NMSA News

By Katie Stage

The Naturopathic Medical Student Association (NMSA) has had a busy and productive few months as the organization continues to grow and incorporate itself more into student life at the Naturopathic medical schools across North America.   

NMSA was recently recognized as Student Affiliate of the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians (AANP).

“Recognition as the Student Affiliate of the AANP is, by far, the most rewarding milestone in our development, " said Dr. Leila Fosdick Turner, NMSA founding member and SCNM alumna. "This recognition adds unlimited possibilities for students in training, and will change and enhance the relationship of Naturopathic medicine with our current medical system. From the beginning, our mission was to serve the students and the profession, and I’m so ecstatic to see us doing just that.”     

NMSA also just completed its first annual election process for the board positions, which include President and Vice Presidents of Communications, Membership and Education, Public Relations and Finance. The new board members will now appoint students for many additional positions, including elections and fundraising representative as well as the track co-chairs. The current board was pleased with the process and is very excited to have NCNM, SCNM, UBCNM, and CCNM represented on the board, with SCNM members showing particular involvement in the current and new leadership positions.   

NMSA is pleased to announce several new activities driven by the tracks.

The Philosophy Track just launched its Scholars Program. The Scholars Program is a quarterly essay contest that aims to encourage students to engage in philosophical discussions.  Each quarter, a question concerning the philosophy of naturopathic medicine will be announced and posted on the NMSA website. The question will be chosen to both stir the philosophical thinking of NMSA students, and also to help them hone short and practical explanations of what naturopathic medicine is, for use now as students, and in early practice, with family, with friends, potential patients and with others. The submissions will be reviewed by a member of the naturopathic community, and the five best answers will be posted on the NMSA website along with a short biography of the students. At the end of the year, NMSA members will vote on the best answer overall, and the winning student will be awarded with the Naturopathic Scholars Award at the AANP/NMSA convention and a dedicated cash prize. The first question will be posted on the NMSA website on November 15th, and the entry must be received by December 1st. To learn more, please visit www.naturopathicstudent.org.  

Finally, NMSA is thrilled to announce the launch of the Annual College Bowl. Sponsored by the Leadership track, the College Bowl is an academic competition between the six naturopathic medical schools in North America. Each school will select four students and two alternates to compete at the Bowl, which will take place at the AANP convention in August. The winning team will take home the Naturopathic College Bowl trophy, the accolades of the naturopathic community, and the $12,500 first prize. The second place prize will be $7,500 and third place prize will be $5,000. The prizes will go to the school’s Student Government Associations for a NMSA pre-approved project that works towards advancing the Naturopathic Medicine profession.  

The Naturopathic Medical Student Association (NMSA) is the first incorporated independent association of naturopathic physicians-in-training, and includes students and alumni from all six naturopathic medical schools in the United States and Canada. NMSA strives to promote the principles of naturopathic medicine, establish a better understanding of health in communities, and improve upon the current standard of healthcare. The organization focuses its efforts on the areas of most interest to students: Public Health, Legislation, Philosophy, Professional Development, and Student Leadership.  

To everyone who has supported NMSA, thank you! Students, alumni, and supporters are welcome to join NMSA, and membership if free. For more information, or to join the organization, please visit www.naturopathicstudent.org.

Naturopaths Without Borders Provides Humanistic Medicine in Mexico

By Katie Stage

SCNM's Naturopaths Without Borders (NWB) club will travel to Mexico this coming February to provide volunteer assistance at the Casa Clinical health care clinic for the poor. Ten students and Dr. Hazel, SCNM’s beloved hydrotherapy professor, will participate in the volunteer program for one week starting February 9, 2008.  

Goals for the trip include participating in the medical care at Casa Clinica, adding hydrotherapy to Mar de Jade’s spa building, and planting medicinal herbs on the Mar de Jade campus to create a sustainable supply of medicines.      

At the Clinic, students will conduct patient intake and assist Dr. Laura and Dr. Hazel with diagnosis and treatments. The students will be exposed to a wide range of health conditions, many not commonly seen in the SCNM Medical Center, including parasites, severe infections, diabetes, hypertension, ulcers, urinary tract infections, and women’s health. In addition to volunteer hours, NWB will donate supplements, medicines such as homeopathic remedies, supplies including acupuncture needles, and reference books on naturopathic medical modalities.  

Dr. Laura del Valle, a family physician who uses a blend of Western medicine and holistic methods, founded Casa Clinica in Las Varas (about 60 miles north of Puerto Vallarta) in 1985. Since its opening 22 years ago, Casa Clinica has offered health services to over 16,000 registered families. The clinic primarily serves the local population, however, many patients travel for hours to reach Casa Clinica as it provides a level of care otherwise beyond their reach.   

The student volunteers will stay at the Mar de Jade resort, located in Chacala, a small fishing village near Las Varas. Mar de Jade is a beautiful, ocean side eco-resort that offers delicious home-cooked meals, yoga and meditation rooms, several pools and a library.  Proceeds from Mar de Jade and the spa building recently constructed there are used to fund Casa Clinica and support projects to further the local economy. In addition to the services of the clinic, Dr. Laura and guests are responsible for a free after-school program including meal and child care through the afternoon hours, a library for the village, and many work opportunities for the local women in Chacala.  

In addition to the clinical experience, students will have the opportunity to take Spanish lessons at Mar de Jade. The students will receive approximately 20 hours of volunteer or clinic hour credit, depending on their level of education at SCNM.  

This trip is NWB’s second of many planned trips to Mar de Jade. Volunteering at Casa Clinica broadens the medical school experience for students, and provides much-needed medical care at Casa Clinica.    

“My goal for this trip is to increase international awareness of Naturopathic medicine, and to increase the international awareness of Naturopathic medical students," said Sean Hesler, NWB President. "I want to give our students an eye-opening experience that will be both educational and inspirational, as we combine Naturopathic wisdom with a clinic that provides a preferential option for the poor.”

Any students or people interested in helping the patrons of Casa Clinica are encouraged to donate supplies or money, which will be used to fund medical equipment for the clinic.

“Donations of money and medical supplies will allow us to provide first-rate care for people who most need it,” said Hesler. All donations are tax deductible.  

For more information on the trip please contact Sean Hesler, President of NWB, at s.hesler@scnm.edu. For information on Mar de Jade and Casa Clinica, please visit  www.mardejade.com.

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'Cure' defies convention

Excerpt reprint from Chicago Tribune, Kathleen Louden

Kirt Tyson believes he is cured of Type 1 diabetes, a disease thought to be incurable without a pancreas transplant.

Type 1 diabetes means the pancreas cannot produce adequate insulin to process sugar in the blood. Type 2 diabetes occurs when the body becomes resistant to insulin.

Initially misdiagnosed with Type 2 diabetes at age 24, Tyson had extremely high blood sugar, even with insulin treatment. So when his blood work was normal months after his 2005 diagnosis, his physician wanted to know how, he said.

"When I told her I was off insulin, she was astounded," said Tyson, 25, a former Baltimore resident who now is a graduate student in Tempe, Ariz.

The doctor was probably more surprised when Tyson said what he believes cured him: a raw-food diet that eliminated sources of sugar typical in the American diet. Conventional wisdom is that insulin injections are the only treatment for Type 1.

Tyson had just returned from the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center in Patagonia, Ariz., where he was one of six people with diabetes who participated in a documentary film "Raw for 30 Days." Scheduled for release next spring, the independent film (rawfor30days.com) chronicles the participants during a 30-day residential program that strives to reverse diabetes naturally. The alternative treatment focuses on eating organic foods that are vegan (no meat or dairy), sugar free -- and uncooked.

Tree of Life's raw diet, according to the center's founder and director, Dr. Gabriel Cousens, involves "live" plant-based foods. These foods are freshly picked or sprouted, so they contain more nutrients, said Cousens, a holistic medical doctor and psychiatrist.

On this medically supervised live-food diet, people with diabetes typically lose weight, can discontinue their medicine and have their blood-sugar levels return to normal within two weeks, Cousens said. He describes the diet in his new book, "There Is a Cure for Diabetes: The Tree of Life 21-Day+ Program" (North Atlantic Books), to be published in January.

Tyson reported that his fasting blood sugar dropped from 300 (milligrams per deciliter) to a normal 90 by the program's second week. He continues to eat mostly foods that are raw and said his blood sugar remains normal. "This diet works for me," he said.

Some of the other documentary participants reportedly did not fare as well, despite initially improving greatly with the diet. Cousens said one person dropped out of the program, and two others still have mild diabetes.

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The Raw for Life 2-disc DVD set is an opportunity for you and your loved ones to learn more about raw, vegan, veggie and living foods as well as how you can easily implement it into your life for maximum happiness, health and joy.

20% discount for SCNM students, staff, faculty and alumni. Offer Expires 12-25-2007.

Visit www.1shoppingcart.com/app/aftrack.asp?afid=700317 and enter discount code: tyson20.

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Updates from the  Library

Early Close

Tuesday, Dec. 18 - close at 5:30 p.m.

:Library CLOSED

Dec. 19, 2007 thru Jan. 1, 2008.

Final Exam Week Hours

7 a.m. - 9 p.m. - Tuesday, Jan. 22 thru Friday, Jan. 25

7 a.m. - 5:30 p.m. - Monday, Jan. 28

Winter Break Schedule

10 a.m. - 5 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 29 thru Sunday, Feb.10

No weekend or evening hours

Regular Library Hours

M-F 7 a.m. - 7 p.m.

Saturday, 8 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Extended student check-out of all reserve and most reference items will go into effect on Friday, Jan. 25, at 12 p.m. This will allow items to be kept until 9 a.m., on Monday, Feb. 18, the first day of spring term.       

If there is a journal article you need that the Library does not have on-site, we can almost always get a hard copy of it. This takes about 10 ten days or less and the cost $4 per article. The Library uses an electronic, computerized service called DocLine that instantly connects us with other many other medical libraries in the Phoenix metro area, regionally and all around the country. For assistance please see Robert Wilbanks, Library Assistant, or Mayu Muralidharan, Library Technician.

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Tempe has a new place to shop

By Melissa Coats

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Why don't all whales have cancer?

A novel hypothesis resolving Peto's paradox

John D. Nagy,1,*,† Erin M. Victor,* and Jenese H. Cropper*

*Department of Life Sciences, Scottsdale Community College, 9000 E. Chaparral Rd., Scottsdale, AZ 85256, USA; †Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-1804, USA

Erin Victor, 2nd quarter student, along with a fellow student and a professor, recently had an article published at Integrative and Comparative Biology. The article has quickly gained a lot of interest and has been mentioned in the AZ Republic, Nature journal and in international science journals.

To read the article in its entirety visit, http://icb.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/icm062?ijkey=lGTx6f1sWKYzncD&keytype=ref&eaf.     

Synopsis: Larger organisms have more potentially carcinogenic cells, tend to live longer and require more ontogenic cell divisions. Therefore, intuitively one might expect cancer incidence to scale with body size. Evidence from mammals, however, suggests that the cancer risk does not correlate with body size. This observation defines ‘‘Peto’s paradox.’’ Here, we propose a novel hypothesis to resolve Peto’s paradox. We suggest that malignant tumors are disadvantaged in larger hosts. In particular, we hypothesize that natural selection acting on competing phenotypes among the cancer cell population will tend to favor aggressive ‘‘cheaters’’ that then grow as a tumor on their parent tumor, creating a hypertumor that damages or destroys the original neoplasm. In larger organisms, tumors need more time to reach lethal size, so hypertumors have more time to evolve. So, in large organisms, cancer may be more common and less lethal. We illustrate this hypothesis in silico using a previously published hypertumor model. Results from the model predict that malignant neoplasms in larger organisms should be disproportionately necrotic, aggressive, and vascularized than deadly tumors in small mammals. These predictions may serve as the basis on which to test the hypothesis, but to our knowledge, no one has yet performed a systematic investigation of comparative necrosis, histopathology, or vascularization among mammalian cancers.

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It's About Time, Isn't It?

We believe it’s about time that licensed NDs showcase what they do in their clinical practice each and every day. Are you as tired as we are in seeing infomercials promoting all the wonderful benefits of natural medicine explained by non-experts, without any mention of the true experts – US - the licensed NDs? - The physicians that have the academic training and primary care experience that has sustained growth in the fields of diet, lifestyle, nutrition and botanical medicine.

Well, you can now have a voice, by contributing one or more of your clinical success stories to the soon to be published book called "101 Naturopathic Cures." If you are interested in contributing to this first in a series of historical books that showcase hardworking NDs in clinical practice, simply drop us an e-mail at vismedicatrix@hotmail.com and we will send you an easy to complete questionnaire which allows you to share the case you wish to submit. All contributors will also be able to contribute a 150-200 word bio sketch and the address to their clinical practice. A portion of all sales will be contributed to the AANP and state licensure organizations.

Who are we? Dr. Chris D. Meletis, N.D., NCNM 1992, (former Dean and Chief Medical Officer at NCNM, international author and lecturer) and Dr. Jason E. Barker, N.D., SCNM 2001.

Please join us in furthering established ND's as the rightful experts when it comes to Natural Medicine and its clinical efficacy!

Contact us at: vismedicatrix@hotmail.com Phone: 503.643.1024

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