For three long years, the entire Kuhn family suffered through a mysterious illness that no doctor could identify. They had been everywhere and tried everything. MRIs, CT scans, diagnostic ultrasounds, panels of blood work, hormone testing, urinalysis; you name it, they did it. Visiting general practitioners, emergency room doctors, specialists in every field of medicine and several different hospitals provided no answers. They were in trouble. Dr. Rob Kuhn, his wife, Wendy, and their three children, Alex, Nick, and Nolan, rode this rollercoaster of misdiagnosis and non-diagnosis nearly all the way to their graves. Finally in May of 2008, through a truly synchronistic event, they discovered that they were being attacked by a deadly biotoxin. At last, they had an answer. Sadly, the new challenge became the fact that traditional medicine has a very poor track record in treating biotoxic illness. Another solution had to be found. In Return to Health, Dr. Kuhn shares with you the challenges that his family faced and how they were able to overcome them through the use of functional medicine techniques. Inspired by his own health turnaround, he changed the focus of his practice and began taking care of people with chronic conditions. Now board certified in integrative medicine, Dr. Kuhn enjoys the rewarding feeling of helping people whose health problems are the worst of the worst. Autoimmune conditions, type-II diabetes, fibromyalgia, hypothyroidism, biotoxic illness, and those strange mystery conditions are all in a day's work for this natural healthcare physician. This situation may sound familiar to you. You may be watching your health deteriorate while getting no answers. If you have been suffering with health problems that nobody has been able to figure out, read Return to Health.
Return to Health
Overcoming the Unimaginable and Beating the OddsBy Robert KuhnBALBOA PRESS
Copyright © 2012 Dr. Robert Kuhn
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4525-5672-7Contents
Foreword, Timothy Feuling................................................ixIntroduction: You Can Regain Your Health ... Really!.....................xiPart 1: Learning About Sickness..........................................1Chapter 1: Back from the Brink...........................................3Chapter 2: The Downfall..................................................15Chapter 3: Fixing Chronically Bad Health.................................32Part 2: Returning to Health..............................................49Chapter 4: Creating the Vision of a New You..............................51Chapter 5: Detoxification................................................64Chapter 6: Do You Know How To Eat?.......................................86Chapter 7: Exercise Is For Life..........................................106Chapter 8: Less Sleep = Less Health......................................120Chapter 9: Stress, the Three-Headed Monster..............................130Chapter 10: The Master System............................................148Chapter 11: The Healing Power of Belief..................................165Chapter 12: It's Time to Take Back Your Life!............................177
Chapter One
Back from the Brink
There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.
—Victor Hugo
May 1, 2008
Today is my thirty-ninth birthday. It's 7:15 am, and I'm standing in the upstairs guest bathroom in my house. I'm staring at myself in the mirror. My skin is jaundiced, with a horrifying yellowish tint. My eyes are bloodshot, and I mean to the point where it looks like I stayed out until three o'clock in the morning drinking tequila. My arms tremble uncontrollably. In fact, my entire body is shaking mildly, and once again I feel nauseous. Every time I take a breath, it feels as though my lungs are filled with shards of crushed glass. I am cold and shivering, even though it's springtime. A splitting headache pounds my skull, and even though I just slept through the night, I feel like I need to be in bed for about another two days to regain some energy. My eyes begin to tear up as I look at myself and think, "Today is going to be the last day that I am alive on this planet."
It's time to go to work. Do I go to work or to the emergency room? This is a disturbing question to ask early in the morning. After three years of bouncing around from doctor to doctor trying to figure out why I was in this position and what was wrong with me, I knew that there was nothing medicine could do to help me. A whole lot of ghastly statistics and part of my life's work had told me that hospitals are places where sick people go to die. As bad as I felt, I chose to go to work. This is my story.
The Story Is Part of the Problem
In my first draft of this chapter, I wrote my story in its complete and total entirety. I included every painful detail. Feeling strongly about what my family and I went through, I wanted the world to know what happened point by point so that I could hopefully prevent others from suffering the same fate.
But by doing that I would be reinforcing one of the most negative, health-draining behaviors that people partake in: telling their stories. You see, everyone has a story. Everyone! And for most people, that story becomes a self-limiting crutch that prevents them from ever living a life of happiness.
"I'm depressed because my wife left me." "I'm not doing well at work because I'm not smart enough." "I can't make a relationship last because of my upbringing." The list goes on and on. While some of these things may be true, they are still a story, and they still hold you back. For many people there is a huge payoff in holding on to those stories. Sometimes they receive attention from others for telling their sad story. Other times their story allows them to be taken off the hook, to not face the truth about why something isn't working in their life. It doesn't matter what kind of payoff it is. A payoff is a payoff, and it could seriously hinder your chances of regaining your health or achieving your dreams.
Let me give you some examples of people's stories that relate to their health. These are things I hear on a daily basis; they keep people from actually being able to achieve the level of health that they want:
• I have fibromyalgia, so ...
• I'm overweight because ...
• My MS is causing ...
• I can't do this because ...
• I can't exercise because ...
• My thyroid causes ...
• I have peripheral neuropathy, so ...
• My migraines cause me to ...
• My back will never be better because ...
• My parents had this so ...
• This has been going on ever since ...
This is just a short list of the stories I hear in my practice on a regular basis. To be clear, I'm not saying that people don't actually have these conditions, because they do. I'm also not saying that these conditions don't present challenges, because they do. The problem is that for many, the condition becomes their story, and once they have a story it can be a major obstacle to healing.
When I hear a sentence begin that way, I know someone is about to tell me their story again. Here's the issue: while it may be true that you have fibromyalgia, MS, or peripheral neuropathy, believing your own story inhibits you from moving forward in your life. Your story becomes your identity. You must change it!
Let me give you an example. I had a fifty-year-old female patient a few years back who had been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, which is a condition of global body pain. We'll call her Michelle. Michelle had completely bought into her diagnosis, hook, line, and sinker. She always came into the office with the statement, "My fibromyalgia is killing me today." One day she came in shaking and upset. She walked very slowly with a cane and made a scene over how much pain she was in. In a very loud, shaky, and upset tone, she said to me, "I'm having a terrible fibro flare-up." As a matter of fact, she told everyone else in the office too—the other patients, my staff, anyone who would listen. Here is the really interesting part of the story. She was my last patient on the morning shift that day. About fifteen minutes after she left, I went to a café right around the corner from my office to get some lunch. I walk into the café, and who did I see laughing, joking, and walking swiftly through the restaurant without a cane or any apparent physical disability? You guessed it. My patient Michelle appeared to be in no pain and to be having a great time. Of course, I would like to say it was because the treatment that she just received was so incredibly awesome, but there's more to it than that.
Am I suggesting that while in my office she was faking it? It's hard to say, but consider this. When she was in my office, her husband was with her. He coddled her and looked very concerned, obviously stressed over her condition. When I saw her at the restaurant, her husband wasn't there. She was there with a few other ladies having lunch. You can decide for yourself what the difference was.
Psychologically speaking, people get affirmation, a feeling of significance, and other types of emotional support from clinging to their story. They may not even realize that they are telling...
