Optimum Nutrition - Spring 2020 PREVIEW

INTERVIEW
F
or those who haven’t seen the
film Dark Waters, there is a scene
in which the main protagonist
Rob Bilot, played by Mark Ruffalo, is found
ripping up carpets and throwing cooking
pans into the rubbish — before his wife,
played by Anne Hathaway, yells at him to
stop. I shan’t ruin it with spoilers, but the
film is based on the real-life story of lawyer
Rob Bilot who spent two decades fighting
one of America’s largest corporations over
the dumping of toxic waste. It was roughly
when I saw the film that I also spoke with
Dr Jenny Goodman. A UK-based doctor
who practises ‘ecological’ medicine,
Goodman is a long way from Hollywood
but her message isn’t too different from
that of Dark Waters. Her book Staying Alive
in Toxic Times: A Seasonal Guide to Lifelong
Health lists and discusses the chemicals
that surround us in everyday life. But unlike
Dark Waters, she also tells us what we can
do to lessen the damage.
The ‘toxic overload’ debate — the
concept that we live in a chemically-loaded
environment that we didn’t evolve for — is
a controversial one. Many experts argue
that toxins are usually at ‘safe’ levels; for
example, pesticide residues on food. The
other side of the debate, however, is that
those pesticide residues, added to all
the other chemicals in our environment,
create an unhealthy cocktail. Pollution
from vehicles, chemicals in food packaging
or plastic bottles, or cigarette smoke are
well known examples. Goodman’s book
includes many more, stating that these
chemicals are making us — or some of us,
at least — sick; triggering health problems
including neurological disturbances,
autoimmune conditions and cancer.
Goodman and I speak on the phone.
As we talk, she occasionally refers to
academic studies so that I can check her
facts. My impression is that she either
has an excellent memory or is superfast
at thumbing through lists of journal
references. It’s also a reminder that despite
the rather (in my opinion) ‘softly softly’
approach cover of her book, Goodman
comes from a science background. She
qualified as a doctor in 1982 but became
disillusioned because medical training
did not tell her how to help prevent
disease. She writes that on the wards,
the profession focused on suppressing
symptoms “using a vast array of drugs”.
(Goodman, p.2) In the 1990s, she
discovered the British Society for Ecological
Medicine (BSEM) — a form of practice also
known as functional medicine — where,
she writes, she encountered other doctors
who were also disillusioned with dishing
out drugs.
Joining BSEM, she says, meant
rethinking some of her training. “I had an
awful lot to unlearn. I was to some extent
still in the conventional mode. I thought
purely in diagnostic terms — you’ve got
disease X or you haven’t,” she says. “And if
your symptoms don’t fit any pattern in my
textbook then you haven’t got a disease,
ergo you must be well. Of course, we know
that isn’t the case. We know there is a vast
spectrum between health and [a named]
illness.”
Many people can be quite ill, she says,
but with symptoms that haven’t quite
made it into the textbooks. She says she
also had to unlearn the notion of aetiology.
“In medical textbooks, under each disease
there is a section called ‘aetiology’ which
means ‘cause’. It’s always a very small
section.
“I had to learn that what conventional
medicine gives as a cause — which is what
is happening in the tissues, in the cells — is
a mechanism, not the cause.”
Another difference between
conventional medicine and how she
practises, she says, is that rather than
saying nothing is wrong, because the
patient’s symptoms don’t fit into a
textbook, she will say ‘I don’t know what
is wrong’ before investigating. Much of
Goodman’s approach involves nutrition
because, she explains, many chemicals
“push” nutrients out of the system.
However, nutrition as medicine is not
largely accepted by the wider medical
...toxins are driving... diseases including: “Acne, addictions, ADHD,
allergies, anxiety, arthritis, asthma, autism and ASD, auto-immune
diseases, cancer, chronic fatigue syndrome/ME, dementia,
depression, diabetes, eczema, endometriosis, fertility problems,
fibroids, hay fever, heart disease, hyperactivity, inflammatory bowel
disease, irritable bowel syndrome, lupus, motor neurone disease,
multiple sclerosis, obesity, Parkinson’s disease, period problems and
PMS, polycystic ovaries, stroke, thyroid problems”
“The gastroenterologist who — if you pardon the pun — poo pooed the
idea of the microbiome is probably dishing out probiotics on the NHS”
profession, and it is unlikely that many
of us would get similar information
from our GPs. This, she says, is because
conventional medicine is “slow to catch
up”. In her book there is the example
of a gastroenterologist who, about six
years ago, told a patient that food made
no difference to the state of their gut.
“The gastroenterologist who — if you
pardon the pun — poo pooed the idea of
the microbiome is probably dishing out
probiotics on the NHS in the six years
since that comment was made,” she says.
“[Medical understanding is] changing
rapidly but of course myself and my
colleagues will never ever get the credit,
because once the mainstream knows it, it’s
like they always knew it.”
Generally, it appears that GPs are
nonplussed when she works with their
patients. Asked how they respond to her
recommendations, she replies: “On the
whole just blank. Research that is known
about in the academic sphere does take
time to trickle down to the clinical world.”
She mentions small intestine bacterial
overgrowth (SIBO) and leaky gut (intestinal
hyperpermeability) as two examples
that have only recently entered into the
consciousness of conventional medicine.
Where Goodman and like-minded
practitioners continue to stand apart
from conventional accepted wisdom is
on the belief that environmental toxins
are driving growing rates of modern
diseases including: “Acne, addictions,
ADHD, allergies, anxiety, arthritis, asthma,
autism and ASD, auto-immune diseases,
cancer, chronic fatigue syndrome/ME,
dementia, depression, diabetes, eczema,
endometriosis, fertility problems, fibroids,
hay fever, heart disease, hyperactivity,
inflammatory bowel disease, irritable
bowel syndrome, lupus, motor neurone
disease, multiple sclerosis, obesity,
Parkinson’s disease, period problems and
PMS, polycystic ovaries, stroke, thyroid
problems.” These diseases, she writes are
“21st century plagues, which were rare or
unknown before the industrial revolution.
They are not inevitable and they are not
primarily about ageing.” (Goodman, p.8)
The fact we are living longer, she
believes, is not to blame. “There’s a lack
of logic in the argument that says thanks
to the wonders of modern medicine we’re
now living long enough to get hideous
diseases,” she says. “Alzheimer described
what he called pre-senile dementia. His
first patient was 51. In your nineties you’re
going to forget people’s names, but in
SPRING 2020 | OPTIMUM NUTRITION
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