Life Mastery Protocol

Early in my professional career, I had the great good fortune to be accepted as a protege of Dr. John Bastyr, a man who was, at that time, considered to be the wise old head of natural healing in America. Though Dr. John has now left us, he had the honor of living to see the largest Naturopathic school in the nation carry his name. It was this same Dr. John Bastyr who, some forty years ago, first gave me a hint about the condition that is now called Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. It was also he who introduced me to the orthostatic blood pressure test for this condition; a test just recently "rediscovered" at Johns Hopkins University.

Never having been one that could do things half way, my interest in these neglected, and often abused, patients soon became a personal crusade that continues to this day. Over the last forty plus years, I have discovered that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (what I called Adrenal Syndrome for the first thirty some years of my practice because the rest of the medical community would not even accept its existence) is one of the simplest conditions to understand and treat, but also one of the most difficult. This paradox exists because CFS can range from vague mild symptoms to near complete debilitation. While the underlying condition remains the same, its character is obviously different at these two extremes of severity. Therefore, the treatment of any one stage of CFS must be unique to that individual stage. But, I am getting ahead of myself. Let us first look and see just what we mean by Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

In a nutshell, my long experience and, more importantly, successful treatment of CFS has convinced me that: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is the result of a weakening of the glandular system (particularly the adrenal gland) of a susceptible individual as the result of long-term unremitting stress in their life. The more susceptible the individual, the less stress and the shorter time required to create this condition. Conversely, the stronger the glandular system of the individual the greater the amount of stress and the longer it must be continuously applied to manifest the condition. At one extreme of this susceptibility, we find the individual in whom CFS is triggered by the glandular changes of puberty. These individuals may well never know what real energy feels like unless they are treated by "one who knows."

On the other extreme, we have the individual who, for all practical purposes, is nearly immune to CFS, in that their glandular system is so strong that they are able to readily fend off almost any long term stress they may encounter. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome may develop in this individual, but only following the most gigantic of personal challenges.

Four decades of research has shown that this condition is not a problem most Americans are in danger of developing unless they are exposed to very severe unremitting stress over a long period of time. My own estimate is that only from twenty to twenty-five percent of the general population are readily susceptible to CFS. My research has shown that, if you took a thousand average Americans and subjected them to unremitting stress for a long period of time, you might expect the following results: (1) A few individuals, those with a very strong glandular system, would show little or no effect from the stress. (2) A very large group, maybe seventy to seventy-five percent would develop all the well known symptoms of hypertensive disease (elevated blood pressure, high blood fats, etc.leading to a susceptibility to heart attacks, strokes, etc.). (3) The remaining individuals, a smaller group than the last, but still very significant at approximately twenty or more percent of the population, will develop one or more of the various symptoms we now group under the name Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

The reactions to unremitting stress in this latter group is just the opposite from those in the group number (2). When under stress, the blood pressure of those in group (3) goes down, not up. Their blood fats are rarely a problem. Not only is salt not a problem for these individuals, as it is for the majority group (3), but taken properly may well serve to make them feel better.

In discussing group (3), I am reminded of the experiments by one of the early investigators of the endocrine gland system. He removed the adrenal glands from a cat and found that when this cat was confronted by a dog it did not run or fight but simply collapsed. This is exactly the way that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome patients respond to stress. This animal experiment, and its human similarities, provide us with strong suspicions that one of the underlying causes of the symptoms of Chronic Fatigue, etc. is functional adrenal insufficiency.

As mentioned previously, there is a great variation in the degree of susceptibility to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in this stress sensitive group. This degree of susceptibility ranges from those who would only develop symptoms under the most severe stress all the way to those who have little chance to escape Chronic Fatigue Syndrome no matter how little stress they encounter in their life. It is this latter subgroup that I have called Chronic Adrenal Syndrome individuals in some of my earlier works on this subject.

As per the name given it, the most common symptom of CFS is weakness and fatigue, with little, or no known, reason to explain it. In some phases of this condition, however, panic attacks and insomnia may well be the most prominent symptoms. It all depends on just what the body is doing to adapt at that particular point in the development of this condition.

Perhaps the most difficult pattern of symptoms for the non-CFS individual to understand about these patients is the sudden mood changes that the condition can cause. Since CFS directly affects both the glandular and nervous systems, it can bring about almost instant changes through either. A CFS patient can feel fine one moment and yet be ready to commit suicide a few minutes later. On the other hand, I have seen patients who, one day, I felt would be permanently bedridden, up and around the next day in a happy state of mind. What is happening is that these CFS patients have lost the ability to adapt or to build an internal "buffer" to the trials and tribulations that we all face. Each day they walk a narrow tight rope and, if they take one misstep, they will fall into a black bottomless abyss on one side or the other.

With such quixotic mood changes, it is easy to understand why less compassionate and understanding physicians often consider these individuals to be neurotic, if not actually psychotic. It is most unfortunate, in this so called enlightened age regarding Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, that so many doctors still consider these poor wretches to be only lazy malingerers or victims of a simple state of depression. Last night on a TV show I saw a comedian attempting to make fun of people with what he called the "Yuppie Flu." It was a good thing that I was not in his audience or he would now have a black eye. Such ignorance! How do you think his audience would have reacted if he attempted to make jokes about diabetic or cancer patients?

The following protocol is particularly intended for, and dedicated to, you and other CFS patients. It is especially designed to help the most severe of these neglected and unwanted souls. Through our past programs we have been able to return hundreds, if not thousands, of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome patients to efficient, productive lives and trust that with this new improved protocol that we will be able to help thousands more.

Unlike the adrenalless cat in the experiment we mentioned, our patients still have some adrenal function. The integrity of this function will vary from patient to patient but as long as there is still some adrenal activity, it can be supported and husbanded. One of the major considerations with these patients, however, is the fact that they have very little ability to adapt quickly to the rigors often required in normal daily life. That is the daily routine that has been designed by those from the hypertensive majority [group (2)]. We usually find this hypotensive CFS patient attempting to adapt to a world made for and by another group of people. Thus, they usually go through life a square peg attempting to fit into a round hole.

Here at the Clymer Research Healing Center & Sanctuary, we have two main programs to help these patients. First, we provide, at our Sanctuary, an environment specifically designed for their adaptive abilities and, second, we have created a new protocol we call Life Mastery in which we carefully instruct these patients how to live in a world not of their own making.

In our Life Mastery program the patient is taught how to best maximize the use of their glandular and immune systems. Unlike the hypertensive individual, the CFS patient has little or no leeway in living their life. They must make the most efficient use of every action and activity if they are to survive in the world built by and for others. The main purpose of the Life Mastery program is to teach them how to establish this needed efficiency and effectiveness.

Since the CFS patient has much less vitality to expend compared to the average person: Wasted or unproductive energy expenditure must be reduced to a minimum.

Unlike the majority of the population, who have the ability to bumble through life learning by trial and error, the CFS patients has little slack to do so and, if they are to survive and prosper, must learn to do things right the first time as much as possible. This takes careful instruction in Life Mastery and such instruction is the backbone of our care.

What we call "waste" is any unnecessary activity that is not designed to result in an improvement in the basic condition. Obviously, if the patient must and is able to work this is a necessary activity, even though it may be a stress and is one that we must accept in many patients.

In practice, Rule #1 must be approached with reason and logic. The idea is not to make the patient a prisoner of his or her own life style restrictions but only to reduce all activities to those that are truly to the patient's benefit on all the various functional levels. The key, as in so many things, is proper and efficient use, not non-use or abuse.

Actually, there is no one who could not benefit from our Life Mastery program but for the CFS type patient it is an absolute necessity and a real life saver.

Since foods, and even some nutritional supplements, to which the individual may have an adverse reaction create unnecessary stress: No food, herb or supplement should be taken that does not directly contribute to an improvement of the condition.

This is actually a variation of Rule #1, something that is true of almost all the Rules that follow. Every substance that enters the body sets up a chain of events for digestion, absorption and assimilation that requires some of the body's energy. If the substance (food, vitamins, herbs, drink, etc.) takes more energy from the body than it provides, it is detrimental to the CFS and they will be the worse for the consumption. The same principle is especially true for drugs of all kinds, whether taken by mouth or by injection. Many drugs given to CFS patients may have a seemingly beneficial short term effect but often the long term results are to the detriment of the basic CFS condition.

We are often asked for a diet to help cure CFS. Unfortunately, there is no one diet, or even type of diet, to do so. The diet must be individualized to each patient. It must be chosen so as to create the maximum benefit with the minimum of vitality drain.

This is usually best accomplished by a diet composed of fresh natural foods prepared in such a manner that they are easily digested so as to retain as much of their original nutrient value as possible. Also, all foods need to be so combined with other foods in such a way that they impose the least amount of stress on the digestive system and are, thus, more fully assimilated.

As a part of your Life Mastery program, your individual dietary needs will be determined and, from this information, you will be taught how to choose and prepare the foods best adapted for you. While we have suggested some general dietary guidelines here, we accept as true the admonition, "One man's meat is another man's poison" so, in the long run, each CFS patient's dietary regime must be carefully adapted to their individual requirements.

This same admonition holds true for supplements. Not only do different phases of CFS require different supplemental help, but each patient, within a group, invariably requires a unique supplement program as well. This, again, is a part of the Life Mastery program.

Such a supplement regime is never a fixed item. Due to the nature of CFS and allied conditions, the needs of the patient often change frequently (especially in the early stages of treatment). It is important that the physician stay on top of this situation and be ever ready to alter the supplement program if needed to meet the ever changing nature of the CFS patient.

Since the glandular system of the CFS patient cannot discriminate between the various types of stress that compromise it: It is as important to prevent wasted mental and emotional energy as physical energy.

After devoting some forty years to the study and treatment of CFS, I can state, without fear of contradiction, that I have found very few cases that did not have a problem with both mental and emotional stress as well as with physical stress. In my original books on this subject, I made the "rash" statement that one unit of mental stress was equal to two units of physical stress and one unit of emotional stress was equal to four units of physical stress. As the years have passed I have found no reason to change this conclusion or the formula itself.

Mental stress is that which might occur from an employment or occupation that involves a great deal of mental effort or concentration, but not necessarily an emotional reaction to that effort. If there is also an emotional reaction along with the mental stress, we have a combined stress assault that can become most deadly and debilitating to most CFS individuals.

Over the years, we have found mental and emotional stresses to be the most elusive of all and ones that 99% of the physicians who treat these conditions tend to ignore. One of the main reasons for initiating the Life Mastery course is to particularly address these specific stresses. To this end, we have not only devoted a goodly part of our in-house Sanctuary program, but have also developed a correspondence program for those individuals who are not able to come to our Sanctuary at this time.

The basic principle of our program to reduce mental and emotional stress is to help the patient transmute those stresses into feelings and emotions that are constructive and productive in their nature. That is to change hate to love, resentment to compassion, etc.

This sounds almost too good to be true but it can, and must, be done if the CFS patient is to truly learn to live a useful, productive life. The scientific principle involved is based upon the fact that it is possible to retrain the cells of the nervous system (from the brain on down)
to respond differently to stimuli than the way they have in the past. Our series of Life Mastery lessons, which are an integral part of this program, are the main vehicle by which the patient is taught to accomplish this most essential transformation.

Since, by the time we get the CFS patient, they usually have some sort of secondary immune weakness: It is essential to remove all stresses of an allergic or infective nature at the same time as the underlying Chronic Fatigue Syndrome condition is addressed.

While there is a great deal of effort to identify some specific causative agent as the culprit in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, I do not believe that such an agent exists. I do find, that, since there is abundant evidence to show that the immune system is compromised in most of these patients, they are very susceptible to the adverse effects of opportunistic organisms. The question here becomes one of the proverbial chicken and the egg. My experience tells me that the glandular imbalance and weakness come first in most instances.

In our history of the CFS patient, we commonly hear the story of a patient who has been working extra hours, going short on sleep, eating mainly junk food and then who, suddenly, "caught some sort of bug" and has not really felt well ever since the infection. I feel the "bug" was just the triggering mechanism for a glandular collapse that was bound to happen.

However, once the immune system is compromised and some form of opportunistic agent has "taken root," we must do all we can to assist the immune system in the elimination or shackling of this unwanted guest. In this process we must be careful that we do not "throw out the baby with the bath water," that is we must do all we can to see to it that the treatment given for the infective or allergic agent is less of a stress to the patient than the agent itself.

The first step in our healing efforts is to determine if the patient really has CFS and, if so, to determine their phase or stage, so that treatment can be correctly directed. Once this is accomplished, we next begin an exhaustive examination to discover if any opportunistic
organisms or other conditions are complicating the CFS condition. If these are found, appropriate treatments, in keeping with the nature of the patient's CFS phase, are instituted.

Following this, special provocative non-evasive allergy tests may be advised if the patient's history leads us to believe that some form of allergy might be an inhibiting factor in their recovery. During the time that these objective examinations are being made, we will also be counseling with the patient to determine what, if any, emotional support and assistance is required to assure them of a total return to the stability they desire.

Once our diagnostic work is done, we are ready to implement the full therapeutic procedures. Due to the fact that there are certain therapies nearly all our CFS patients can use with benefit, we usually do not need to wait until all our tests are final to begin our general body regeneration efforts. However, once we have all the tests in place, we can augment our general regeneration efforts with added specific therapies for the individual needs of the patient.

For those patients in one of the later phases of CFS, or who come to us from out of state or country, we have created our Sanctuary. This is a facility situated between our two Healing Research Centers and in easy walking distance of both. Here, the CFS patient is able to be sequestered in a world where we are able to reduce stresses to a minimum. Often the only treatment we can give at first to some of our more severe patients is the stress reduction of our Sanctuary and our passive modality therapies. This combination has never failed us.

Many patients have written us stating that, while their CFS condition has improved with the care of other physicians and facilities, they eventually seemed to hit a brick wall and could go no further. Our experience has shown that the protocol outlined here, including a stay in our Sanctuary, is just what they need to break through that brick wall. We have yet to find a CFS patient that has not respond to a combination of our active and passive adrenal therapy plus the needed minimal stress stay in our Sanctuary.

The main reason our continued efforts to help the CFS patient is our dedication to these patients. CFS is not a sideline with us, it is what we do. The vast majority of the our facilities are directed to create and implement the ideal care of the CFS patient. Because of the strange nature and course of this condition, the CFS patient has many problems in their relationships with others. They are, by nature, giving individuals and when they become too weak to give, they begin to feel guilty. This sense of guilt, in turn, creates more stress which in turn stresses the patient more worsening the condition and an unending vicious circle is created. Our Life Mastery course in designed to break this cycle of emotional pain, exhaustion and guilt by teaching these patients the needed rules of living in the world with their own glandular system's rather unusual idiosyncracies.

Our Life Mastery course takes into consideration all the known components of treatment that have shown promise in assisting in the correction of CFS and other allied conditions. In fact it will help almost all known conditions that are exacerbated by any form of stress.

In review, our treatment consists of: Passive therapeutic modalities to help the glandular and immune systems to regenerate. Carefully selected and adapted nutritional supplementation to support these two important systems. Programs of counseling to assist the patient in the reduction of mental and emotional stress. Specific efforts to identify and treat all allied conditions and opportunistic invaders. A Sanctuary where those who require, or desire, it may come to take advantage of a stress free environment for their complete recovery.

Our Life Mastery course is available in three different forms: (1) A complete form in which the patient stays at our Sanctuary while being treated and instructed. (2) An out-patient form in which the patient has treatment and instruction at one of the Healing Research Centers, but lives at home. (3) A correspondent course for those patients who are not able to make it to our Healing Research Centers except, perhaps, for the diagnostic workup.

Every CFS patient, as well as those with related conditions (most auto immune conditions), can be helped to lead productive lives once again. However, to accomplish this worthy goal, every facet of their life must be taken into consideration. If problems are detected, these must be corrected if we are to be successful in our efforts to "bring back from the dead" another CFS patient. It has been our experience of the last forty years that unless the total approach, as outlined herein, is taken, there is little chance of a lasting "cure" for the more seriously affected CFS patient and so it is to these dear neglected and misunderstood individuals that our Life Mastery course is directed and dedicated.