SCD Resources Section

 

  SCD-friendly doctors and medical practitioners -
Dr. Mehl-Madrona's introductory letter
 

Dr. Lewis Mehl-Madrona of New York City joined the SCD listserve on July 2, 2000. The following is his introductory letter. As you can imagine, he was received with much elation!

 

  M.D.'s

Subject: New York Area Resource
Date: Sun, 02 Jul 2000
From:
Lewis E. Mehl-Madrona

Dear SCD-list,

I am writing to introduce myself. I joined this list at the suggestion of my friend, Fia Richmond, who wanted me to learn about these ideas. I have been enjoying the posts and learning more and more.

I am a physician who treats many patients with digestive disorders and difficulties.

I have recently joined a new practice in New York City, and am writing to announce the opening of my practice and to invite those of you who live in the New York metro area and who need a doctor to consider me. My office is at 245 Fifth Ave., 2nd Floor, and is part of Beth Israel Hospital's new Center for Health and Healing. We are a truly integrative practice, providing both conventional and alternative medicine. Besides three family physicians, we have a psychiatrist, a homeopath, a chiropractor, a nutritionist, an acupuncturist, an ayruveda practitioner, a nurse-healer, a gynecologist, a gynecology nurse practitioner, two internists, two massage therapists, a pediatrician, and assorted support staff. We provide hospital care at Beth Israel and are backed by a full range of specialty services.

I have asked Mary Beth Augustine, our nutritionist, to join this SCD list alongside me, so that when you come to visit us, we will both be very familiar with what you are doing and how to support your needs.

If any of you local New York folks are interested in helping us do a study of Elaine's ideas, I'd appreciate any volunteer effort to get something like this underway.

Thanks much for reading (if you got this far!), and I hope I meet some of you.


Lewis Mehl-Madrona, MD, PhD


Clinical Program Director
Beth Israel Medical Center Continuum Center for Health and Healing
245 Fifth Ave., 2nd floor
New York NY 10016 USA
Pager: 800-555-8035
Cellular: 917-856-3755
Fax: 646-935-2273
Home: 212-982-0021
Work: 646-935-2220

 


  Selected SCD Listserve Responses to above letter
  • To Dr. Mehl-Madrona and Ms. Augustine from Elaine Gottschall: Thanks so much for your email and willingness to work with us. It has been such a wonderful thing for me to have the support of Drs. Galland and Hoffman and now, you with a hospital setting!!!!! I am sure you must realize that you and the other doctors have given our IBD sufferers such comfort. You have taken the horrendous fear (expressed yesterday by one of our list members) away. We have nothing to fear but fear itself and how beautiful our lives can become without it hanging over our heads. Thank you. With much gratitude, Elaine

  • Dear Dr. Mehl-Madrona, Welcome to the list. I'd like to thank you for taking an interest in this diet, which has helped so many of us. I do not live near New York City, but if I did I would certainly be making an appointment with you and volunteering to help with your study in any way that I possibly could. If there is any way that I can help from Ontario, just say the word! Janice

  • According to Fia Richmond, " Beth Israel Medical Center has opened a new department as of June 1st, 2000. The Center for Health and Healing has Dr. Lewis Mehl-Madrona, author of Coyote Medicine, as their program director. Dr. Mehl-Madrona has been my son's doctor for several years now and I highly recommend him. He is one of the most open-minded physicians that I have come upon. He also advocates a strong spiritual component to his philosophy of healing. He has continually supported and encouraged the SCD diet with my son. You can learn more about him and access his CV by going to http://www.healing-arts.org/children.

  • Dear Dr. Lewis MM from ElaineGottschall,
    You refer to "scientific studies" and I am not sure what you mean. Doctors, some in New York City, Like Dr. Hoffman and Dr. Galland plus many others, have treated out-patients to find them recovering from UC and Crohn's after years of suffering.Of course, they have their medical records before and after.
    While at Rutgers Univ. the Dept. of Nutrition had people coming into the dining room of the Dietary Dept. for 3 meals a day. They also required stool and urine specimens for the study they were doing. The only problem was that these subjects would go home and eat whatever they pleased without reporting. Obviously, this is not a controlled study. Dr. F. C. Dohan (whom I reference in my chapter on the brain) used a similar diet when his schizophrenic patients were locked up and all food was really controlled and he found that those on the restricted diets were released in about half the time of those that ate the normal food. The only thing I can think of is to get subjects who are willing to check into a sort of sanitorium (spa) and stay there with someone doing all the cooking. It would have to be a pleasant setting but one where they had no access to other food. I can understand why many researchers work on the level of testubes or one molecular enzymatic action rather than take on the whole person. The alternative doctors as well as some medical doctors have found that the Specific Carbohydrate Diet works as an adjunct to their care. Some doctors do not even use supplements such as grapefruit seed extract or bother with sensitivity tests but put the people on the diet and check them out weekly using blood tests, etc. The sicker the patient is, the more some rely on the diet solely as well as any medication they may be on and with weekly checkups, the medication is most often reduced.
    The diet must be carefully controlled as I found that even some of the laboratories are sending out elemental diets which are far from elemental. They use maltodextrin as a carbohydrate source which is a very difficult molecule to digest because of the scarcity of the isomaltase enzyme on intestinal microvilli. . The researchers come up with all kinds of excuses not to use dextrose as a carbohydrate source (which would truly make the carbs elemental) because of the osmolality getting to high.
    Without going into details now, this is a lame excuse.
    I appreciate your interest in the work I have been doing for 40 years and hope that with your assistance we can make this nutritious diet an option, at least, for those not doing well on traditional treatment. Let me know what you want me to do next. With best wishes, Elaine Gottschall