My name is Beverly Isla, a graduate of the Canadian College of Homeopathic Medicine, in Toronto, Ontario. Today, my guest is Dr. Gary Hardy. He has been practising for 30 years in the field of chiropractic therapy, naturopathy, and homeopathy. Dr. Hardy is one of the faculty members of CCHM. He was also one of the founding members of the Canadian Academy of Homeopathy. It’s great to have you here! My first question is: In addition to the 3 modalities you work with, you also incorporate nutrition in your practice. Nutrition is the basics that we all have to deal with, since we all have to eat. What, in your opinion, is the role of nutrition in practice?
Gary: Well, nutrition is kind of the foundation. For me, it’s the foundation of health, that with nutrition, you can create the condition for health to exist in the body. Food is extremely powerful. Food, itself, can both create diseases and it can also take a pre-disposition and dramatically remove that person from that diseased state, to a more healthy state.
When I talk about nutrition, it’s not so much supplements. For me, it is much more important to talk about whole food. When we talk about whole food today, people think of it as being health food. I look at whole food. Whole food is basically what my grandparents and great grandparents ate.
When we talk about having, say, a roast beef dinner with vegetables, well, now we have to talk about if it is grass fed. Is it organic or is it regular fed meats?
So, for me, when I’m talking about whole foods, I’m talking about beef that was grass fed. That’s what cows are supposed to be eating: grass.
Now we have to talk about fruits and vegetables. Are they genetically modified or not genetically modified? So, again, it’s going back to the basics. It’s going back to the foundation of what food is ideal for us for centuries for thousands of years. That’s the type of food I like to put people on.
Bev: Even just walking around the grocery store, for 3 weeks, I was off the 7 things: the starch, the corn and it really limited what I can have. Like they say, you walk around the perimeter and everything in the middle is no go.
Gary: A lot of the foods in the middle of the grocery stores were not ever present. 60% of them were not present 70 – 80 years ago. You know this new food technology does not necessarily mean it’s good or healthy for us.
Back in 1961, there was an American physiologist and marine biologist, that appeared in Time magazine. He came up with this theory called, The Fat Hypothesis or Lipid Hypothesis. What he basically said was, that saturated fats cause cardiovascular disease. It wasn’t until 1977, I believe, that the McGovern Report, from the US senate, came out and said ‘we strongly recommend that people decrease red meats, increase grains, and eat more fruits and vegetables.
Well, since 1977, after people started taking that advice, all the products out there became ‘low fat’ products. What’s happened now is that we have an epidemic of obesity and diabetes. We’re getting younger children coming in, with diabetes and elevated blood lipids.
We’ve created a paradigm, by which, rather than getting healthier, we’re getting sicker. And it’s based on a hypothesis that was never proven. Now we know that saturated fats do not cause cardiovascular disease. You can eat eggs, two, three eggs a day and I guarantee your cholesterol levels won’t elevate. It has absolutely nothing to do with it.
Carbohydrates are the main triggers for increasing your blood lipids, elevating cholesterol, and increasing cardiovascular disease. Even carbohydrates are related to things such as Alzheimer’s, which is now known as diabetes of the brain.
So, it’s really important. There are so many myths out there in terms of nutrition. We’ve got to make dramatic changes and start breaking those myths. I have patients coming in that have seen cardiologists who said ‘cut out those red meats and cut out your eggs’. I’m saying there’s no evidence, scientific evidence, indicating that by reducing those foods will have any effect on cholesterol. By reducing carbohydrates, you get a dramatic decrease in your blood lipids, cholesterol levels, and uric acid levels.
It’s far more important to address the real underlying problems in terms of our diet rather than these ongoing myths that both corporations and other professions have been perpetuating.
Bev: In terms of carbs, are you thinking all carbs or just certain carbs?
Gary: Depends on what state of health the person is in. If you have a patient, for instance, that is on very high levels of Metformin and Glyburide. Their blood sugar is very elevated. It’s almost like a pendulum. If your blood sugar is very elevated over here, you have to do an equal amount of decreasing carbohydrates, in order to bring it down.
So, if a person is very very high, I’ll take them off carbohydrates in terms of grains. I’ll still have them on some carbohydrates. They’ll get some from vegetables. I’ll put them on a no grains diet. What you’ll notice is, not only will the blood sugar drop down very quickly, but also, if they have weight issues, their weight loss will start taking place as well.
They’re still having meats, fish, fruits, vegetables, but the fruits will be more the berries and, perhaps, some apples, peaches, and plums. We’ll have them on some fruits, but totally off the grains.
Again, if a person just has slightly elevated blood sugar, you can do less. It just depends on where the person is and what point they’re coming to see you and to what degree you have to see a change take place. The greater the change, the more you have to do.
Bev: Do you often treat people with just nutrition and nothing else or do you combine?
Gary: I usually combine, but it depends. If someone comes in and they have diabetes, for example, the forefront will be nutrition, the background perhaps homeopathic medicine or something else. It depends on whether they have some other side issues.
If the person comes in with diabetes, but they also have a lot of other complications, as a result of it, or other problems such as sleep disorders or skin problems, then it might be 50/50. So, it just depends, you have to sort of arrange it according to what is presented in front of you.
Bev: That’s good that you customize it like that. It’s not a one size fits all.
Gary: It’s got to be customized
Bev: How does nutrition play a role in homeopathy and how does homeopathy play a role in nutrition?
Gary: I kind of look at homeopathy as it takes care of the conditions that have evolved. A person comes in and they have migraines, headaches, eczema, and some bowel problems. Homeopathic medicine will, in a sense, be able to change the expression of those problems.
In other words, if a person has migraines, headaches and you treat with homeopathic medicine, the homeopathic medicine will begin to reduce those migraine headaches, becoming less and less frequent to the point where they’re resolved. Same thing with the skin conditions, etc.
The nutritional part comes in and it creates a condition where health can exist. In some cases, some of those foods can be contributing factors to triggering a migraine or triggering the skin condition. So, they work hand in hand together. I really don’t see how you can treat a person without using nutrition as a foundation. I don’t think there’s a single person that comes into my office, that we don’t talk with about nutrition. To me, it’s the foundation. It’s what nourishes a body. It’s what keeps us healthy.
You know, it’s like exercise, and drinking plenty of fluid, and food. Those are the foundations of health.
Bev: How often have you come across a case where the role of nutrition was paramount?
Gary: That’s really hard to say. I can think of a few times, where people have come in and they are quite healthy and they just want to know what they can do to increase their health. In those cases, we’ve sat down, and discussed what they’re eating and made some alterations and that’s all what was necessary.
The majority of my practice tends to be people that come in with more serious disorders. But, yes, I’ve had some people come and say ‘I’m healthy now. I just want to maintain that and prevent things from happening down the road.’
Bev: Can you give an example of a case where you used nutrition with homeopathy?
Gary: I use homeopathy and nutrition with all autoimmune diseases. Crohn’s disease is a good example. I use nutrition to remove factors that trigger inflammation and foods that will assist in repair. I recommend the most nutrient dense foods that are easiest to digest and allow for repair to take place.
Bev: Thank you so much for that information and hopefully this video gets in the hands of one person that can be helped.
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