Although this newsletter is entitled Health By Design I have never explained the philosophy that lies behind the title. It is a worldview that sets me apart from most individuals who provide consultation to individuals seeking to improve and maintain their health. It is a belief system that guides my interpretation of signs and symptoms and upon which I base my therapeutic recommendations.

Simply stated, I believe that the human body is far too complex to have developed by chance mechanisms. It was carefully and wonderfully designed to operate within set parameters. If those parameters are present the body will thrive; if they are not present it will decay.

I began to look at the world around me from a different perspective in 1984. A friend who was an Oklahoma City talk show host suggested that I might want to tune in to hear the guest he was interviewing. “He claims to have excavated human footprints next to dinosaur footprints in the same rock layer, “ my friend said. “I’d like to know your opinion on what he has to say.”

I was intrigued. I’ve never been afraid to think outside the box, but that statement was outside the cosmos as I knew it. Either the man had made a valid observation and was incredibly courageous or he was so deluded as to be certifiably insane. I decided to listen.

The guest, Dr. Carl Baugh, did not sound like a lunatic. He admitted that his claim stood alone in sharp contrast with contemporary teaching on the subject of earth history, but he calmly and confidently related his findings. I resolved to explore the matter in more detail rather than dismiss it outright.

Six months passed before an opportunity arose to travel to the excavation site at Glen Rose, Texas. As we were making preparations my younger daughter, Camille, an avid scientist even at the age of 12, asked where we were going.

“To check out a site where a man claims to have excavated human footprints right beside dinosaur footprints,” I replied.

“Ah dad,” she sighed with a hint of exasperation in her voice, “that’s impossible!” I had to admit that given all that I had been taught about the ages of the earth she was probably correct.

We made the trip. We viewed the excavation site. We went back and participated in new excavations. We helped pump out the Paluxy riverbed and map out ancient trails in the underlying limestone. We visited with scientists from around the world, and listened carefully to their opinions. We became convinced, beyond a shadow of doubt, that the findings were genuine – that human beings and dinosaurs had once been contemporaries on the earth.

Throughout the process of exploring possibilities I had not previously considered, one thing became clear. The world we live in today is not the world that once was. In the world that once was dragonflies had 6 foot wing spans. In the world that once was ferns grew into trees 150 feet high. In the world that once was roamed immense creatures whose tissues could not be oxygenated and who could not survive in today’s atmosphere. In the world that once was iron did not rust, illness was virtually non-existent, and men and women lived for hundreds of years.

I have spent years studying these things, and I do not expect you to accept them as a matter of faith. I do, however, ask you to remember that the four most confining words in the English language are “I already know that” and I challenge you to begin your own investigation of the observable facts.

Why, for instance, are forests found beneath the Antarctic ice cap? How is it that fresh-frozen mammoths have been found in the Arctic with buttercups in their mouths and undigested food in their stomach?

Before I accepted the possibility that a sudden and dramatic change occurred in the earth’s environment approximately 5,000 years ago, I received only more questions in response to my initial questions. Since I accepted that possibility the answers I have received have invariably led to yet other answers.

Since 1984 I have been the primary medical consultant to the research team studying the world’s first and only hyperbaric biosphere. The biosphere a project designed to simulate what many scientists believe were characteristics of the environment of the world that once was. The effects of the hyperbaric biosphere have been dramatic in effect and unprecedented in scope.

One of the most significant findings, as it relates to the subject of health and wellness, was observed in fruit flies. The adult life span of the second generation of flies born and raised in the biosphere was triple that seen in today’s natural environment. No other group conducting longevity research has produced similar results, with the possible exception of some studies involving highly technical genetic manipulation.

I recognize that there is a vast difference between human beings and fruit flies. Nevertheless, the fact that the longevity of the adult fruit fly tripled within two generations has tremendous implications. I am not about to suggest that the fountain of youth has been discovered and that our grandchildren will live between two and three hundred years. What I am suggesting is that the long ages attributed to people living in the world that was are realistic. I am also suggesting that the human body was designed to exist in an environment dramatically different from that found on earth today.

If this is true, and I am unreservedly convinced that it is, the approach to illness and wellness must be fundamentally different than that generally accepted and promoted. The model of disease in which I was trained as a physician states that man evolved on this planet about a million years ago. He went through many developmental stages including the hunter-gatherer stage, the agrarian stage, etc. That being the case, the reason people experience heart attacks is that they have not evolved far enough past their hunter-gatherer stage and have genetic set-points for cholesterol and other substances that are out of sync with today’s informational age.

If I accept that heart disease is the natural result of an evolutionary time trap I have no options but to wait until it overtakes me and then turn to poisons to lower my cholesterol level and undergo a surgical procedure in an attempt to bypass the damage.

If, on the other hand, I accept that I am at risk for heart disease because the parameters in which my body was designed to function are no longer present I have the option of, to the best of my ability, restoring those parameters, which will allow the body’s intrinsic healing mechanisms to function properly in restoring optimum health.

Since I have been applying the model of restoring the parameters within which the body was designed to function, I have seen restoration of health to levels I had not previously believed possible. Many responses that I would have considered miraculous fifteen years ago now appear routinely. I am constantly reminded that within the marvelous design of the human body lie healing mechanisms that surpass the most advanced pharmaceutical approaches and surgical techniques ever devised by medical scientists. That is the wonder of health by design!