An Analytical System of Clinical Nutrition

By -- Guy R. Schenker, D.C.

For a little over a year I worked as a chiropractor in a medical clinic. While its name emphasized that it was

preventive care -- in truth it was a last ditch effort for most of the patients to extend or at least improve the quality of whatever life was left.

The result was that I was exposed to all kinds of pathological conditions that the average chiropractic physician would never see in his office. This meant that I would work with patients who had cancer, multiple sclerosis, or cardiovascular problems on an equal footing with everyone else. On the staff was a naturopath, an acupuncturist, a psychologist, two nutritionists, myself, and a medical director. Instead of the usual prescription drug pharmacy, the clinic ran a health pharmacy and restaurant. The pharmacy consisted of nutritional supplements and homeopathics. What a delight to write up prescriptions that you felt could not harm the patient.

Most of the patients improved but there was always that one patient that we felt would have improved faster and better if individually tailored nutritional tests and programs specific to the needs of the patient and in the best combinations had been at our disposal.

Guy Schenker, a chiropractic physician, has recently produced a text that might go a long way into resolving some of the problems indigenous to nutritional therapeutics. Rather than the casual "This is good for most people so it must be good for you" approach, the author presents a concept that enables the physician to develop a nutritional program tailored to the needs of the individual. Rather than develop a nutritional therapy for a specific disease as most nutritionists do -- he suggests a patient specific approach. In other words, a nutritional program specific to the requirements of the individual. If this is done, the body is enhanced to fight whatever pathology may invade it with its own natural defenses.

Schenker feels that there are four fundamental balances that must be maintained for the body to remain in optimum physical condition: 1) water/electrolyte 2) anaerobic/dysaerobic 3) acid/alkaline and 4) sympathetic/parasympathetic. The cause for the imbalances, he feels, is most often stress. He further postulates that there are five types of stress: 1) psychic 2) chemical 3) nutritional 4) physical 5) thermal and 6) electro-magnetic.

Realizing that the reader might tend to become bogged down in nutritional theory, the author has wisely offered some shortcuts to the busy physician so that the concepts he promulgates may be quickly and accurately applied. This comes in the form of specific tests to determine the patient's needs followed by specific nutritional suggestions.

It is not the desire nor intent of "DC" to endorse any product or form of therapy. We therefore cannot, in good conscience, do more than recommend Dr. Schenker's efforts as worthy of study and consideration by the profession.

An Analytical System of Clinical Nutrition is a volume aimed at the right target. It's up to you to decide if it hits that target well. Buy it and find out -- your patients might be glad you did.

RHT