Transcription of Dr. Richard Maurer for the show Harvest #2
Dr. Lisa: I’m here with Genevieve Morgan, Wellness Editor for Maine Magazine. She’s going to talk a little bit with Richard Maurer, Dr. Richard Maurer and I’ll let her introduce Dr. Maurer.
Genevieve: Thank you Lisa. Those of you who read the magazine know that I interviewed Dr. Maurer this month for an article called ‘What’s for Dinner?’ Dr. Maurer earned the Doctorate of Naturopathic Medicine from the National College of Naturopathic Medicine in 1994. He supervises medical residents for the Maine Medical Center CAM Residency Fellowship. He’s adjunct faculty at the University of Southern Maine. Dr. Maurer is a member of the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians, the Maine Association of Naturopathic Doctors, and is an active member of Slow Food and the Western Price Foundation.
He lectures regularly, has authored numerous health-related articles, compiles a quarterly newsletter and is in the process of writing a book on the FatBack Diet. Dr. Maurer specializes in physiologic bases of disease for effective diagnosis and treatment. He addresses weight issues, thyroid problems, anemia, pre-diabetes, digestive diseases and allergies. He applies the FatBack diet principles for many conditions including ADD and autism.
Dr. Maurer is available for teaching and lecturing on natural therapies. He has practiced naturopathic medicine in Maine since 1994 and practices at Coastal Naturopathic Center in Falmouth, Maine, which he also owns. Am I right?
Dr. Richard: Yes.
Genevieve: Oh great. Welcome Richard-
Dr. Richard: Thank you Genevieve.
Genevieve: So nice to have you here.
Dr. Richard: It’s a pleasure.
Genevieve: We had such a good time talking the other day about what people should be eating for dinner. Today Lisa and I have been talking about so many things, but our last segment was about local food. There are so many reasons why we should be eating locally from an economic perspective, but I’m interested in what you have to say about why people should eat local from a health perspective and a scientific perspective.
Dr. Richard: That’s a good question. There tends to be a division between what is healthful and what is local. Local we think of farmers, we think of farmers’ markets. Historically though, if we go back to say my great grandmother, there was only local. Local foods created the community cuisine and culture that we look at now when we’re studying what is so healthy about the Mediterranean diet for example.
There’s a great article if we go back a few years to 1972. The Scientific American did an article called Lactose and Lactase. This is studying the enzyme that helps one digest milk sugar. If you were from Sweden or European countries, there was only about a 2% to 10% chance that you would not have enough lactase to digest milk sugar, so you were not lactose intolerant. Whereas they studied people from Thailand and China and the rates where about 98% lactose intolerant.
I use this as a way of comparing, not because lactose intolerance condition I see in my practice, but it’s one many people have heard of. That is just one enzyme that has shown preference to a local regional way of eating. There are probably thousands upon thousands of other enzymes in our body that help us digest and be healthy eating a local cuisine.
Dr. Lisa: Let me just ask you, do you think that it is the environment influences genetics over a long period of time or that your genetics start to play a role in your preferences or you allergies or the way that your body metabolizes?
Dr. Richard: In that particular study and numerous subsequent studies, the environment really changes the genetic preference.
Dr. Lisa: What we’re really talking about then is you need to understand where you come from and what your culture is in order to figure out what the healthiest foods are for you to eat. If you move to a region, eating locally is also important. Is that correct? You need to choose … You need to look at your own personal background and then where you live.
Dr. Richard: Yes, and there’s both genetic reasons for that. Furthermore I’m reminded of patients I’ve seen over the years who are trying to do a raw foods cleansing diet. They’re quite gone and they’re very sick all winter, because they’re trying to do this based upon a book that was written by some self-proclaimed medical authority living in southern California. They’re trying to do this diet in March in Maine, with perhaps two young children at home and a demanding life schedule. When I tell them they need chicken soup and perhaps Mariwan toast, the surprise in the room is palpable.
Dr. Lisa: This is important. When we talk about locally-grown foods and whole foods market does sponsor our locally-grown food segment. In Chinese medicine, which is the type of medicine that I’ve integrated into my western medical practice, there is a very seasonal element to all of this. When people come in and it’s October, they really should be eating winter squash. They shouldn’t be eating watermelon grown in Belize or something like that. Do you have the same sense from your own practice?
Dr. Richard: I do. There is a … I do recognize that the human body is extraordinarily adaptable, but those adaptations over time have always responded to the seasonal change. We change our enzyme output from our pancreas based upon what foods are locally available. That’s been working that way for thousands and thousands of years.
Dr. Lisa: Richard do you have a specific example of a patient that you can tell me more about that exemplifies what we’re talking about?
Dr. Richard: I do. We could … Frequent themes I see are related to someone’s metabolism. Either that pre-diabetes metabolism or the thyroid metabolism. There was a woman who I saw just recently who she was very discouraged. She started training for a triathlon and while training she was gaining weight despite keeping her diet the same, and no small amount of weight. Obviously her frustration was warranted and we ran tests. She does have hyperthyroid and she has the kind that is most popular, common in women and that is the autoimmune hyperthyroid. It slows the metabolism down whenever there is an event that is stressful to the body like decreased caloric intake or increased activity.
Dr. Lisa: So interesting.
Dr. Richard: This is a wonderful trade. Of course this is terrific to help a woman survive the potato blight famine in Ireland. I don’t think this particular patient was very excited about her ability to survive a difficult time.
Dr. Lisa: I know many women who would not like the idea of training for a triathlon and gaining weight.
Dr. Richard: Understand it meant that we had to watch her thyroid numbers much more frequently and adjust medications more aggressively. It worked fine and she has a better understanding that she can’t feast or famine her exercise. She has to stay very consistent with it so her body doesn’t perceive it as a stressful one-time event which is what she’s ultimately wired for from her long past genetic survival.
Dr. Lisa: There we go; it is nature and nurture.
Dr. Richard: Absolutely.
Dr. Lisa: What I think is interesting about what you’re saying is the how people get their information about food. We spoke a little bit about that in the interview, but I’d like you to speak more to that to our listeners today.
Dr. Richard: Thank you. I think the dilemma we all have is trying to answer that question, thank you to author Michael Pollan ‘What to Eat’. As we wrote, as you titled the article ‘What’s for Dinner?’ This question has been asked forever. The answer has traditionally come from a local community culture family, that cuisine aspect of what to eat. The other one is what’s unique about ourselves as individuals.
The problem is since about 1970 in the United States, we’ve been getting our information from some centralized authority. Whether that’s a government authority or some medical authority. That centralized authority is trying to come up with one way of treating everybody – one diet for 240 million people. I tend to treat people in my naturopathic medical practice on a one-on-one basis.
To help someone understand themselves as individuals requires interpretation of their past history, their family history. Proper interpretation of their blood tests. I’m ordering blood tests that help me evaluate for what happens when they eat something. Their thyroid tests, their insulin tests, their glucose. They’re not getting diabetes perhaps in their 30s, 40s and 50s, but they’re getting migraines and cholesterol problems and high uric acid and conditions that precede diabetes.
It means that they inherited the diabetes gene, or that slight hypothyroid gene – the gene that slows your metabolism down every time you decrease your caloric intake. To help people understand themselves is extremely useful in helping them gauge what a healthy diet is.
Dr. Lisa: What I like about what you just said was that you do treat the individual when it’s one-on-one, but you’re talking also about their family history, their cultural history-
Dr. Richard: That’s right.
Dr. Lisa: … and I know that you’re part of the Slow Food Movement. Getting back to things that are more important about cooking and eating than just the nutrients that are ingested. The family aspect of things, how much do you do with that in your practice?
Dr. Richard: I do a great deal. In a general medical practice, I am the true family doctors in a way-
Dr. Lisa: Right, which I love because I’m also trained in family medicine so I just have to give you a big sort of verbal hug for that Richard, for focusing on the family.
Dr. Richard: Thank you. I think we all appreciate when we see a child and an adult and a grandparent all in one family. We are better doctors, we’re better diagnosticians and I think the family benefits by having a better understanding of what they need to do to be at their optimum; to be the healthiest.
Genevieve: What I love about being in the room with the two of you is I feel like I’m in the presence of the new future of medicine. Which is expansive, which includes many different aspects of healthcare and is not specialty-based. That you both are so expansive in your treatment of people first and disease second. I just wanted to give you a chance Richard to talk about naturopathic medicine for maybe a minute or two. What it is actually, because I think there is a misperception about naturopathic medicine that it’s not real medicine. From what you’ve just told me, those tests sound very clinical, they sound absolutely what a regular traditionally-trained medical doctor would do.
Dr. Richard: Yes. As a naturopathic doctor I went to an undergraduate premedical programme and then a four-year residency-based naturopathic medical college. In my own practice here since, well, for the past 18 years, I have seen a number of people. I use a great deal of blood tests. The clinical labs probably know me very well. I interpret them as I think the traditional general practitioner would have. I do a bit more physiologic-based medicine. I’m always trying to understand what makes somebody work. What’s happening when they exercise? What’s happening when they eat? What is their response to that? That’s my specialty or my basis.
I think naturopathic doctors as a rule tend to be more physiologically-based. It’s a big word but basically means that they’re studying the way people work. What makes them healthiest? Through that we treat disease by using more natural therapies: diet, nutrition, herbal medicine, and physical medicine.
Genevieve: How can people learn more about your practice and how to get in touch with you and if they want to become a patient, make an appointment?
Dr. Richard: They can certainly visit our website, coastalnaturalhealth.com. They can call the office. We are Coastal Naturopathic Center in Falmouth, Maine.
Genevieve: Are you accepting new patients?
Dr. Richard: We are.
Genevieve: Great.
Dr. Lisa: Now this will be available on the Dr. Lisa website, doctorlisa.org.
Genevieve: Thank you so much Richard for coming. Been very insightful.
Dr. Richard: Thank you Lisa. Thank you Genevieve.
Genevieve: To read more about Dr. Richard Maurer’s approach to health, lifestyle and diet, pick up the September edition of Maine Magazine at your local newsstand or visit us at mainemag.com.