Dr. Dinner is the director and primary physician at the Be Young Clinic in Ramat Beit Shemesh, where he practices anti-aging and functional medicine
It’s an advanced field of medicine where we treat people and conditions from the root cause. For example, if someone has an autoimmune disease, according to conventional medicine, you’d use drugs to suppress the body’s immune system. In functional medicine, we’ll search for what set off the immune response — a gastrointestinal problem, an allergy, or even a low-grade infection — and repair that. This works best with Alzheimer’s and memory problems, cardiovascular disease, menopause, and prevention of age-related problems, and those are the areas we focus on most.
“Is this alternative medicine or conventional?” Answer: both. Many conventional drugs are lifesaving, and we use all aspects of conventional medicine that are useful and healthy. We also use many natural treatments that have scientific or proven benefits, so we encompass the best of both worlds in a scientific and rational way. For example, coronary artery disease can cause a heart attack. We use natural supplements that improve vascular health, as well as drugs like ACE inhibitors or statins in some cases. In other words, we treat all things that cause damage to the arteries, with all different sorts of treatments.
I follow the program of Dr. Dale Bredesen, a neurologist in the United States who has isolated 36 factors that lead to the buildup of amyloid in the brain, which is what causes Alzheimer’s disease. Dr. Bredesen has reported success in detecting which factors exist in a particular patient and treating accordingly, and we follow his protocol.
Firstly, the physicians and professors who run these programs are world renowned — their names carry a lot of weight. Secondly, everything we do is scientifically based. We know the scientific function of all the natural products we use, so there is no quackery. The sad thing is, many people are unaware of this field of medicine. Conventional medicine is stuck in a box of evidence-based medicine, largely based on drug trials; if a drug works, that’s the solution. Physicians who haven’t learned functional medicine can’t adapt to the fact that finding the root cause and correcting it is much more effective than prescribing a drug. That being said, there is increased awareness in conventional medicine to adopt functional medicine methods; the Cleveland Clinic, for example, has integrated a functional medicine unit. We see that in the frum community as well — we’re generally open to alternative measures and willing to try.
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