In My Own Words: Julian Whitaker, MD

As a long-time practitioner of alternative medicine, I am often asked why I took the "road less traveled" in medicine.

I certainly didn't set out to be unconventional. I graduated from Dartmouth College in 1966, earned my medical degree at Emory University Medical School in Atlanta in 1970, and completed my internship at Grady Memorial Hospital, also in Atlanta. Good formal medical education is important, and I'm grateful for this foundation in basic medicine, but there was something to come that was far more important to my career as a physician.

Sparkling Eyes Got Me Started
It took place one evening when I was working in the emergency room during my orthopedic surgery residency at the University of California in San Francisco. A young woman came in with a sprained ankle. As I tended to her injury, I was struck by how healthy she was — so healthy, in fact, that her eyes actually sparkled. It suddenly dawned on me that physicians never study health, and certainly never advise their patients how to achieve it.

I learned that this woman sold vitamins and took them herself and, as a result of this encounter, I personally began taking vitamins. More importantly, I began learning all I could about nutrition and natural therapies, subjects virtually ignored by medical schools. I soon became convinced that these approaches, which drew upon the body's own healing powers, held far more potential for preventing disease and restoring health than traditional medicine's blunt tools of prescription drugs and surgery.

Continuing My Education
In 1974, I met with four other doctors in the modest conference room of a Motel 6 to form the California Orthomolecular Medical Society. To my surprise and delight, one of my medical heroes, two-time Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling Ph.D., showed up to lend support to our fledgling organization. Dr. Pauling himself had coined the term orthomolecular medicine in 1968, which he defined as "the preservation of good health and the treatment of disease by varying the concentrations in the human body of substances that are normally present in the body and are required for health." More than any other label — alternative, nutritional, natural, holistic or complementary medicine — orthomolecular medicine comes closest to describing what I have believed in and practiced for the last 25 years.

In 1976, I went to work at the Pritikin Longevity Center under the direction of Nathan Pritikin. Until then, in spite of my years of training in medical school, internship and residency, I couldn't recall ever having seen patients get well. True, many got better, but virtually all stayed on "follow-up" prescription medications. Now, for the first time in my medical career, I saw patients get well — not as a result of dangerous drugs or risky surgical procedures, but through the powerful effects of a low-fat, high complex carbohydrate diet and exercise. And not only did these patients drop their medications, they dropped their diseases.

Charting New Territory
While my training at the Pritikin Longevity Center convinced me of the therapeutic power of diet and exercise, I believed that there was more that could be done to reverse disease and achieve optimal health. I continued my education in earnest, with the goal of identifying safe and effective solutions to some of the most common health problems of modern life — heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, arthritis, and more. And in 1979, I launched the Whitaker Wellness Institute Medical Clinic, to share my knowledge with patients who had been failed by conventional medicine and had nowhere else to turn. Since its inception, over 25,000 patients have flocked to the Whitaker Wellness Institute to participate in an intensive program of diet, exercise, nutritional and herbal supplementation, and lifestyle changes. They've benefited from alternative therapies such as chelation, acupuncture, and EECP. To learn more about these therapies click here. And they've proven the medical establishment wrong countless times by reversing their "incurable" diseases and achieving a newfound vitality no matter what their age.

Reaching a Wider Audience
In August 1991, the first issue of my monthly newsletter, Health & Healing, rolled off the presses. Since then I've covered just about every treatment option offered at the Whitaker Wellness Institute — vitamin and mineral supplementation, herbal therapies, natural hormone replacement, acupuncture, chiropractic, EECP and more. Today over half a million subscribers, disenchanted with the failures of conventional medicine, rely on Health & Healing for news about safe and effective alternatives. Countless others have turned to my books in search of the crucial health information they can't get from their own doctor: Reversing Diabetes, Reversing Heart Disease, Shed 10 Years in 10 Weeks, A Guide to Natural Healing, Is Heart Surgery Necessary?, and The Pain Relief Breakthrough. To keep up with ongoing developments in my field, I belong to the American College for Advancement in Medicine, a professional organization of physicians dedicated to nutritional and alternative therapies. I am a founder of the American Preventive Medicine Association, a physician advocacy group for freedom of choice in medical treatment, and am board certified in anti-aging medicine. Through my clinic, newsletter, books, lectures and now this web site, I continue to preach the healing powers of diet, exercise, lifestyle changes, and the principles of orthomolecular medicine to an ever-growing audience.

Julian Whitaker, MD