Dear Patients, Colleagues, and Friends of Dr. Dattner,

Dr. Alan Dattner passed away unexpectedly at the age of 79 of a heart attack, likely induced by Lyme Disease, on November 29, 2023.

I share the details of his passing here because I believe it is important for you to know he was in excellent health for his age, as he lived the principles he taught his patients.

Dr. Dattner was exceptionally healthy. He ate clean food and lots of vegetables, he took supplements appropriate for his body, and he was always actively learning and growing intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. He was living every day to the fullest – sailing, swimming, dancing, biking, kayaking, playing harmonica, traveling, and spending time with friends and his beloved wife Shohama – right up until he passed.

My name is Alicia Dattner, and I am Alan’s daughter. I worked with my father for 15 years, as the first editor of his seminal guidebook on Holistic Dermatology, Radiant Skin from the Inside Out, as well as his marketing director, website manager, newsletter/blog editor, and videomaker.

While I’m not a medical professional, growing up with him, I absorbed many of the principles of his understanding:

• The skin is the barometer of the whole body’s health
• Rather than suppress the symptoms of skin disease, heal the underlying cause
• Use the safest methods of treatment first
• Integrate the best aspects of complementary and western understanding for a full picture of diagnosis and treatment
• You are what you eat
• The health of your heart, mind, and spirit all impact your body
• Each of us is unique in our body’s needs and treatments

While he was too modest to share this, Dr. Dattner was in fact the founder and creator of the field of Holistic and Integrative Dermatology. It’s been said that his scientific research at the National Institutes of Health likely would have won a Nobel Prize, had his team been interested in going through the rigamarole to submit it, and subsequent Nobel Prizes were won based on that research, which laid the groundwork for his understandings in immunology and cross-reactivity.

When Dr. Dattner created the field of Holistic Dermatology it was not about simply telling people to take more fish oil or meditate when itchy. This integrative medicine approach was actually meant to be integrating the highest levels of western medical education with the deepest wisdom of ancient traditions to do the detective work of searching out and healing the underlying causes of skin disease.

My dad would spend a couple of hours taking a patient’s history, adding a healthy dose of humor to his genial and scientific bedside manner. That night he’d comb through the details of their diet and their environmental irritants and their emotional and psychological stressors, crack open medical textbooks, search PubMed for studies, find ingredient lists of cleaning products or shampoos, all to find possible chemical pathways causing the condition. And then he did the work with them of finding the proper treatments, diet, supplements, and sometimes medications.

Patients with impossible-to-treat skin conditions came to him from all around the world. Many had been to every expert dermatologist and healer they could find and couldn’t heal their skin conditions. Until they met him.

After spending several hours discussing the history of their condition with Dr. Dattner, taking responsibility for their health by following his instructions, and experimenting with treatments together over a period of weeks and months, many patients miraculously discovered and healed their skin conditions. And often also experienced radial improvements in their mood, energy level, and overall health.

My dad was in the middle of building a comprehensive software application to help physicians and healthcare providers diagnose and treat skin conditions. While this work unfortunately won’t likely be continued (message me if you know someone who would be interested in continuing his work), I am making his blogs and videos available permanently. They’re accessible on this website.

We all miss him a lot. I’m glad he left a legacy of wisdom, and he would surely be happy that wisdom will live on in the form of his book.

Radiant Skin from the Inside Out, his book, is accessible here, and it is a comprehensive guide on how to approach treating your skin condition holistically on every level. I highly recommend it if you suffer from any kind of skin condition.

My dad cared deeply about the earth. He was an avid outdoorsman and found emotional and spiritual nourishment in the ocean and the woods. As a quiet environmental crusader, he fought and won to keep out two wood burning plants that would have polluted the air where he lived. Ultimately, he saw our skin as a reflection of “the Earth’s Skin.”:

“In the bigger picture, I am vitally concerned about the parallels between the underlying conditions affecting the surface of our body’s surface (skin) and the conditions affecting the surface of our planet. I want to work with others to vision ways to improve the “inflammation” on the surface of the Earth we live on.” -Alan M. Dattner, MD

Wishing you all the best of health.

Sincerely,

Alicia Dattner

A reminder: this information is for educational purposes only. It is not meant to treat, diagnose, or prevent disease. Find a practitioner who can help identify the individual factors that are contributing to your condition.

Skin Care Blog

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