How is Holistic Dermatology Different from Conventional Dermatology ~ Healthy Frontiers
Interviewer: So how do you look at skin disease differently from your colleagues in dermatology? How is holistic dermatology different?
Dr. Dattner: Well if you pick up a text book in dermatology, you look at it and then you read about this disorder and they say this might be related to kicks, it might be related to this, but we don’t know the answer.
Interviewer: Right.
Dr. Dattner: Well, that’s what got me asking. I want to know the answer, what’s causing it and when I finished my work at the dermatology branch, we had done work on what was known as a immune recognition. How the white cells, not the antibodies but the white cells see one thing and have it look like another. They see this flower and say, “oh, that looks like that one,” and if they are sensitive to this, they attack the other one.
Interviewer: Yeah
Dr. Dattner: And that turns out to be an equation that requires not only the flower, but the hand that’s holding the flower if you will.
Interviewer: Sure
Dr. Dattner: It’s the transplantation antigens and we show that and actually later two people won Nobel prizes on work related to that.
Interviewer: Wow, for that research, that’s terrific.
Dr. Dattner: So that made me understand that we are very unique equations that went on. So it wasn’t one like the corn caused eczema. It was corn in a certain persons’ system that would cause a crust reaction to their own skin and maybe even at certain times. So I began to see that these kinds of things really existed and it let me know that the kinds of things I was hearing from the alternative world made sense.
Interviewer: So would you have that allergy and I don’t….
Dr. Dattner: Right, exactly.
Interviewer: Suppose that’s sometimes, it’s like let’s find out why this guy has it and this guy doesn’t.
Dr. Dattner: Yeah and it’s because of this additional piece for the recognition plus the exposure. There are a lot of different variables and a lot of this had gotten thrown out because they said that well if X amount is caused by corn then all eczema should be cause by corn but it isn’t and not even in the same individual. So they threw out the food thing because it didn’t make sense. It’s only with this new perspective that it makes sense. So as I saw that and as I began to do it I began to find solutions for people who hadn’t found solutions before and I became very excited, not just that I wanted to help those people, but I wanted to bring this knowledge into medicine. Not just for skin because of course it’s important for skin but for inflammation in general.
Interviewer: Sure, makes so much sense.
