“Dr. Dattner is an extremely gifted physician who helped me recover from a painful and disfiguring skin disorder. My skin was bleeding, shredding, breaking, and swelling from inflammation–so much that I had to wear a surgical mask.
He identified my autoimmune damage, and within days, dramatic improvement occurred. I could finally sleep, and uncover my face, due to the reduction of pain and inflammation, after having seen many doctors. Progress steadily continued.
With gratitude and appreciation, I have only the highest recommendation for Dr. Dattner.” -MK, New York
“You did such an amazing job with my daughter’s skincare – it’s amazing you did it without pharmaceuticals – it is so wonderful to see her as healthy as she is – and we owe it all to you. Now, her sister wants to see you, too!” -Marisa S.
A combination of new products, and rediscovered herbal remedies have been found to have anti-aging effect for the skin.
Some of these have protective effects when take orally, and others are improve appearance applied directly to the skin. At least 4 groups of factors must be considered in choosing applied products:
They must be effective for you.
There must not be any ingredients that will also cause an allergic or other outbreak.
The ingredients must work together to produce a synergistic effect, and not chemically react with each other or you to cancel out their effects.
Finally, since many of the creams on the market contain synthetic ingredients to prevent spoilage, enhance smell, appearance, and feel, the product must be acceptable to you according to your sensibilities and the potential risks that these products may bring. Since you may differ from others on each of these points, my recommendations for each person may vary and may take time be formulated.
4th Visit: Adjust your regime for maximum vitality
Our work together includes but goes beyond finding a conventional medical diagnosis and trying a recommended treatment. We work to find the concert of factors which are likely to have brought about your condition, and address these factors in the safest possible way to reverse them, and subsequently the condition or “disease” that you have.
Any information you jot down about how and when your problem started will be helpful, and any time you spend thinking about the time your problem started, and what events occurred before, will make our visit go smoother.
One to Three Pages of Your History: If you have the time and motivation, put together a chronological history of your illness, its aggravations and improvements, and the various environmental exposures, dietary changes, medications, infections, medical procedures, injections and vaccinations which preceded your illness in the one month to one season period before you got worse.
If you choose, this could be accompanied by a written story of the history of your illness. A full medical history, including major conditions, illnesses, hospitalizations, surgeries, laboratory reports and X-ray reports should also be assembled. Obtain these reports by contacting your physicians and giving them written permission to send the information to you or me. You may have such information faxed to me if you are about to visit very soon.
If you have trouble remembering when you got worse and what was going on at the time, take out your date book, diary, or a calendar and begin by remembering special events such as holiday, vacations, and significant events, remembering whether you had the condition, and what you were doing at the time. Remember smelly chemical exposures, colds and minor illnesses, and other things requested, and begin to list them according to date.
Be sure to remember and list exposures at work, change of workplace or job performed, hobbies, sports, house painting and renovations, new cars or carpets, pets, exposures when visiting friends or other worksites, unusual illnesses in friends, family or co-workers, etc. Similarly, make a list of what seems to have been associated with your getting better. This may include different therapies or physicians, medications, herbs, supplements, energy therapy, etc.
Some people type out such a list on their computer, put it in a spreadsheet or simply mark it on a calendar and then produce a list from that. The more searching and complete your list, the more we will have to work with in discovering the underlying cause of your illness. What is important is to recall the time-line sequence of events, write it out, and communicate clearly it to me.
If there are medications, supplements, skin care applications and makeup you are using, it may be helpful to have those items with you. You can put them all in a big bag and bring them to our first visit. If possible, list what you ate for each meal in the last day or two, or for a typical day as well.
I look forward to reviewing your information with you as we begin the process of unraveling the cause of your health problems.
Even the experts don’t agree. Chinese medicine says don’t eat cold food, Ayurvedic medicine says don’t eat spicy food most of the time, raw foodists say heat kills the best enzymes in the food. Some say soy is out of the question, others say chicken makes the body alkaline. With so many conflicting kinds of advice about what to eat, how much sun to get, etc., it can be difficul to know what’s right for your body.
I like to look at the arguments and the data coming from both sides of such controversies, and the literature that supports both sides. I like to see who is sponsoring the argument on each side, and follow the trail of the money supporting the studies.
For me, the harder it is to follow the trail of evidence, the more hidden the support, the more I suspect the data to be tampered with. I know that data can be selectively chosen to emphasize a point. I also know that a vast variety of information, from anecdote to in vitro study, from animal work to epidemiology, can point in a given direction. Because making the right choices in these areas are integral to a natural skincare regimen, it’s important to get it right. Begin to become your own detective.
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As always, the content of this blog is for information and education purposes only, and should not be used to prevent, diagnose or treat illness; please see your physician for care.
How can you tell what is the best treatment for your body, even when experts don’t agree? There are so many conflicting opinions and facts in the sphere of health that it can be difficult to tell what’s right to eat, wear, etc. Some swear by avoiding wheat and gluten, some eat only raw foods. Some say dark chocolate is good for you, others say it causes acne.
Part of the answer comes in asking the questions: how much, for whom, and when? Sun exposure benefits come with small amounts of exposure, and what you can tolerate depends on your skin color. Except where there is an absolute toxicity or specific sensitivity, most regularly used products have an ideal level of exposure. Too little water and we dry our; too much and we drown. More on this in part three.
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As always, the content of this blog is for information and education purposes only, and should not be used to prevent, diagnose or treat illness; please see your physician for care.
How do we know what we can compromise on and what we cannot, in the field of health? How do we know what treatment is best for what ailment? What treatment is best for what person? Medicine is not now, nor has it ever been, a field of absolutes. New information often changes how we think about ailments, treatments, and cures. Not to mention the fact that any number of people have different ideas on any number of subjects.
For example, we have been told for years that eating eggs is bad for you. Now it appears that eggs have gotten a bad rap. Someone says that sunlight is bad for you, and someone else says that it is necessary to make Vitamin D.
A dermatologist who writes about the benefits of sun exposure (Dr. Michael Hollick) gets fired from his academic post, while others tell you to avoid the sun as much as possible. These controversies are numerous and rage on regarding soy, milk, coffee, cell phones, childhood vaccines, and pesticide exposure, just to name a few. How do you know what is right for your body, when even the experts cannot agree? Because making the right choices in these areas are integral to a natural skincare regimen, it’s important to get it right. I’ll go into the answers in part two of this post.
As always, the content of this blog is for information and education purposes only, and should not be used to prevent, diagnose or treat illness; please see your physician for care.
Imagine a hot button that sets off acne when it is pushed. There is such a “button” that has been recognized in cells that sets off an inflammatory response. It is call the “inflammasome”.
A recent study published in the latest issue of the “Journal of Investigative Dermatology” showed that the acne bacteria, Propionibacterium acnes, activates the “inflammasome” in cells, and may be an important part in the mechanism that sets off acne.
While they suggest finding ways to block this activation, I suggest we look for ways to avoid it and keep our fingers off the button.
For the past few decades, the role of diet in acne treatment was considered to be a red herring. But thinking is changing in recent years. In part, thanks to a great dermatologist and world expert on acne who just passed away last Sunday.
Dr. Alan Shalita was an expert in both clinical treatment and research in the field. And most impressively, his perspective changed as new evidence cam in.
Years ago, he rebuffed my suggestion that diet might have some role in affecting the sebum in a way that caused acne. But in 2010, he was senior author on a scientific article that re-examined the evidence on the association of diet and acne and he concluded that “Dermatologists can no longer dismiss the association between diet and acne.”
He called for others to explore this relationship between diet and acne, something I have been doing successfully for the past few decades. It is of note that such an expert revised not only his thinking, but that his speaking out helped to change the thinking of the majority of dermatologists.
For the past half a century, dermatologists believed that diet had no effect on acne. It’s time for us to wake up to what we are putting in our bodies, if we truly want clear skin.
For years I have been writing and lecturing that acne is caused by inflammation that comes from within.
It’s not just a “local” process caused by plugged follicles. It’s not just caused by the bacteria Propionibacterium acnes that lives in the follicle. Over the years, more data has accumulated to support this thinking.
The big news is that just this month, an article came out in the most scholarly of all the dermatology professional journals, showing that acne is not only related to inflammation, but also has characteristics of an autoimmune disease.
An article in the February issue of the Journal of Investigative Dermatology showed that extracts from the acne bacteria cause formation of “TH 17 Lymphocytes,” a type of white cell characteristic of autoimmune disorders. This same type of lymphocyte was also found in acne lesions themselves.
The other factors, such as diet, have yet to be connected to the findings in this study, but the evidence is growing stronger that something is lighting the fire to cause the inflammation in acne.
Since most people have this Propionibacterium (acne-related) organism in their skin, the flame that sets it off the fire of acne may well be coming from what you eat.
If you break out in acne, pay very close attention to what you put in your body the few days before the acne explosion. Studying your breakout cycle is the start of natural acne treatment.
If you have trouble remembering when you got worse and what was going on at the time, take out your date book, diary, or a calendar and begin by remembering special events such as holiday, vacations, and significant events, remembering whether you had the condition, and what you were doing at the time. Remember smelly chemical exposures, colds and minor illnesses, and other things requested, and begin to list them according to date.
