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Interactive Nutrients

Interactive Nutrients, the Dr. Badmaev Tradition, and Advancements in Health Care 

- by Vladimir Badmaev, MD, PhD

The issue of better health care

The Interactive Nutrients philosophy derives from the integrative, Western, and traditional health care approaches combined. This approach to nutriceutical development evolved over centuries of Badmaev physicians, always with one eye in the world of Tibetan medicine particularly, and the other in Western medicine. Certain fundamental truths about the nature of humanity and the art of healing have been captured intuitively and clinically for centuries by Tibetan Emchis – Lama Physicians – and are as useful today as any cutting edge scientific development that humans can conceive and contribute to Healthy Living in a Changing World.

Tibetan medicine (TM) perceives the human being as a complex entity, inseparable in body, mind, and spirit, a concept that Western medicine is only beginning to embrace. This essential understanding and approach to healing is central to the formulation of multi-component TM botanical therapies and is the basis for the triadic design of each preparation in the Tibetan pharmacopoeia. The idea that a therapeutic formula design would reflect a corresponding complexity to the multidimensional human being is unique to Tibetan medicine.

As Western medicine begins to examine the efficacy of the TM approach, scientific findings about these natural formulas are providing valuable data and evidence for the appropriateness of their clinical application, and the amazingly accurate yet complex components of each remedy. The TM approach values the application of a matrix of elemental dynamics and coactions rather than just focusing on chemical isolates. This is in stark contrast to the current approach of a pharmaceutical industry that isolates and synthesizes substances without regard to their collateral elemental unbalancing effects.

For five generations, my family has blended the wisdom of two bodies of knowledge, East and West. The result is the Dr. Badmaev Tradition, firmly grounded in both Tibetan and Western medicine. Viewing the current climate and conditions, this is an opportune time to address and understand the need for, and the value of Interactive Nutrients.

The time for an Interactive Nutrients category emerges due to the following developments in the field of health care:

  1. Escalating costs of the health care for an aging, long-lived population with few satisfactory answers and solutions to disease prevention and treatment.
  2. Growing commercial demand for nutritionally based therapies.
  3. Consumer trend in self-diagnosis and self-treatment utilizing a broad range of products - vitamin, botanical, food supplement and chemopreventive (synthetics based on natural compounds).
  4. Growing involvement of physicians participating in integrative health care.
  5. National Institutes of Health (NIH) sponsored studies to examine the role of nutrients in prevention, risk-reduction, and treatment of disease, e.g., NCI/NIH SELECT/PREADVISE trial of selenium and vitamin E in preventing prostate carcinoma and Alzheimer's disease in elderly population of North American men. The author Vladimir Badmaev participated in the NIH/NCI panel.

The future of health care

The Interactive Nutrients (IN) selection method represents an original technique for developing novel nutriceuticals, based on the TM approach to recognizing and deeply understanding unique health care concepts and only then seeking the potential preventive and therapeutic solutions. Some objectives of IN process are:

  1. Identifying a unique health care concept.
  2. Selective elimination: rejection of unsafe and/or ineffective nutriceuticals.
  3. Positive selection: efficient identification of the safest and most promising nutriceuticals, preferentially based on history of food use.
  4. Flexibility in adjusting the working nutriceutical formula.
  5. Safeguarding the formula by preclinical and clinical (Phase 1) safety evaluation.
  6. Progressive validation of the product through science and clinical studies.

The Interactive Nutrients selection process begins with identifying an important health concern and specific health concept. For example, most commercially available pharmaceutical and nutraceutical aids for weight loss are designed to decrease body fat and/or weight in an individual by decreasing the appetite, decreasing the amount of food intake, especially fat absorption, slowing down the rate of fatty acid synthesis within the body, or increasing the rate of catabolism of fatty acids.

These weight control means do not take into account the importance of focusing on specific mechanisms leading to overweight/obesity such as non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). The Interactive Nutrients process sees NAFLD as the direct cause of overweight/obesity rather than overeating calorie dense food. The overeating behavior would be a risk behavior, whereas a dysfunctional metabolic organ, the liver, in the case of NAFLD, would be a direct cause that leads to overweight/obesity.

As a result of this kind of novel thinking about Interactive Nutrients, a novel and effective INproduct has been developed to combat NAFLD and overweight/obesity. The invention, consisting of brown seaweed extract and pomegranate seed extract, relates to a method of promoting liver health that would support healthy metabolism of fat and result in healthy body composition and weight.

The Interactive Nutrients Process Exemplified by Tibetan Pharmacology in the Dr. Badmaev Tradition

The evolution of the Dr. Badmaev Tradition over the course of three centuries has blended Western scientific thought with Tibetan medicine, a more intuitive yet equally empirical technique. While science and technology play an important role in validating the selection process, it is often the intuitive thinking process used in traditional healing systems that leads to the accurate diagnosis of the condition and selection of a specific nutrient or combination of nutrients to alleviate the condition. Today's diagnosis and selection of treatment relies overwhelmingly on the lab data and technology to the detriment of a physician-patient contact.

Despite advancements in medical technology, there is relatively little progress in finding cures for chronic and degenerative conditions, therefore, we need to utilize the kind of intuitive thinking used in TM and we need to do it sooner rather than later. In order to understand disease processes and implement effective treatment solutions faster, we may have to set aside our cozy preconceptions, leave for a while the world of strict science, and follow the advice of established tradition.

Each TM formula in the Dr. Badmaev Tradition uses the triadic approach; in addition to its active ingredients, it includes ingredients to support the active ingredients and enhance gastrointestinal absorption, as well as to offset the unwanted side effects of the active ingredients. The broad range of therapeutic activity secured by this three-way-acting design gave ground for the development of bioprotectant formulas, i.e., formulas with pharmacological action operating through both prevention and intervention. The bioprotectant approach to both preventing disease and to sustaining health has been central to understanding and practicing medicine throughout the Dr. Badmaev lineage.

Traditionally developed Interactive Nutrients, along with the added benefit of preclinical and clinical research, as well as continuous technological development, are proving their own value in addressing wellbeing, healthy aging, and longevity. An example of the successful implementation of a traditional Tibetan treatment through research is Adaptrin® (historically referred to as Badmaev 28), a formula to support cardiovascular health and a healthy immune system, which underwent multiple double-blind clinical trials in patients with cardiovascular conditions.

From the viewpoint of centuries of experience and continuous research to develop and validate these therapeutic methods, the Dr. Badmaev Tradition continues to provide effective formulas and a comprehensive approach to Healthy Living in a Changing World.