Meeting Dr. Joseph Pizzorno

Last month I was in San Diego attending a week long conference of the Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine (AIHM). What a refreshing gathering of so many different health specialists and generalists, truly representative of my ideal in holistic and integrative care of patients.

One of the highlights for me was to attend a set of lectures given by Dr. Joseph Pizzorno and then to meet him for the first time. He is one of the founders of Bastyr University. I’ve been in touch with him for the past couple of years now because of his kind willingness to pen the foreword of my first book in the Every Body’s Guide to Everyday Pain™ series, Volume One – Put Out the Fire. Until now we had only corresponded remotely and so this was the first chance I’d had to meet in person this man I’m so grateful to.

I was in disbelief for quite some time that this natural health care giant was willing to associate his name with a project like mine – very much still in its infancy.

What I’ve learned about him during the process is how generous, gracious and humble he is and all of this was just confirmed by our in-person meeting in San Diego. He was practically mobbed by eager attendees after his lectures and despite being worn out from travel and an unusually long consecutive series of lecture hours without a break, he responded with patient kindness to everyone’s questions.

The topic of Dr. Pizzorno’s most recent research and writing work is environmental health.

The area of study referred to as “environmental health” concerns itself with the effect that inorganic compounds in our environment  exert on our overall well-being, whether those be naturally occurring or human-made.

It is an essential piece to the puzzle when considering the three possible triggers of everyday pain.  Exposure to these compounds can be one of the significant influences responsible for triggering an imbalance in our biochemistry – the precise factor that can add to our inflammatory toxin load and set us up for pain.  When chemistry is out of balance it can profoundly change our emotional coping and in turn our mechanical stressors as we translate emotion into posture.

Environmental toxin exposure is an awesome topic demanding supreme command of the research which Dr. Pizzorno clearly has with unique affinity.  He is in the process of preparing for the release of a new book on the topic:

The Toxin Solution: How Hidden Poisons in the Air, Water, Food, and Products We Use Are Destroying Our Health, and What We Can Do to Fix It

And there is another book in the works for a few years down the road of a more didactic nature.  I’m very excited to see both and will be heavily referencing this work for Volume Two – Fix the Fire Damage of my pain book series.

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