Patient-Centered Empowerment

The rock-solid foundation of Self-Health for the 21st Century™ is what Byron calls patient-centered empowerment. This goes far beyond the notion of patient-centered care, which is a laudable effort on the part of health professionals to get patients and families more involved in health-related decisions and treatments. Patient-centered empowerment is all about you having the confidence to be fully responsible for your own health.

Patient-centered empowerment is not for everyone. It requires that you spend a considerable amount of time learning about health. It requires that you put into practice what you have learned. You have to walk the walk, not just learn the talk.

A primary goal is that you have the knowledge and certainty to make important health-related decisions for yourself: as well as being able to give valuable input and guidance to those you care about. Your personal reward is a quality of health that makes your life more enjoyable, while giving you the best chance of preventing the numerous diseases of aging.

Remember, when all is said and done, there is no person that cares more about your health than you. Patient-centered empowerment is rooted in the concept that it is your duty to yourself to have the knowledge to be in charge.

An Entire System of Wellness

Self-Health for the 21st Century™ is an entire system of wellness covering the key aspects of how your body functions, what you need to know about such function, and how to take effective steps to improve it when you see yourself heading the wrong direction. Consider it a comprehensive owner’s manual for the operation of your body.

What do your symptoms actually mean? In the world of Western medicine they are the potential sign of some disease or medical condition: which more often than not you don’t have. Even if you do have a collection of symptoms that add up to a health problem, like hypothyroidism, how did you get such a problem in the first place? In Western medicine the problem is treated with a drug, even though the cause is seldom identified. In Self-Health for the 21st Century™ you learn so many basic principles of health that you are readily able to see and determine the actual cause of most health problems you could encounter: as well as knowing how to fix them.

Western Medicine is a Resource, Not a Workable System of Health

Self-Health for the 21st Century™ teaches you how to identify and fix smaller problems as they arise. This prevents you from developing larger health issues that are more difficult to resolve. The old adage that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure is still true today. Even if you have a significant health problem you will learn how to “peel the onion” to help unravel your fall from health. You will learn important steps to restore balance to an injured or ailing system. There is no short cut to learning how to effectively manage your most important asset: your health.

Taking a sledgehammer to a health problem will continue to be the purveyance of Western medicine, and integrated by you into your health at times when sledgehammers are appropriate: not as a primary system of thinking about your health and future wellness. In Western medicine drugs are often the solution, which typically means stay on one or more drugs indefinitely. In Self-Health for the 21st Century™ drugs are temporary solutions to be used only when needed. They have a defined purpose and a clearly established exit strategy. That exit strategy is based on you being firmly established on the path to restoration of your health.

Low-Tech, Low-Cost

Self-Health for the 21st Century™ is low-tech and low-cost. You simply either do or don’t have a collection of symptoms that you readily feel. Some of these symptoms predict that a system within your body is not functioning up to par, like ongoing sinus drainage, joint pains, or constipation. Others signs predict good health, like the presence of a vibrant energy level, a sparkle in your eye, or popping out of bed in the morning ready to go.

In Self-Health for the 21st Century™ you will learn to evaluate the importance of the pros and cons of your health status, relate them to specific function of your body, clearly understand the severity of the issues, and have workable strategies to move in the positive direction. Fancy lab tests are not essential because you either do or don’t have various issues and they are either getting worse, staying the same, or getting better. Your current status and your progress are self evident and more reliable than any lab test. The key is that you have the skills to understand and manage the “language” of your body.

High-tech, high-cost Western medicine has oftentimes replaced the human element in healing. For some, better quality of care is associated with a “Disney World” dazzling display of wondrous gadgets and super-advanced technology. Unfortunately, the output is invariably the same, a stale authoritarian dogma of drugs and surgeries. Oftentimes the technology itself has the net effect of creating significant fear about your health, which is unfortunately used as a further threat to gain compliance with the remedies of a dysfunctional paradigm of health. While such technology will always have its place and value, especially in emergency medicine, it pales in comparison to the quality of health you can achieve with the low-tech, low-cost approach of Self-Health for the 21st Century™.

Advanced Science-Based Strategies with a Practical Flair

The principles of Self-Health for the 21st Century™ evolved based on working directly with thousands of individuals over a twenty-five year period. These principles are both science-based as well as practical, results-oriented.

Byron J. Richards, Board Certified Clinical Nutritionist, is a gifted translator of highly technical advanced science into plain English. The information presented in Self-Health for the 21st Century™ is intended to empower the lay person, the mother in charge of a family, the person struggling to recover their health, and the person who simply wants to know how to maintain optimal health. However, any health professional will quickly find it an invaluable body of science-backed wellness information: the type of training that most health professionals never received and a terrific augmentation to their primary practice focus.

Richards has practiced in a clinical setting that was often a place of last resort for people who had seen multiple doctors and were still not feeling well. Some of these people were struggling with various well-defined illnesses that Western medicine was unable to improve. Others fell between the diagnostic cracks into the world of what is often called the “walking wounded.” Regardless, figuring out how to actually solve these types of health problems is what formed the working paradigm that underlies Self-Health for the 21st Century™.

As an expert nutritionist, Byron Richards has worked on the front-lines of applied clinical nutrition for over 25 years. He has gained hands-on experience and knowledge that is not taught in any textbook or by any college-level wellness/nutrition curriculum. He is an encyclopedia of clinical pearls; in many respects the most valuable, practical, and useful information possessed by a health professional. Over the years these clinical pearls combined with solid science form the workable strategies inherent in many of the solutions presented in Self-Health for the 21st Century™.

While it is always encouraged that you study as much as you can about various aspects of health from many different authors, you will find in Self-Health for the 21st Century™ a grand synthesis of health principles that helps you make sense of the writings of others. You will also develop your own system of critical thinking so that you can rapidly and accurately evaluate the importance and relative truth about what any person is saying regarding health. And to top it off, this treasure-trove of information will save you time and shorten your learning curve so that you can follow your own path to life-long health. The goal is that you are empowered as a true problem-solver of health issues with the high-level skill of being able to translate what you know into tangible results.

Leptin: King of Hormones

Central to the system of Self-Health for the 21st Century™ is an advanced understanding of the hormone leptin. As it turns out, leptin controls all other hormones in your body as well as plays a dominant role in the function of all systems within your body. It may seem difficult to grasp that one hormone can do so much: especially one that you may have heard very little about. However, you will quickly learn that leptin signals the permission for your body to produce energy and the rate at which it will be produced. When you understand that every cell or any organ system in your body requires energy to function you can begin to see why leptin is so important. And that is just the beginning of the story.

Leptin problems are the cause of obesity and the primary cause of diabetes and heart disease. They are a dominant force in many cancers (especially sex hormone cancers) and a secondary force in virtually all cancers. Not knowing what leptin is or how it is working in your body is like trying to be the offensive coordinator of a football team without having any sense of what your quarterback is ever going to do. Understanding and managing leptin effectively is a life and death issue. Make mistakes with leptin and you are rowing your boat against the current. Live and eat in harmony with leptin and you open the door to a far higher quality of health.