The Black Hole

There I was, an 18-year old young man, who, by all cultural standards, should have been feeling exuberant about the future. It was 1976, and I had just graduated from high school. From my perspective, everyone around me was having the time of their life…and I was barely holding on to mine. My buddies were leaping headlong into college, jobs, and the typical joyous mayhem of those years. Me? I felt like I was falling into a black hole. I had been so sick and exhausted for so long that I was starting to believe I couldn’t hang on much
longer. Every night when I laid my head on the pillow, I honestly questioned whether or not I would be alive in the morning to lift it up again. I had seen every doctor and specialists imaginable and, for the most part, been left for dead by the medical profession.

Seeing the constant concern in my parents’ eyes and feeling like an extreme burden on my family, I conjured up this plan to join the military. I figured if I could pass the physical and get in I would at least have free medical and my mom and dad wouldn’t have the responsibility. Somehow I passed and I was sworn into the Air Force in the summer of 1977.

Fate had other plans. It’s likely I would have been given a proper military burial had I actually served in the Air Force, but I quickly found myself with civilian status again. It turned out the job they promised me wasn’t available, so I was honorably discharged without ever serving a day.

Light on the horizon

Don’t ask me why, but before I knew it, I was in my car headed for California. It was a whim, but to a naïve kid from Michigan, the Golden State offered some metaphoric, kind of hard-to-define hope. I hit the pavement and headed into the sun. It turned out to be a decision that probably saved my life.

“Dude, you look sick,” I heard one day from a friend of a friend. “You need to take some vitamins or something.” He was a healthy, muscled-up California boy who meant well but wasn’t exactly the overly sensitive type. I had heard many comments like that in the past but this one hit home. The truth was I would have given anything to look and feel like that guy.

The next day, I walked into a health food store for the first time in my life. There behind the counter stood this long-haired fellow (a “hippie” to the naïve Michigan boy), shoving carrots into this machine that looked like R2D2 from Star Wars.
This orange liquid was pouring out of the bottom of it; I was a little freaked out. He looked up and said, “Hi, would you like to try some carrot juice?”—words I’d never heard before. Carrots have juice!? I thought. “No thanks” I said, trying not
to make it obvious that I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

“What can I help you with?” he asked, introducing himself as Marty.

“I wanted to get some vitamins.” I replied.

“Do you know what you want?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t know the first thing about vitamins.”

Then Marty said something that hit me like a ton of bricks. “Do you mind if I give you some advice?” I feebly replied no. “You look like you have some pretty difficult health problems and I don’t think a few vitamins are going to solve it. What kind of problems are you having?” I was very hesitant to talk about it with anyone, let alone some guy I just met in this crazy health food store. I was embarrassed by my appearance, couldn’t think straight, barely had enough energy to stay awake and had already told the so-called “experts” everything and
was basically left to die.

Suddenly, I was overcome with emotion and told Marty I needed to go out to my car. I sat there and sobbed uncontrollably for at least fifteen minutes. I realized that this “hippie guy” took one look at me and knew something was seriously wrong and had the human decency to actually want to help. It was a life changing moment. I had a sense of hope, felt some light shining into the
black hole of my life.

“Am I going to die?”

Marty told me he knew a local doctor who could find out what was wrong with me. His name was Dr. William Goldwag, M.D. and he practiced something called “alternative medicine.” He was the editor of Prevention Magazine. (At that time Prevention Magazine was on the cutting edge of natural and alternative medicine).

He probed into my life like a private investigator. Was I a healthy baby? Was I breastfed? What was my diet like as a child? Did I have any health problems as a child? Where did I grow up? Did I eat a lot of sugar, milk products, junk food? When did my symptoms start? What kind of stress was I under? He was relentless. I’d been to every specialist under the sun and was never asked one question like this.

After a bunch of blood, urine and other tests, he sat me down and told me I had some very serious problems. Of course, my first question was, “Am I going to die?” He said, “You don’t have a fatal disease per se, but your body and mind can’t take much more abuse. You’re the worst case I’ve ever seen. You don’t have a lot of life left in you right now but you can rebuild your health if you do the
right things.”

The right things? So there were “right things” I could do! My spirit lit up like a Christmas tree. I was already mentally prepared to “do or die”—literally—but I never even considered the idea that I could “rebuild my health.” Dr. Goldwag explained that I had some very severe deterioration in different areas of my body. He told me that most—not all—doctors don’t recognize these problems because they haven’t learned certain protocols in medical school and are resistant to new ideas. He said I would have to be strong and believe I was on the right track even if the rest of the world was saying otherwise.

I promised to take his advice and then sat back and listened while he explained my main problems: severe adrenal exhaustion, severe glucose intolerance (the term back then for pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes today), Hashimoto’s disease, (an autoimmune disease of the thyroid gland), severe anemia, elevated liver enzymes and poor liver function (thus the yellow eyes), and a very compromised immune system.

Adrenal exhaustion? Glucose intolerance? Hashimoto’s disease? It all sounded like a foreign language to me. He went on say that other symptoms like allergies, fatigue, inability to concentrate, anxiety, depression, multiple infections and hormone imbalances were all the result of having these top priority problems. He said if I focused on correcting the main issues my other symptoms would improve and eventually disappear.

My quest gained momentum

Dr. Goldwag started me on a controversial treatment called A.C.E. Injections (Adrenal Cortical Extract), designed to rebuild my adrenal function. Slowly, I could feel more life creep back into my body and mind. The better I felt the more I researched. I became a fire-breathing advocate for natural and alternative medicine and discovered a hidden talent. I was really good at finding these little known yet effective treatments for conditions that conventional medicine didn’t even recognize.

I found out about a newly discovered condition introduced by Dr. Orion Truss, M.D. caused by the over use of antibiotics and fueled by excess sugar, starch and alcohol consumption. It was a fungal infection caused predominantly by organism called Candida Albicans. Yeast imbalance is now common knowledge, but back then, this information was new and edgy.

Thinking back over years of antibiotic use and a voracious sugar addiction, I knew I had to investigate. It turned out that one of the few researchers with any knowledge of this brand new phenomenon was a Dr. Paula Davies, M.D. from the University of Michigan. I had just returned to Michigan for a visit, so that week I drove out to the University in Ann Arbor to attend a lecture by Dr. Davies.

I decided to get checked for “Candida Overgrowth.” She followed up with me several days later and told me she had never seen someone with such a severe gastrointestinal Candida infection. Believe me, I made myself an expert on that subject in record time. I knew about Candida problems before Dr. William Crook released his book “The Yeast Connection.”

While in Michigan I read about another new emerging condition called Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. At that time, the main cause was thought to be a virus called Epstein-Barr. I had myself tested and, sure enough, the test was positive along with another viral infection called HHV6. Before long I was quite the authority on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Back in California, I heard about a test for food and chemical sensitivity called the Cytotoxic test. Doctor James Braly, M.D. authored an article I read on the subject, so I contacted him. I was one of his first patients to take the test.

Out of 130 foods tested I reacted to over 100! Seventy percent of those reactions were considered severe. A severe reaction meant that live white blood cells were injured or killed when introduced to the offending food. With further testing, it turned out I had many severe reactions to chemicals, pollens, molds and other “environmental allergens”, as well. 200 needle sticks later, Dr. Braly was astounded by the quantity and severity of my extreme sensitivities.

I wasn’t exactly enjoying being the poster child for the “sickest person alive” but I was really happy to be on my quest for health and knowledge. Keep in mind that every doctor that I had sought out, Dr. Goldwag, Dr. Davies, and Dr. Braly and many more were all respected authorities. These people were pioneers. They were going against conventional thinking and they were helping someone who conventional medicine had failed miserably.

One thing for sure, these “unorthodox” forms of medicine saved my life. When the dust settled, I realized that my mind and body was being ravaged by a series of problems that conventional medicine didn’t recognize.

On top of my long list of maladies in the most severe form known to humankind, add pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes, (the testing wasn’t sophisticated enough back then to know for sure), chronic reoccurring bacterial infections and a failing liver and it’s not too hard to understand why I was barley alive. Keep in mind what all those “specialists” I saw in the past were recommending. Antibiotics! Guess what all the antibiotics were doing? Ruining my already failing liver, making the fungal infection much worse and creating something called antibiotic resistance. The bacterial infections I had were figuring out the antibiotics and developing resistance to them. No wonder I felt like I was free-falling into a black hole!

At that point I had a good idea what was wrong with me. It was overwhelming to say the least and my progress was pretty slow. How do you overcome bacterial, fungal and viral infections, stop reacting to hundreds of food, chemicals, pollens, etc., reverse adrenal fatigue, reverse pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes, boost my immune system, rebuild a failing liver, and correct autoimmune thyroid disease? My mind was reeling. How do I prioritize all this? What should I focus on? If I only knew then what I know now! I made mistakes that cost me years of suffering.

But was I learning a great deal about the secret world of alternative or natural medicine; I was living and experiencing it. I was a pioneer in my own right, only as a patient.

I charted my course…and stuck with it

I continued to research and study like a man possessed. I was uncovering things that were so shocking they were hard to believe. Highly competent and qualified doctors and other professionals were losing their license to practice medicine because they dared to be different. Some had successfully cured serious degenerative diseases like cancer. Others were treating the same conditions I was suffering from.

At that time, if you were a medical professional who offered help to patients that you suspected had adrenal exhaustion, chronic fatigue, glucose intolerance (type 2 diabetes) hypoglycemia and candida fungal infections, you had to be extremely courageous and dedicated. As pitiful as it was, you were considered by your own profession to be a heretic.

I was fueled by a passion so strong nothing stopped me from uncovering new conditions and new treatments. In the beginning, it was mostly for myself. But as I gained more strength and better health I redirected that energy and simply did it to fill my tremendous appetite for this new found discovery called Natural and Alternative medicine. Along the way, I met people who I could help with bits and pieces of my wisdom and experience. That dynamic fueled me even more.

Today—some 33 years, hundreds of radio shows/interviews, articles, speaking engagements, and thousands of hours of research and development later—I still have an unquenchable passion for health and healing and I am a living example of the rejuvenative, healing power of both your mind and body…even if you’re free-falling through darkness to death’s door.

Here is to your own journey to HEALTH.

All my best,

Don Bodenbach