A gentleman came to my office with knee pain that had been going on for approximately three months, and had been gradually getting worse. Using Nutrition Response Testing to determine the cause of the knee pain, I found that he had a fungus in his bladder. At first, both patient and doctor were puzzled by this finding. What possible connection could a fungus in the bladder have with knee pain?  But, on checking the connection between the knee and the bladder, I found that supporting the bladder with the appropriate nutritional supplements definitely corrected the knee. So, I placed the patient on the supplemental program and gave him very specific instructions as to diet. He took my advice and, as a result, in three months the patient was pain-free.

During this process, I found out that there are myotomal (muscle) connections between the bladder and the knee. In other words, it was entirely possible for the fungus in the patient’s bladder to have triggered the pain in the patient’s knee via these connections. Through Nutrition Response Testing the patient’s body was able to reveal that the bladder fungus was the problem, and the knee pain was just a sign of the underlying issue.

I reflected, upon making this discovery that without Nutrition Response Testing this connection might never have been found. Another health professional treating this gentleman would have treated the symptoms presented and looked no further. It would not have occurred to him or her that a fungus in the bladder was the causative problem.

This lesson in listening to the body was reinforced to me about six weeks later when the same patient returned, this time with pain in his thumb. Looking at just the thumb, I used several different support therapies, which did not help, and over the next three months the thumb grew worse instead of better. I did not strictly apply the Nutrition Response Testing protocols until, after several visits, the patient reported that his knee pain had returned. Then, the light went on. I proceeded to check him with Nutrition Response Testing and found that the initial problem with the bladder fungus had returned. As a result, I placed him on the same supplemental support he had been on previously, and within a week the thumb began to improve.

Over the next six weeks, the thumb was corrected and restored to normal function with none of the inflammation, pain, irritation, swelling and other symptoms that had been present before. The knee, however, was not so quick to heal this time. It finally did correct itself, however, and as a precaution I asked the patient to maintain his supplement program for several more weeks to be sure that the body had sustained enough energy to take care of the causative bladder fungus permanently. The patient returned to his normal activities, with no residual pain at all.

This case is demonstrative of what we have been discussing in the last several articles concerning the health/disease continuum. When this patient came to me with the complaint of knee pain, it was not readily apparent that the pain he was experiencing originated in his bladder. It took Nutrition Response Testing, a procedure that is not commonly used in mainstream medicine, to ferret out the cause. This was a clear case of the symptoms seeming to have no direct connection to the actual cause, as per Dr. Reckeweg’s theory of the six phases of the health process.

Once we found the problem, the patient was given a choice … to follow my recommendations on supplements and diet changes, thus moving toward recovering his health, or to continue to do as he had always done, thus further damaging his body and moving toward debility. His choice to follow the necessary program ultimately helped him to not only get rid of the symptoms, but more importantly to reclaim his health in the process.

This example helps us to more clearly see the health/disease continuum at work. And, if we take the lesson seen here, perhaps we will make better choices for ourselves … choices that lead to a full and vigorous life, versus a steady and pain-filled decline into life-threatening disease.

In the next article, we will take a look at another example of how the health/disease continuum works, thus clarifying even more the way the disease process can, if addressed properly, be arrested and reversed.

To your good health!

Dr. Jon R. Link