Reviews Dr J Steven Christensen Md Internal Medicine ÂⷠMale ÂⷠAge 49 18 Reviews
The physician is in. To attain him, y'all must cross the limestone-pillared entrance of his headquarters in Hoffman Estates and go past the chocolate-brown paneled walls and soothing tiled lounge, downwards a labyrinth of hushed halls and empty conference rooms, to the door of a spacious corner role. Two soft knocks and a person instantly recognizable to about any true believer in culling medicine appears. The doctor is Joseph Mercola, the face, the vocalization, the prime mover behind one of the nation's most heavily trafficked—and controversial—natural health websites, Mercola.com.
He may non have the mainstream name recognition or stone-star appeal of, say, Mehmet Oz (though he has twice been a guest on The Dr. Oz Show). But Mercola's influence is however considerable. Each month, nearly two meg people click to see the osteopathic physician's latest musings on the wonders of dietary supplements and minerals ("The 13 Astonishing Health Benefits of Himalayan Crystal Common salt"), the marvels of alternative therapies ("Learn How Homeopathy Cured a Male child of Autism"), and his take on medical inquiry, from vaccines ("Your Flu Shot Contains a Dangerous Neurotoxin") to vitamin D ("The Silver Bullet for Cancer?").
Visitors to his site are as well treated to heavy doses of the antipathy Mercola holds for near things traditional medicine and Big Pharma—the "medical-industrial complex," he calls it. Many followers are almost evangelical in their support of his message. "If only the globe had more Dr. Mercolas!" wrote ane in the comments section for "The Thugs of the Medical Globe," a Mercola.com commodity most drug companies. "You are a warrior sir, and your tireless, true, and fearless efforts to expose these criminals is much appreciated."
Not surprisingly, the medical establishment sees things differently. Some researchers and doctors say that Mercola steers patients away from proven treatments and peddles pseudoscientific misinformation on topics such as influenza shots and fluoridation. In their view, he is resurrecting old myths, such equally the threat posed by mercury in dental fillings, and promoting new ones, such as the notion that microwave ovens emit harmful radiation. "The information he'due south putting out to the public is extremely misleading and potentially very dangerous," opines Dr. Stephen Barrett, who runs the medical watchdog site Quackwatch.org. "He exaggerates the risks and potential dangers of legitimate science-based medical care, and he promotes a lot of unsubstantiated ideas and sells [sure] products with claims that are misleading."
Some of the articles on Mercola's site, Barrett and others say, seem to exist equally much about selling the wide assortment of products offered there—from Melatonin Sleep Back up Spray ($21.94 for 3 0.85-ounce bottles) to Organic Ocean Buckthorn Anti-Aging Serum ($22 for one ounce)—as about trying to inform. (Your tampon "may be a ticking time bomb," he tells site visitors—but you lot can buy his "worry-free" organic cotton tampons for the discounted cost of $seven.99 for sixteen.) Steven Salzberg, a prominent biologist, professor, and researcher at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, calls Mercola "the 21st-century equivalent of a snake-oil salesman."
Mercola says that his critics are wrong on all counts. Far from dispensing unsafe misinformation or trading in conspiracy theories, every bit some allege, he is a champion of "taking charge of our own health," the doctor insists—a truth teller alerting Americans to what he calls the abuses, hoaxes, and myths perpetrated by the multi-billion-dollar pharmaceutical and health insurance industries.
He'due south also undaunted by his recurring run-ins with the Food and Drug Administration. Final March, the agency slapped the doctor with its third alert to cease making what it describes as unfounded claims. Specifically, the FDA demanded that Mercola cease touting a thermographic screening he offers—which uses a special camera to take digital images of pare temperatures—every bit a amend and safer breast cancer diagnostic tool than mammograms. (Equally of presstime, Mercola's site had not removed the claims.) Mercola says that the FDA's statements are "without merit" and has had his lawyers ship a letter to the FDA telling information technology so. The FDA did not reply to repeated requests for comment.
Meanwhile, the Better Business organization Bureau has tagged Mercola.com with an F rating, its lowest, due in office to customer complaints that the company doesn't honor its 100 percent money-dorsum guarantee. That black marking isn't exactly the kind of affair that tends to boost revenues. Hoovers, a segmentation of Dun & Bradstreet, estimates that the privately held Mercola.com and Mercola LLC together brought in just nether $7 million in 2010. (A Mercola spokesman didn't dispute that figure.)
Just those dollars don't reverberate the extent of Mercola's influence. According to traffic-tracking house Quantcast, Mercola.com draws virtually 1.9 million unique visitors per month, each of whom returns an average of well-nigh 10 times a month. That remarkable "stickiness" puts the site's total visits on a par with those to the National Institutes of Health's website. (Mercola claims his is "the world's No. 1 natural wellness website," citing figures from Alexa.com.) Mercola'south 200,000-plus "likes" on Facebook are more than double the number for WebMD. And ii of his 8 books—2003'due south The No-Grain Nutrition and 2006's The Nifty Bird Influenza Hoax—take landed on the New York Times bestseller list.
Warrior or dishonest, straight shooter or charlatan, the question is the same: How has a site congenital on ideas so reverse to mainstream science—so radical that even some staunch culling health advocates are uncomfortable with some of his positions—become so popular?
When I met Mercola in his suburban office one afternoon last fall, he was pleasant, articulate, enigmatic, and—understandably, perhaps—wary. Trim and athletic, with the healthy vigor of a marathoner (which he was), the 57-year-erstwhile sported a crisp button-downwards, pressed khakis, and the tan of someone who winters in the tropical climes of the well-to-practise (which he does).
His golden hue is but i example of his rebellion against medical orthodoxy. Because scientists have establish excessive sunlight to be a likely carcinogen, dermatologists warn that there's no such thing as a salubrious tan. Mercola scoffs, arguing that sunlight is beneficial because exposure to it causes the trunk to create vitamin D. "I actually never have vitamin D," he says. "I simply get it from the lord's day."
He even advocates something considered outright heresy to nearly skin doctors: the utilize of tanning beds. Specifically, he recommends the Mercola Vitality Dwelling house Tanning Bed—on sale at his site for $two,997 ("Incredible Deal!"), free shipping within the continental United States for a limited time, returns subject to customer-paid shipping plus a 15 per centum restocking fee.
Mercola is well aware of his lightning-rod status. He actually embraces it. He did not blanch, for example, when Oz introduced him on a 2011 Dr. Oz show equally "the almost controversial invitee I've ever had . . . [a man who] is being called everything from game changer to innovator, controversial to dishonest." When I first asked virtually the mainstream critics who ridicule him, Mercola just shook his head, equally if they weren't worth discussing.
In fact, he doesn't need to worry much almost being controversial. Not when his in-your-confront denunciation of the $two.half dozen trillion wellness intendance industry is resonating so well with an increasingly frustrated segment of the population. With health costs zooming and no convincing plan in identify to curb them, "there is public dislike of Big Pharma and many managed care and health insurance companies," says Tom Smith, director of the National Opinion Enquiry Center at the Academy of Chicago.
Mainstream doctors may observe it near inconceivable that people could choose Mercola over accustomed schools of idea. But studies show a long erosion of public confidence in medicine, Smith says. Add in the poor economy of recent years and information technology's no surprise that people "are looking for handling alternatives in general and to Mercola in particular."
The numbers tell the story. Retail sales of vitamins have soared from $two.4 billion in 2006 to $iii.4 billion in 2011, according to SymphonyIRI Grouping, a market inquiry firm in Chicago. Today about 40 percent of American adults seek some form of alternative health care, including reiki and ayurveda, the National Institutes of Wellness says. They are spending roughly $30 billion a yr out of pocket for visits to alternative-care physicians and on related products. And the health intendance industry is taking heed: Some large health insurers now cover certain treatments, such every bit acupuncture, that were once considered radical.
Mercola isn't your standard alternative medicine guy, mind yous. A spokesperson for the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, a federal agency, declined to comment about Mercola specifically. But she provided position papers that contradict several of his views—for example, on the authorisation of the FDA and on vaccination (more about that later on).
Mercola'southward distrust-heavy spin seems to have striking a particular nerve. "That's the cardinal sales hook," says Barrett. "That you can't trust the government, and because I don't trust the authorities, you tin can trust me. And a lot of people don't trust the regime for a lot of reasons."
Mercola didn't always stand up on the fringes of wellness care. Early, he eagerly embraced and so-chosen allopathic medicine—a term that originally referred to the exercise of traditional health care but has become a mocking putdown by sure alternative-medicine advocates.
Born and raised in Chicago, Mercola lacked professional role models at home: His mother was a waitress and his father a deliveryman for Marshall Field'south. Just, he says, he was "always passionate about learning."
Subsequently graduating from Lane Tech College Prep Loftier School and from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he majored in biology and chemistry, he got a job compounding prescriptions in the pharmacy of a medical middle. Next came a degree from the Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine, a small school in Downers Grove. (Unlike an MD, an osteopath, or DO, is trained to focus on prevention and holistic treatment. DOs and MDs are considered equivalent by state licensing boards.)
In 1985, Mercola launched a small private practice out of an 800-square-human foot role in Schaumburg. At first, he was a traditional drug-prescribing doc. He fifty-fifty worked equally a paid speaker for a drug company, promoting estrogen replacement therapy. "I thought drugs were the reply," he says with a shrug.
That changed in the early 1990s, when conventional treatments failed to assistance a immature patient with recalcitrant diarrhea. Flummoxed, Mercola found a possible respond in a volume called The Yeast Connection. Afterwards he tried the all-natural protocol the volume recommended, he says, "the child had a miraculous recovery."
Over the next several years, Mercola began networking with a number of agreeing physicians "who were getting pretty adept results with nontraditional therapies." He grew increasingly skeptical of traditional medicine and interested in treatments designed, he says, to "treat the whole person" rather than just symptoms. "I became very passionate near this new approach. I immersed myself in the science of nutrition and found peers who had amend results making patients truly responsible for the intendance of their bodies, educational activity them how to do and then without writing out a new drug prescription for each part visit."
In 1997, equally a way to share what he had found that would be "useful and helpful," he started Mercola.com. It proved a hit. Simply because it didn't charge for content or accept ads, it was besides a coin bleed. In the first 3 years, Mercola estimates that he spent half a million dollars on the site. To keep it afloat, he says, "I had three options: to get paid subscribers; to sell information, which I didn't desire to do; or to sell products, which is what I wound up doing. . . . The purpose for selling items is to have a revenue stream so we can pay our staff to provide information to brainwash the public and brand a deviation and fund [our] initiatives."
The success of the site gave a pregnant boost to his exercise, Mercola says: "I had people flying in from all over the world. It ever puzzled me: when people came in, I wouldn't tell them anything different than I had written on the site. They could have just as easily looked it upward for free. But they had to hear it from me." (Mercola stopped practicing medicine six years ago to focus on the website.)
His success also afforded some lifestyle perks. In 2006, for example, he bought a spacious $2 meg waterfront home with a puddle in tony South Barrington. Only Mercola is non one of those assuming-faced names who are regularly spotted rubbing elbows with the metropolis'southward lodge set. He has never married and has no children; he does take a girlfriend, he says, but he declines to discuss her.
Every bit he congenital his site, Mercola began filling it with articles he wrote, on subjects such as his conviction that vitamin D "positively influences" conditions from eye disease to diabetes to cancer. (Some studies do propose that elevated levels of vitamin D may protect against sure cancers.) He shared his views about bug such as infirmary-caused infections and the overuse and improper use of antibiotics. He reiterated the importance of preventive care and said that spending more than time with patients could help them heal. And he recommended eating unprocessed foods and getting plenty of exercise. These are all stances that few mainstream doctors would argue with.
But he likewise took more than controversial positions. On pharmaceuticals, for example: "In that location are a few drugs—very, very few—that I would recommend." Amongst his reasons: Drugs treat symptoms rather than underlying causes, many are unproven, and they can cause immense harm.
"You have more than 100,000 people every year [in the The states] dying from taking legally prescribed drugs," Mercola says, citing a 1994 written report from the University of Toronto. "No people in a typical year are dying from vitamin supplements," he continues, his vox ascension. "And even so vitamins are vilified and drugs are identified as the hero. Information technology doesn't make sense." (It's not unknown for people to dice from overusing supplements, which escape FDA review and then long as they practise non make health claims on the label.)
"Fraud. Kickbacks. Price-setting, bribery, and illegal sales activities," Mercola rants in a characteristically scathing web posting. "Add in all the doctored and back-dated documents, federal and civil lawsuits, and billions of dollars in government sanctions, fines, and penalties—not to mention the deaths—and yous'd think it was the script for a thriller global action movie. Merely no, it's just Big Pharma at its mendacious best, dancing all the style to the banking company while . . . endangering the lives of regular people similar you and me."
It's true, of grade, that many prescription drugs have been yanked from the market over the years because of serious health risks and side effects. Consider Vioxx, which Mercola says he flagged as potentially dangerous years before Merck withdrew it in 2004 over reports that information technology raised the risks of heart assail and stroke.
It'southward as well true that not all drug companies have the cleanest reputations. Only final November, British drug maker GlaxoSmithKline agreed to pay a tape $iii billion settlement to the U.S. government over allegations of improper sales and marketing practices involving numerous drugs, including the diabetes medication Avandia. Federal prosecutors likewise accused GlaxoSmithKline of paying doctors and manipulating research to promote the drug, which has been linked to centre problems.
"There'southward no doubt that people die later on taking conventional medicine," Salzberg says. "Those things happen and are bad and should be corrected, absolutely. But the solution is not to believe the claims of Dr. Mercola that because something is natural information technology's better. He'due south really just changing the topic on yous."
Joseph Ross, a cardiologist and an banana professor of medicine at Yale University, agrees with Salzberg. "The effect is more complicated than Mercola is making it. Yes, there are problems with the [drug] industry, problems with the relationships between the manufacture and the profession, and problems with the medical literature due to industry distortions. However, many of the pharmaceuticals bachelor to us today are both safe and effective and are improving the lives of patients. I do not advocate throwing the baby out with the bath h2o."
But the stance that tends to drive Mercola's critics almost crazy is his support of the antivaccination movement. A search of Mercola.com reveals dozens of articles and videos railing against virtually all vaccines, particularly mandatory ones for children. Amongst the titles: "Do NOT Allow Your Child Get Influenza Vaccine—ix Reasons Why."
Mercola says he recently donated $1 million to several alternative medicine groups, including the National Vaccine Information Heart, which describes itself every bit a "vaccine watch dog." Part of the coin, according to the group's website, was used to pay for an advert chosen "Vaccines: Know the Risk," which was shown hourly on the CBS Jumbotron in Times Foursquare for several weeks terminal spring.
Mercola says he is simply trying to ask hard questions about the potential impairment caused by inoculations and voice his opposition to government-imposed mandates. "There are near no safe studies done [on vaccines]," Mercola says. "Nosotros don't know what the furnishings of combining them are. We don't know what the long-term complications are." He says the government and media downplay very existent risks and either underreport or ignore serious agin reactions. Meanwhile, "nosotros don't have the option to say no [to getting the shots]. Information technology's just insane what'south happening, and more and more vaccines [are coming] down the line."
It's one thing, Mercola'southward critics say, to push unproven dietary supplements. It's another to advocate that parents shun something that has washed so much skilful. "When I was training 50 years ago, I saw kids who were deaf from measles, demented," Barrett says. "Vaccines save lives and they prevent disability."
More broadly, the CDC warns that a major drop in the number of children beingness vaccinated poses a threat to all Americans. That'southward because when a big plenty portion of the population has amnesty to a certain communicable diseases, its spread becomes unlikely—and then-called herd immunity. Failure to immunize kids, the CDC says, could result in a return of diseases such equally measles and polio that have been all merely eradicated.
Mercola is goose egg if not a gifted marketer. His site bristles with provocative headlines ("Do Drug Companies Secretly Favor a World Flu Pandemic?") and promises of astounding breakthroughs ("Zinc Can Cure Diarrhea"). And his enormous archive of blog posts and videos on health care topics from arthritis to shingles are all costless—provided you share your e-mail address. At the bottom of such articles are products from Mercola's own line that correspond to the topics he's just addressed. "He has applied the science of advice probably as skillfully every bit anyone who has e'er used the Internet," Mercola'south chief critic, Barrett, acknowledges.
This skill is no blow. Around the time Mercola began to sell products on his site, he too began to study marketing. "I read a lot of books, took a lot of courses, and started agreement the process of how to communicate information effectively."
Amongst the tricks he learned was how to grab readers' attention—the notion, for instance, that "80 percent of the effectiveness of an article is based on the headline." He also learned the power of provocation. "I would find manufactures that supported one position and [say] why I disagreed. I didn't hold back, and people seemed to like that. I didn't realize at the fourth dimension that was a useful marketing principle."
If there were whatever incertitude virtually the importance of marketing to the operation, information technology was dispelled when I was given a quick tour of Mercola'southward sprawling headquarters. The lobby of Dr. Mercola's Natural Health Eye looks like the kind of well-appointed suburban function where you'd expect vanity procedures such as face-lifts to be offered. As it turns out, only one short hallway is dedicated to patient services. "Marketing and customer service accept up most of the rest," a new-patient coordinator told me.
The medical pros on staff—a doctor, a nutritionist, and four therapists—offering treatments such as the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), which Mercola describes as a "class of psychological acupressure, based on the aforementioned free energy meridians used in traditional acupuncture." Another option: thermography, the screening method with advertising claims that got Mercola into hot water with the FDA.
One fundamental element of Mercola's appeal—and the reason he is so misreckoning to some of his critics—is that plenty of the things he advocates are rooted in mutual sense and fifty-fifty good science. His site, for instance, offers a thorough primer on proper paw washing to avoid spreading or communicable the flu. As much as he pushes people to spend time in the sun, he also tells them to avoid getting a sunburn and even to comprehend up in a way that allows enough lord's day to get through while avoiding pare harm.
In the opinion of David Gorski, a doctor who runs a site similar to Barrett's (ScienceBasedMedicine.org), the trouble is that Mercola either vastly exaggerates preliminary research or cherry-red-picks studies that bolster his indicate of view. Gorski believes that Mercola besides ignores information that show him incorrect or pushes far across what is scientifically sound, using scare tactics to make his point. For instance, his site includes an article by a California md titled "HIV Does Non Cause AIDS." Mercola posted a annotate at the cease of the commodity: "Exposure to steroids and the chemicals in our environment, the drugs used to treat AIDS, stress, and poor nutrition are possibly the real causes."
Gorski lists a litany of Mercola'due south beliefs that he says fly in the face of good science. "It'south all at that place," says Gorski. "He's antivaccine. He has promoted [someone] who believes cancers are caused by fungus. He has promoted fear-mongering about shampoo. He digs upward the hoary old myth that anti-perspirants containing aluminum cause breast cancer. Just this calendar month he is pushing this nonsense that somehow recombinant bovine growth factor in milk causes breast cancer, something for which there's no show.
"Basically, if information technology's 'natural,' it's good," Gorski says. "If it's pharmaceutical, it's evil. If anything boils his approach down to a curt audio bite, that's probably as close every bit I can think of."
When I asked Mercola why the criticism against him past mainstream physicians is so harsh—and why the FDA has been on his case—he laughed. "It's a very elementary answer," he says. "There are enormous sums of coin involved. In that location's this huge collusion between authorities and industry. They leverage the federal regulatory agencies against the states to make us await like nosotros're breaking the law."
He pushes treatments and theories shunned past conventional medicine, he says, because "when you empathise the truth [you have a duty] to communicate that as clearly and effectively as possible. I can see things that are merely obvious and clear to me. I don't need 30 more years of science to support it. Am I wrong sometimes? Sure. Everyone's incorrect [sometimes]. . . . People telephone call me a ophidian-oil salesman, of course. They're free to do that. I don't think there's a justification for it."
Every bit for his critics, Mercola views them as "pawns" of a organisation in which medical journals take become an almighty arbiter of the scientific process. "It's how physicians and health intendance professionals validate their approach," he says. "Simply employ the journals. [That'southward fine] if y'all can maintain objectivity and y'all don't corrupt information technology with conflict of interest. Unfortunately, that's not the case. These journals go corrupted. Then anybody down the line steps in and says, 'Oh, the journals say it, the experts say information technology, then who am I to say differently?' And they all autumn in step."
Salzberg strongly disagrees. "What people like Mercola sometimes ignore is that real medicines really piece of work. They really work because they undergo very strenuous testing. . . . Medical science is constantly critiquing itself. We're always skeptical nigh our own results. The purveyors of supplements and 'alternative medicine,' including Mercola, are actually not doing that at all."
In his coolly modern office—with its polished wood floors, caramel-colored leather piece of furniture, and dramatic lighting—Mercola tells me he's not long for this earth. That is, he won't exist sticking around for the coming common cold and sunless stretches of a Chicago winter. As is the case every twelvemonth at this time, he will soon be off to more agreeable latitudes. "I typically become to warm climates such as South Florida, Mexico, Miami, the Caribbean area," he explains. "My girlfriend has a home in Florida, so we stay there sometimes." He withal works every twenty-four hour period, he says. "I just work in shorts and T-shirts."
Of course, he likewise enthusiastically chases rays. But without traditional sunscreens. Those are "loaded with toxic chemicals," states a posting on his website. According to researchers, the mail service continues, "about half of the 500 most pop sunscreen products may really increment the speed at which malignant cells develop and spread skin cancer."
In that location is an alternative, a "major breakthrough in all natural sunscreen lotions," the site says: Dr. Mercola's Natural Sunscreen with Green Tea. It'south on sale for $fifteen.97 for an eight-ounce canteen, just a mouse click away.
Source: https://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/February-2012/Dr-Joseph-Mercola-Visionary-or-Quack/
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