From the April 1995 Newsletter of the West Texans living With CFIDS/FMS

Dr. Samuels Speaks On Diagnosis and Treatment

WLTC was privileged to hear Michael G. Samuels, DO, of Dallas, at the meeting on March 11. Dr. Samuels is on the teaching faculties of Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine and the Sutherland Cranial Teaching Foundation, and heads international studies into AIDS and longevity. A summary of his address is presented here for the benefit of those who were unable to attend and to refresh the memories of those who heard him.

A patient comes into my office and she's crying, and she's half asleep, and she's slumped into the chair, and she's got a stack of medical records that's a foot high, and her husband is sitting over in the corner of the room, and he's disgusted because he's back in somebody's office, another physician, and he's going to have to pay more money for the same diagnosis: his wife is crazy. Now he's begun to believe it himself. I turn to the front page of my very long questionnaire, and attached to it are 5 or 6 more pages of symptoms, and I turn to the second page, and there's an additional page stuck in there with a list of drugs that she has been on and their effects, so a 13 page questionnaire ends up being somewhere around 40 pages.

She woke up one day and felt like she was coming down with the flu. The symptoms got persistently worse by the day, so she went to her family physician and he prescribed medicine, but there was no relief, so she went back and he tried another regimen and it was no help and her symptoms continued to get worse, and her whole world fell out from underneath her.

She lost her life, her outside life, whether she was working or going to school and her family life because she could no longer provide her share of duties as a mother and as a wife, and she is still trying to find some help. My record right now in my office is seventy-two physicians, that someone has seen, trying to get some relief from this unrelenting problem.

Another patient comes in, a male this time. He's at the pinnacle of the world. He graduated from college about 6 years ago and is a computer expert: one of the largest computer companies in the world hired him as a trouble-shooter. He travels all over the world handling computer problems, and he can figure them out at the drop of a hat. He's looked upon as the expert. He's making a very good living, but one day he woke up with the flu. He began to have visual problems, then neurological symptoms which got markedly worse. He's had CT scans and MRIs. He's had diagnoses that ran from depression to seizure activity. He can't even get out of bed. He can't take a shower without resting for several hours, and when he does take one, he can't get dressed. He's lost his life, he can no long succeed in business and make a good living, and so he begins searching for help.

You know these problems that are presented with Chronic Fatigue Immune Deficiency Syndrome, or Immune Dysfunction Syndrome. CFIDS can be called Acute Encephalitic Syndrome, or Fibromyalgia. Some doctor's choose to call it depression, but it's not that way at all. Why would someone go to a doctor's office and lie about their symptoms and pay that kind of money? They are spending their entire savings trying to get well.

The problem was originally described in 1985 in The Annals of Internal Medicine. So we're looking at something that is relatively new. Most of the diseases that were taught in medical school have been around for years and years and years, and doctors know the utmost details about them. We learn them as we go through medical school. We study them in biochemistry, in physiology, in pathology, in internal medicine and in surgery. We get it over and over and over, but here something showed up in 1985 and we know very little about it.

Its estimated that about 5% of the feminine population suffer from this problem and that 2-3% of the male population are now beginning to experience it. Since 1985, every three years the number of people with this problem has doubled. Its on a logarithmic scale. What is happening here? I treat chronic degenerative disease. That's the only thing I can call it, because that is what happens. People get this fatigue: unrelenting, persistent, fatigue. One of the questions that I ask them, and I ask everybody in my practice, is, "On a scale of 0-10, 10 being really, really good, and 0 being really, really bad, where are you on the energy scale?

I'll get -10, 0-4 and maybe a 1. I'll say, "Well, do you ever have any good time?" No, these people honestly do not. It wrecks your life. You begin to think that you are crazy because you go in to the doctor who's taken care of you for years, and your complaints do not fit on a 3.5 card, therefore there's no diagnosis on the back side so he can believe it. You know, its a very complex disease state that ranges from the neurological system to the dermatological. There is nothing that escapes from the problem. Now it'll depend upon your own genetics, your own biochemistry, and your own life history as to what particular symptoms you will be faced with. In my particular practice and my philosophy, everybody is different; there are no two people alike. Even your children are not like you. They are similar, but they are not like you, and that makes getting into this kind of problem that we're faced with today very difficult and complicated. But if you're going to get down to the bottom of it, you have to sit down and listen to those people and figure it out. I need all of your symptoms.

As an example: I have been treating this 13 years old boy who's had seizures since before he started seeing me 7 years ago. This boy was in a seizure and the mother shared with me one vital piece of information that gave us the diagnosis, something that she had not told me in seven years. She has to get up every night, every hour and a half to two hours, and make sure that the boy drinks water. Well, that gave me the diagnosis. The boy has diabetes insipidus; it's a hyperpolemic pituitary problem. He doesn't have a full-blown expression of it, but we now know how to treat it. It's these very strange symptoms that throw most doctors off. But it's these very same symptoms that may help if the doctor is listening, because they describe your own particular biochemistry and your own particular genetics: how your body is functioning with the dysfunction.

You know there's persistent fatigue, low grade fevers and all of a sudden people's allergies begin to get worse and worse and worse. The digestive system goes haywire. The patient begins to get numbness, tingling, strange neurological symptoms, seizures, headaches, visual problems, concentration problems. I allow an hour to evaluate each patient. I should take 4 hours for these patients, because one of the most recent ones I had couldn't even remember what she had just told me. You know, she has to live her life by the piece of paper in front of her so she remembers what she was going to do or what she was saying. This is how she protects herself from going crazy with this problem. The sore throat, the swollen glands, the respiratory difficulties. You know, I would get depressed if I had only one-third of these problems and there was no help in store. It's true that these people are depressed, but they are depressed because they are not getting any help and they see their whole life tumble out from underneath them. Or are they depressed because there is a true chemical problem in the brain? The answer is both.

What causes CFIDS? There are many different causes. One that many people have heard about is Epstein-Barr Virus. It's one of the herpes family. You know, this EBV is the one that children used to get all the time. It's called infectious mononucleosis, but the devastating thing about that disease, or that virus, is that it lies dormant in our bodies, waiting and waiting until the right circumstances come about in that particular person's biochemistry, immunological system and it takes a vicious hold on his health.

You have to take a totally different approach for everybody. You have to figure what he is gong to get well with. That's what makes it difficult. I can't see one person every 5 minutes. I used to see three an hour, which is not very many. Recently, because of the complexity of the cases, I've had to go to two people an hour, and it's been suggested, because I constantly run behind, that I go to one an hour, and it may take that to get these people well, but whatever it takes, that's what needs to be done.

I do a lot of stool analysis because these people have a lot of gastrointestinal disturbance. There's a particular test called the Comprehensive Digestive Stool Analysis that looks at digestive capacity. It looks at absorption of nutrients and at the pH of the stool. It grows out all of the bacteria that is growing in the gut and looks at the good and the bad bacteria, then at the mycology (the yeast organisms) and then it looks for parasites. In one of my first instances with this, a woman was diagnosed with Lupus, an autoimmune disorder. She had so many parasites in her colon that the lab put "TMTC" (too many to count) on her chart. I said, "It's living off her very vital nature, her nutrients", so we proceeded to treat her for it, and guess what went away - her Lupus. Her rheumatologist said it was just a remission. Well, its been in remission for 10 years now and her life has continued to improve.

How do you find out what's wrong with you when you have Chronic Fatigue? Psychological profiles may be important, but they're not going to look at the neuro-endocrine regulatory system, nor at the gastrointestinal system to find Leaky Gut Phenomenon. Why is it that every time these people find some foods that they can finally eat, after 2 to 3 days or 2 or 3 weeks, they can't eat even those foods? So they're down to 1 -2 foods and then they finally just give up and eat the foods that cause them symptoms because they have to have something to eat. It's called Leaky Gut Phenomenon. What happens is they get tremendous overgrowth of abnormal bacteria, the gut swells, or the lining swells and the integrity of the cellular system is disturbed enough to cause the gut to leak. Bacteria in our gut are supposed to be there. They help us digest our foods down so that we can get the nutrients. Well, if it is abnormal, foods don't get broken down all the way. So in Leaky Gut Phenomenon, the patient can't eat anything; no matter what he eats, it doesn't get broken down.

The villi in the intestine absorb all our nutrients and our blood vessels and our lymphatic systems come by and take nutrients to the rest of the body, mostly the liver at first if we are healthy. What happens in Leaky Gut Phenomenon is that the bacteria destroys intestinal integrity. The patient loses intestinal villi because the pH is abnormal and there are very small to moderate size holes left in the gut. The food in the digestive tract is not properly broken down and instead of going down to the proper size hole for absorption these large molecules leak across the gut. The immune system says, "Hey, this is not supposed to be here!" and you get an immune reaction: that's why people get severe fatigue when they eat a food. They can get a worsening of concentration, skin reactions and/or respiratory problems. It's because the immune system has been turned on by these "foreign proteins" or whatever they are from the foods. But another complicating factor is if you have a whole host of abnormal bacteria there. They have bi-products and they use the person as a sewer and dump poisons into the system and they leak through the Leaky Gut Phenomenon.

Yeast, candidiasis, is really bad about this. There's still a lot of doctors out there who think that yeast is not a problem. They still don't recognize the consequences of the overuse of antibiotics. The yeast dumps out 108 different types of organic acids. If you took a particular acid and injected it into a healthy individual it would cause the same reactions in him as the patient has. As an example: I'm taking care of a family. The mother came in initially but I've now ended up treating all kids and their father. They all have a severe yeast problem. Dad had absolutely no symptoms. Mom was devastated with fatigue and the children were always sick with something, so we got a list of symptoms. An important thing to ask patients is, "How is your family?" because it will give you some good clues. We did a stool analysis on all of them and they all had an overgrowth of yeast, but Dad had so much of it that had been there an awfully long time. Dad's system is capable of handling it but we started treating it. Well, when you get a big die-off of yeast, all these organic acids break out and Dad got the same rash Mom had. At the store they dumped all this medicine on them, but it never went away and the reason was that it wasn't the yeast, but the poisons the yeast was dumping into the body causing the symptoms and that's the point I want to make.

But besides this, Leaky Gut Phenomenon and the multiple food allergies (you know, constipation, diarrhea, alternating constipation and diarrhea) are all very common with people that have digestive complications, especially with Chronic Fatigue. Neurologically, why are they the way they are?

There's a whole lot of reasons. One of them is the very problem we are talking about: Leaky Gut Phenomenon. That's why when you eat food, you being to develop symptoms, because you're feeding the bacteria or the yeast or the parasite, and so its metabolism speeds up. It dumps its by-products into your system and will poison one part of your body or another depending on what type of poison we are talking about.

A lot of them cross the blood-brain barrier causing what is classically known as neuro-toxicity. A brain SPECT scan looks at function and flow. It tells you how things are functioning up there. We now have a finger print of a SPECT scan for someone who has CFIDS. I've worked very closely with two neurologists in Dallas, looking at environmental causes and we've started seeing a similar pattern in people who are having the same symptoms for different reasons. It depends on what section of the brain that is being affected as to what the symptoms are. One can be confused, can have very poor memory, can have very poor memory recall and you can bet that somewhere in the temporal lobes of the brain he's going to have tremendous neurochemical and neurotransmitter problems. He can have seizure-like disorder so therefore it's affecting more the cortex of the brain and he can have muscular seizures, he can have petite-mal seizures when he just looks spaced out, and again that goes back to the neurotoxicity of these poisons going across the blood brain barrier, disturbing neurotransmissions, chemical or electrical transmissions. There are physiological and neurophysiological reasons why people end up with the symptoms they have, no matter what diseases you're talking about.

Why are people who have CFIDS unable to sleep? They're unable to sleep because of the pain. They're unable to sleep because a neurotransmitter, serotonin, gets depleted so they cannot relax but yet they're fatigued. When they do sleep, they don't get into Stage 3 and Stage 4 sleep which is extremely important. If we take a healthy individual and monitor him on an EEG brain wave and every time he starts to slip into Stage 3, we poke him, after several days we're going to have an extremely irritable individual, one that could go into psychosis.

The Stage 3-Stage 4 sleep is extremely important. Growth Hormone is a neuroendocrine hormone that is secreted by the anterior pituitary and it's been touted as an anti-aging thing. If you look at the insert to any of the Growth Hormone medicines, the FDA has a caution: this drug is anti-aging, and it is. The neuroendocrine system regulates all of your physiological processes including your immune system. It starts with the brain: the hypothalamus sits up above the pituitary gland and relays all the messages from all your cells and tells the rest of the body what to do. So it tells the pituitary to secrete Growth Hormone in children. (It's approved for dwarfism in children.) We secrete Growth Hormone our entire lives but if you look at the rate of secretion it decreases 15% over a 10 year period and it's only around about 20-30 minutes before it gets to the liver and is broken up. The only time adults secrete a lot of Growth Hormone is between 11:00PM and 1:00AM if they get to Stages 3 and 4 of sleep.

Growth Hormone production can be helped by exercise and there are several amino acids such as arginine and ornithine that are useful, but one would have to take upwards of 10-15-20 grams which is not a whole lot if that's what you want, because Growth Hormone is very important, especially in CFIDS patients, because they don't get Stage 3 and Stage 4 sleep.

They don't have proper endocrine gland hormones. The whole system gets messed up: not only is it the pituitary, it's also the thyroid. Most of them do have hypothyroidism. It's estimated now that about 85% of CFIDS patients have hypothyroidism. You go in and say, "Doctor, I think my thyroid doesn't work. I am so sluggish, my skin's dry, my hair's not good, I'm gaining weight for no reason, I'm constipated, I'm depressed. You know, I just don't feel like doing anything", and so he runs a blood test. It's within normal limits so you are told it must not be our thyroid. What are we treating? A blood test or a person? Now, if an optimum dose for you is 9 on your T4, which is a thyroid hormone, and the range is from 4.5 to 12, and you have a 5 but your body says "I really want a 9", you're hypothyroid in my book.

So what about the adrenal gland? It handles chronic stress and people who have CFIDS have their adrenal gland burnt out. The pituitary-thyroid-adrenal axis is extremely important because they balance one another. The pituitary secretes its hormones to the thyroid so it can dump its hormones out and to the adrenal gland so that it can dump its hormones out: cortisol and DHEA. Cortisol is an anti-inflammatory and it helps you deal on a cellular basis with stress. DHEA is a secondary stress hormone that's anti-aging, anti-diabetes, anti-obesity, anti-Alzheimer, anti-atherosclerosis and anti-cancer. It increases memory recall and memory retention. It's a pro-immune stimulant and an anti-depressant. It's all of these things. These people who have CFIDS who come in, "I'm so exhausted!", all of their body is exhausted. It's not a mental thing.

If you just take a blood test you're looking at that very moment in time: you need to look at a temporal aspect, at four separate times, so there is a very simple test to do that. We do it at 8:00AM, at noon, at 4:00PM and at midnight. All of your neurohormones are reflected very quickly in your saliva, so that is a really important tool to look at CFIDS and other problems because now we can send a patient home with a kit and he gets this cotton ball sopping wet with saliva and we measure the cortisol and DHEA.

People with CFIDS usually have their highest levels of cortisol about 8:00AM and then they drop to about half that between noon and 4:00PM. And then after 4:00PM you go to very low levels of cortisol. There are two conditions that CFIDS patients can be in. If you catch them early on in the disease process, you will have someone with a very high cortisol, but the problem with high cortisol, especially over a long period of time, is what cortisol does to the body. It's also an immune-suppressant so if you're chronically dumping out cortisol, your immune system gets further depressed. Sooner or later, that high cortisol level at 8:00AM is going to drop, and you will have almost a straight line. Instead of 15-24 at 8:00AM, they are lucky if it gets to 3-4 by 8:00AM. I've had one patient with a straight 3-4 all day. These people have the adrenal glands all burnt out. They are absolutely incapable of any adrenal response. At the same time the thyroid and the pituitary gland went. It's not uncommon that the neuroendocrine regulatory system just gives out because the attack is so immense in the body.

Another thing about the adrenal gland in CFIDS people - they don't have hypertension; they have hypotension, low blood pressure, because of either the thyroid or the adrenal glad, because the adrenal gland dumps out aldosterone. You see, this is kind of a strange situation, if the doctors really looked at it. People in pain have high blood pressure but these people are in pain and they have low blood pressure. To me that is a unphysiologic homeostatic mechanism that has been broken down and it relates to the immense attack on that person's neuroendocrine regulatory system. Not only does the adrenal gland dump out something to control blood pressure and minerals, called aldosterone, the main stress hormone, to help you live in today's world, but also cortisol and DHEA. DHEA is responsible for children outgrowing allergies and asthma. DHEA levels in children are very low and go up about age 9 or 10. At ages 20-25 they are the highest and after that they drop. Later in life, DHEA levels drop below the threshold and we once again are more susceptible to allergies and asthma. I recognized this several years ago because I'm doing a study on the adrenal gland or the neuro-endocrine regulatory system and Mr Howard Turney here who founded El Dorado gave me a tremendous gift in my practice: he introduced me to an available source of growth hormone.

DHEA is so important in our health and it's depressed in CFIDS patients. Growth Hormone and DHEA go down together even though they're not secreted by the same gland. Growth Hormone is secreted by the anterior pituitary and DHEA by the adrenal gland. Growth Hormone, DHEA and cortisol have important properties to all of us, but especially to people with CFIDS. We're now using it to reverse a lot of the neuro-endocrine dysfunction that occurs in CFIDS people and in many cases we're able to get energy levels up and to reinstate physiological function in their bodies.

I don't care what I'm treating - if it's atherosclerotic disease, if it's cancer, if it is CFIDS; it matters not one iota. The only thing I knew is if you're going to get somebody well, optimally well, where you have to start is with that person.

I mentioned approaches to health care for anyone with chronic degenerative disease. One of the most ludicrous things I've heard of in medicine is to give chemo-suppressive agents to wipe out the immune system in order to kill cancer. In order to kill the cancer using chemo-drugs you'd have to kill the person. If you take a different approach and understand that the body produces natural killer cells, whose sole purpose is to hunt down cancer cells or cells laden with viruses, that's what you need to depend upon: the person's physiological, immunological, ability to heal.

I've been in medicine for 12-13 years and I see people from all over the world. I've only healed one person: me; that's all I can heal. You have to heal you so you need someone who can work as a team member/partner with you, that can help you understand where this problem started, how it started, in order to start repairing your system so it can go on with optimum health. When we approach somebody, and it doesn't matter now whether we're talking about CFIDS, immune-depression, or immuno-dysfunction syndrome, Fibromyalgia, atherosclerotic disease, cancer; all of them have to be approached that way. So you list all the symptoms and you have to understand where all the symptoms came from in that individual. We're treating people; we're treating humans; they're biochemically, genetically different. Their diets are different, their exercise is different, their stresses are different, they go to different schools, different work places, drive different cars. All these things could be important in that individual's case. And then you have to unravel the damage that is done and try to stop future damage. If you can understand what's happening and begin to stop whatever it was, you'll at least have stopped the downward spiral.

Everyone is capable of doing it. I honestly believe that, because God gave us all the things we need. You will be amazed at how quickly and how well you can heal if the body is supplied with the components it needs. If the symptom is based upon the nervous system, you have to consider the neuro-endocrine regulatory system. It's is what regulates so many of your processes. And what I'm talking about are some of the symptoms of thyroid dysfunction, adrenal dysfunction, pancreatic dysfunction. You need that one piece of information.

I do use some medications in my practice. They are necessary at times, but, one promise I can make my patients: when I first evaluate you, even though the first thing I pull out of my pocket may be my prescription pad, I'll be writing directions on it. The important things is that if you have a problem and we don't understand how you got into that problem and I just walk in and give you a prescription - how am I going to get you out of that problem? When I say you need a partner in health, you need a physician who is going to be that partner, who is going to listen to you and help you sort through all the things that have gone on in your health. Remember who pays whom. One of the strangest things - I recently received a consultation letter and the doctor referred to the person as "my patient". It's not his patient and not mine either. You know, you pay the doctor for services, you pay the mechanic for services he provides. You go in and talk to the mechanic and you may not understand, but he'll try to help you understand. You have to find somebody who'll help you understand how you got into the problems so you can reverse them.

I train young doctors and I don't accept all that apply because some do not match what is needed in a physician. Compassion should be an essential part of the medical training. It's the approach. Doctors are keeping me busy.

More and more people are flocking to health food stores and buying books on health. They are tired of not getting well and spending all that money. There is a big dichotomy here. Doctors are getting angry because people are taking vitamins, but secretly they are taking them. They're not stupid, they read the same things we do. A study in 1993 found that Vitamin E reduces the risk of stroke and heart attack by 57% and 52%. A survey of the members of the American Heart Association showed that over 62% of them are taking Vitamin E. How many are telling their patients to take it?

When we approach something, several tests need to be important. You need to evaluate what your symptoms are. When a diagnostic test is ordered, it has its limitations. A blood test won't tell you everything. If you are trying to determine if someone is diabetic, the blood sugar test is a good one, but if you run electrolytes, you aren't going to get a good handle on diabetes. But we're talking about CFIDS or chronic dysfunctional diseases; you can span every physiological system in the body. The SPECT scan on the brain shows flow and function. If the temporal lobes are mismatched, you can be sure there will be trouble with memory, recall and concentration. If the frontal lobes are poorly lit, you will see depression.

One of the things important for CFIDS patients is that the evaluation start from birth and go forward because things that occur all during the lifetime play a big part. What things help? What things don't? When are you worse? When better? For example, some people with arthritis feel better in the morning and others feel their worst in the mornings. You need to understand the differences, because if you treat them the same you will see different results. That's called cookbook results. I don't like cookbook results. I refuse to play that game.

You know, the neuro-endocrine system I've mentioned entails the hypothalamic region which is just above the pituitary and it dumps our regulatory hormone for the pituitary which is called the master gland. It controls the thyroid, the pancreas, the adrenal glands, the ovaries, testicles and growth in children. But Growth Hormone continues to be important in our lives after we quit growing. Formerly, when I was taking care of CFIDS patients, the one thing I did not have available was something to regulate the pituitary. I tried many different things. When I found Growth Hormone it drastically changed my results.

If your immune system is only running on 60%-70% of its thyroid hormone it cannot get rid of an infection very easily. For example, I just saw a little boy with recurrent infections: sinus, ear and skin infections and bronchitis every winter. His temperature was 98 degrees but he was running a fever because his normal temperature was only 96.8 degrees. His thyroid was so dysfunctional the immune system couldn't help. So we cleared up the infection and gave him thyroid. (I use a natural, desiccated thyroid that's been around forever, not the synthetic most doctors now prescribe.) He just went through this last cold spell with no problems.

The adrenal gland helps us deal with stress. This is something I really pay a lot of attention to for myself because of the schedule I keep. I take DHEA and a lot of my patients do. I try to put them back to optimum level. Problems such as asthma will clear up when you treat what is wrong; just replace what the body needs and the body will take care of the rest.

Grow Hormone helps balance out all of them. It has made treating those with CFIDS and some of my other patients much easier because now we can help the person's body regain and recapture some years. You know the story on Growth Hormone is that it is anti-aging. It'll knock it down by 10-20 years. When I saw pictures of Mr Howard Turney before he went on Growth Hormone I was amazed. He was only 59 years old but looked 79 and felt 99. He found out about Growth Hormone and found a doctor in Mexico to prescribe it for him. It reverses the aging processes of those who have low levels of it and those with chronic degenerative diseases do.

Chronological aging in normal. Pathological aging is abnormal. Find out what is causing the symptoms and treat that cause.

After a short break, Linda Hagler spoke to the group. Linda is the president of WTLC, but has been unable to be with us since May because of severe illness. She told us that since May she has been through a lot of changes, a lot of different situations. She has had troubles with allergies and sensitivities as well as malabsorption. Nutrition helped, but she still had great difficulties. In December, Dr. Michael Samuels put her on a new treatment: Human Growth Hormone. This is natural substance produced by the body, but in decreasing quantities as we age. The treatment is very expensive, but is advantageous to almost any problem a person may have because it regenerates cell growth throughout the body. It helps heal injuries, increases endurance and energy, and boosts the immune system.

Linda said that she felt much better within two days of starting the treatment. It stabilizes the body and converts fat to muscle. She is sleeping well, her pain and fatigue is greatly diminished , and her food allergies hardly bother her. This product has the backing of much research, and is highly regarded by the medical community.

Michael G. Samuels, DO., of Dallas, is scheduled to address WTLC on Saturday, March 11, (1995) from 1:00-3:00 p.m., in the auditorium of the Golf Course Road Church of Christ, located at 3500 W. Golf Course Road, in Midland. Dr. Samuels, a native Texan is an experienced professional physician skilled in osteopathic medicine, environmental medicine (clinical ecology), homeopathy, preventative medicine, and nutritional medicine.

He received his undergraduate degree in Chemistry from Texas Tech University, then earned his medical degree from Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine, where he received the Stockseth Award for excellence in 1982. Upon completing his internship at Stevens Park Osteopathic Hospital in Dallas, Texas, he launched his private medical practice, with special emphasis on osteopathic medicine, chronic degenerative disease and preventative medicine, including nutrition, homeopathy, chelation therapy, cranial-sacral osteopathic technique, and environmental medicine.

He is on the teaching faculties of Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine and the Sutherland Cranial Teaching Foundation, and is Medical Director of Bioenvironmental Health, Inc., of two international agencies treating HIV, and of the Alternative Medical Clinic in Costa Rica. He is vice president of Medical Information for Dallas El Dorado Longevity and Rejuvenation (anti-aging) clinics around the world, and the World Wide Medical Director for all El Dorado Clinics. He is involved in oxidative medical research, lectures frequently, and has been on television several times, most recently on the program 48 Hours, which aired on CBS February 16 (1995).

Dr. Samuels says, "In addition to my general practice, I now specialize in selected fields to help solve the current health crisis facing society in today's polluted environment.

"Currently, I am continuing my studies through several fellowships and medical organizations, where I hope to discover revolutionary treatments to combat the unique environmental illnesses of the 21st century. My emphasis is on treating chronic, degenerative diseases, using nontoxic treatments when possible."

One of Dr. Samuels' most important tenets is education of the patient, allowing him to be more involved in his choice of treatment and to be more responsible for his own care. WTLC is pleased that Dr. Samuels has agreed to come to Midland to help educate us concerning CFIDS/FMS, especially his program of treatment with Human Growth Hormone Our own Linda Hagler is involved in this, and has experienced remarkable results; you may have seen her on 48 Hours with Dr. Samuels. For some of her comments on this program, please see page 3 of this issue.

We expect Dr. Samuels' information to be interesting and beneficial to those who have CFIDS/FMS, and to their friends, family members, and health care professionals, and invite all interested persons to attend.

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