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Dr Dietrich Klinghardt is an influential holistic doctor with his own clinic in Washington state, USA, Sophia Institute, and practitioner training program working on difficult chronic illnesses cases. He has an amazing level of unique insight while having mixed results with patients, helping turn around some people toward health, and harming others with lasting damage.
I would like to clarify the strengths and weaknesses of his approach so that health consumers can make an informed choice. I want to show that mixed results can be a result of confusion about underlying theories, especially ambivalence between choosing between the medical model of disease versus a lifestyle and environment model of health. It’s not simply an either or choice, each paradigm has its purpose, but when there is a problem its often because have not shifted full from the established medical paradigm and into the more holistic lifestyle and environment model that deals with complexity better.
This is an intellectual and practical discussion, not a personal attack, although some people who follow him will take it that way because of the reasons they are attracted to him: deferring to a doctor’s authority to be saved. It’s doctor worship. It’s part of the old paradigm. But some of his followers are dogmatic and ban people from discussion groups for disagreeing, the Klingons, I call them. Klinghardt himself is not that way. He seems sincere, open minded, and kind. I like him personally. That does not mean I cannot disagree. This is nothing personal, just a mature scientific discussion.
Holistic Theory
Dr. Klinghardt sees things holistically and recognizes numerous root causes: nutrition, toxicity, infection, emotional, and nervous system dysregulation.
His PhD dissertation was on the nervous systems dysregulation as a basis of immune dysfunction, which takes it a step deeper than people defining their illness as immune dysfunction.
He has spoken about the sources of toxicity from a clinical perspective of what shows up in patients, with mercury being overtaken by aluminum in recent years as heaviest toxic load, compounded by glyphosates or Round Up herbicide weed killers in so many foods and residential uses taking the metals up to the brain. Electro magnetic field exposure is getting worse with wifi, cell phones, etc, spreading and becoming more powerful.
Dr K. has spoken on toxicity being a deeper underling cause than infection since toxicity is what weakens the immune system that allows infections grow. This is the position known as “It’s the terrain, not the bug” taken a century ago by Beauchomp against Pasteur, the father of “pasteurization” or heating of products like milk with the intention of protecting us from infection. Dr K. and the top experts in lyme bacteria disease have said it’s not this infection alone, and not just other coinfections, but toxicity, nutrition and stress that makes people sick. A lyme positive test does not mean that lyme is the main thing making one sick. Despite so many experts saying this, many people focus on the bug rather than the terrain as the main cause.
Infection Focus
Despite this, Dr. K in practice and in videos has expressed a fascination with infections and emphasized aggressive use of anti-biotics and other things that has given mixed results helping some and harming others. Treatment is guided by his own systems of energetic testing, ART, which is clearly inaccurate in some cases.
At one point he admitted in one of his many You Tube videos that they are increasing by losing the war against infection using antibiotics that learn how to resist medications. He seems to have shifted more recently to more natural things like ozonated oils with herbal extracts from the company BioPure associated with him that seems to provide many high quality products.
He has spoken about supporting the immune system to keep in check the bugs and not try to kill them off completely, that it is not necessary. This is a more nuanced and systematic approach that looks at balances in the body. It seems Klinghardt is going in this direction, while continuing with detoxification and other strategies.
There have two weaknesses to his approach.
Medical Style Intervention
One of the features of medical style intervention is a cure from the outside aggressively. Visiting a clinic like Sophia for a few weeks to use multiple aggressive modalities like detox is an example of medical style intervention. It is more likely to work for the people who are stronger and can go at a faster pace. It also depends on whether the ART energetic testing is accurate, which is not so if the people end up feeling worse, “it nearly killed me” and they did not recover soon.
Most detox and nutrition takes time and is best done gradually over years. This requires a system of more support for people at home, although ART trained people do that, too.
Lack of Nutrition
Surprisingly there is a lack of nutritional emphasis. Supplements alone are not nutrition. Eliminating allergenic foods is not enough. Dr. K discussion groups do not discuss diets, but supplements that are the “natural” pill form of medicine, and healing technologies, an aggressive external cure. Both of these can be helpful as secondary aids to systematic nutrition.
They prescribe many supplements but do not do thorough nutritional planning. I have examined the diets of people who were under the care of Sophia trained ART practitioners that showed no quality planning, mostly just supplements that missed the basics and often did not test well energetically.
In a discussion group the Klingons would not hear any of the critique of the limits of supplements and why food is preferred when possible, although other members objected to the admin complaining that it was inappropriate to discuss the issue. There are many kinds of health ideologies that keep people limited in their views, emotional reactive and sick.
For people to heal every food has to be chosen for maximum energizing and healing ability. Attention to thorough nutrition expresses the assumption that the body can heal itself, this is the opposite of medical intervention which is from the outside aimed at specific targets.
6 Principles of Nutrition:
1. Customized Diet:
Give the body all the nutrients it needs to heal itself.
Diets designed for the individual in every dimension: macro nutrients, micro nutrients, probiotics and digestive support, meal timing and fasting intervals, etc.
2. Nutritional Deficiency Focus:
Your body is only as strong as its weakest link.
3. Elimination of all weakening foods and supplements:
Nnutrition is only as good as what it eliminates.
Correction of intolerances to good foods like raw dairy be providing nutrient cofactors.
4. Food First:
Use food when possible, it has fresher nutrients with a wider variety of nutrients that work together as a system of cofactors to be utilized in the body.
5. Physics of Nutrition is just as important as food: sunlight, infrared sauna, uvb lamps, earthing, magnets, and cold exposure can help.
6. Test not Guess: energetic testing is better than guessing.
All foods and supplements tested for compatibility and maximum benefit,
Ongoing frequent monitoring of nutritional needs preferably a form of testing that can be done long distance, like dowsing with a pendulum, so that client needs can be detected and corrected frequently in small increments like 10 minutes, eliminating weak links to keep momentum going forward in a cost effective manner.
These components of nutrition help the body heal itself through supporting the function of cells and organs to do their jobs better than any outside medical intervention can. The stronger someone is from nutrition the more they can tolerate and benefit from more aggressive interventions. Nutrition increases general energy to help detox, build the immune system against infection, reduce pain, stabilize moods, etc.
Health Paradigms
Health decision are based on the paradigm or beliefs about what the problem is and what a solution looks like. Contradictory decisions and positions are often the result of a mix of inconsistent uses of paradigms, in this case, medical model versus lifestyle and environment model. The medical model is more symptom focused and fragmented in delivering cures from the outside. The best parts of the medical model can be used within a larger strategy of the body to handle it through a holistic lifestyle and environment model that is more systematic.
I have not found anywhere the criteria for defining a root cause and then identifying root causes so I did that myself and concluded that there are 6 root causes that encompass all possibilities: nutrition, toxicity, infection, emotions, physical misalignment from teeth to toes, and a stressed brain, aka, nervous system dysregulation. Among these causes nutrition has a special place and the most common starting point because addressing the others often depends on it, especially in the cases of toxicity and infection.
Solving health problems begins in the mind with how you seek and answer and how you follow through to implement. This is a learning problem.
I was lucky enough to get training in learning problems and systems analysis beginning in high school and following through to education at some the finest universities: Berkeley, MIT, Harvard and Brandeis University that enabled me to use the method of Grounded Theory as a way of creating theory based on practice. My dissertation subject was on the application of science to practical problems through total quality and six sigma that use systems theory and root cause analysis that is in many ways more advanced than academic methods. These trends represent a new step in the scientific revolution when understood from the big picture view of human evolution provided by Integral Theory from Ken Wilbur.
