A reprint from Dallas Weekly, February 2004 features Dr. Benjamin Carson and his experience with glyconutrients.
Dallas Weekly Reprint - The Healing of the Healer Dr. Benjamin Solomon Carson Sr., one of the worlds leading physicians, says that glyconutrients helped save his life and should become a complementary component ofour healthcare system. Dr. Benjamin Solomon Carson Sr., the world famous director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore has risen to the very top of the medical profession.
Three years ago, Time Magazine and CNN named him one of the top twenty doctors in America. In 1987 he was the lead surgeon in the twenty-two hour operation that separated the heads of the Binder Siamese twins from Germany. It was the first such operation in which both twins survived.
But in the summer of 2003 Dr. Carson was diagnosed with prostate cancer and despite three decades of saving the lives of others, he came face to face with the staggering possibility of his own death.
“It was a shock,” said Dr. Carson, a professor of neurosurgery, oncology, plastic surgery and pediatrics at Johns Hopkins. “I had been living a healthy lifestyle and getting regular check-ups. But I had high grade cancer in a very aggressive form.”
And yet, at fifty-three years of age, Dr. Carson was not ready to leave his wife, Candy, and their three sons behind. And with the same strength and determination that his mother, Sonya Carson, imparted to him and his brother while she raised them alone in inner city neighborhoods in Detroit and Boston, he sought an answer that would continue his life.
“I had a friend who was diagnosed with cancer who was given three months to live,” said Dr. Carson in his Johns Hopkins office. “He changed his diet and pursued proper nutrition. He was still around and doing well. As a result I started to look at nutritional supplements.”
The father of one of Dr. Carson’s patients told him about a ten year-old company based in Coppell, Texas which had secured world-wide patent rights to a food supplement known as a glyconutrient. The parent suggested to Dr. Carson that he contact them.
After contacting the company, Dr. Carson was surprised by the amount of science they provided. “I was impressed that they did not make any wild medical claims,” he said. The majority of their science pointed to how glyconutrients supported the body’s normal functions of regeneration and repair.
Dr. Carson then contacted Dr. Reg McDaniel, an authority in glyconutrients and medical director of Manna Relief Inc., an Arlington, Texas based charity that makes glyconutrients available to medically fragile children around the world. Dr. McDaniel, who had studied the health benefits of Glyconutrients for two decades, shared his experiences with Dr. Carson. “The science made sense to me,” Dr. Carson said. “God gave us (in plants) what we need to remain healthy,” he said. “In today’s world our food chain is depleted of nutrients and our environment has helped destroy what God gave us.”
Through dietary supplementation, one of the most significant doctors in the history of Medicine decided to support his immune system with glyconutrients. And almost immediately he saw abatement in his condition.
“I had been experiencing some urinary tract problems. The problems went away within four weeks after I started taking the glyconutrients,” he said. “I began to think that I did not need to have surgery or any other type of treatment. I seriously considered not having any type of procedure. I thought I could beat the cancer by supporting my body through glyconutritional supplementation.”
Dr. Carson said his decision to eventually have a medical procedure resulted from his concern for those people who might neglect traditional medical procedures because they had learned of his personal experience with supplements.
“It had gotten out that I had prostate cancer,” said the high profile doctor. “I knew that other people with my condition might not have been as religious about taking the supplements as I had been.”
Dr. Carson was told that his recovery after the surgery would be arduous and that he would not be able to return to work for six weeks. “Because of my experience with glyconutrients I was able to return to work in three weeks,” he said.
He continues to take the supplements and suggests that others who are concerned with optimal health take them. “I do not seeglyconutrients as unnatural,” he said. “I see them as complementary to traditional medicine. Dietary supplements should become an integral part of health care in this country.” A voracious reader of medical and scientific literature, Dr. Carson said that he concurred with an article in the February 2003 issue of Technology Review, a publication associated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, that named glycomics as “one of ten emerging technologies that would change the world.”
“There is a growing trend by consumers to want to blend traditional and complementary medicines,” stated Dr. Carson. He said that it was significant that the National Institutes of Health had granted millions of dollars to researchers to investigate alternative and complementary medicines. “The day is coming when the science will be behind them.”