Medical Doctor Richard DiCenso Discusses Whole Person Therapy

Tuesday, June 17, 2008 by: Kevin Gianni
Tags: mental health, health news, Natural News

(NewsTarget) This interview is an excerpt from Kevin Gianni's The Healthiest Year of Your Life, which can be found at (http://thehealthiestyearofyourlife.com) . In this excerpt, Richard DiCenso shares on the unique Matrix Assessment Profile.

The Healthiest Year of Your Life with Richard DiCenso, a leading authority on whole person therapy and author of Exploring A New Way of Thinking.

Kevin: Well, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got from being a medical doctor to finding this book, Beyond Medicine, that there was more out there than what we think.

Richard: Well, part of my frustration was in my training, because I went from discipline to discipline to discipline over a period of years and it included everything from medicine to chiropractic to forensics to acupuncture to trauma rehabilitation, human biochemistry and nutrition and what I found is that every discipline was that there was a formula to a recipe approach and when I started looking at people with symptoms and looking at the different disciplines I found that each discipline had their own approach to the same symptoms, but none of the disciplines attempted to identify the cause of the symptoms and that's when I stepped back from all the disciplines and started to look at what is it that all of these symptoms have in common and in the final analysis in its simplest form, I found that all symptoms are simply symptoms, that they are just the net result of an imbalance, or deficiency that's progressed over a period of time to exhibit itself as symptoms and in a worst-case scenario, diagnosable health thieves.

Kevin: So for instance, fibromyalgia is a symptom of...

Richard: Some imbalance or deficiency. It can be a different one for each person. That's the interesting part of it, because if there were a simple cause-and-effect, we'd have it already and there would be a cure.

Kevin: Okay.

Richard: It is a name for a group of symptoms that a number of people are experiencing. They come in complaining of the same thing, so they've narrowed it down to being diagnosable. If you have, I think, it's 18 tender points of different parts of the body then you get the diagnosis fibromyalgia, which means what?

Kevin: I don't know.

Richard: Right and that's what I'm saying is that's how a lot of medicine is conducted, is they're telling you what they're telling them, using a different word.

Kevin: Got you.

Richard: So my elbow hurts and so if you've got arthritis, you got tendinitis. You've got degenerative or rheumatoid arthritis. You have whatever, but basically they're going to use a word that means what it is that you're telling them without really describing what's caused what you're experiencing and therefore, if you can't identify a cause, you can't affect a cure.

Kevin: So it's kind of like making up words.

Richard: It's a lot like making up words. It's very similar to what the pharmaceutical companies do with the ad agencies in New York. One of my clients has a large advertising agency in New York and 20% of his business is from pharmaceutical companies and his job is to come up with a name for a drug that they discovered that relieves certain groups of symptoms and so they sit in a brainstorming session for a few days and they come up with something that is catchy and can have an acronym associated with it that rolls off the tongue that people can remember and basically it's "we've got a new pill now and we need a disease to go with it."

Kevin: Wow. So how do you go backwards from a symptom to the actual imbalance?

Richard: That's a great point and I'm a simple guy in the final analysis. So I had to come up with a simple process that I could understand and communicate so that the people I'm working with could become proactive in the process, instead of just looking to me for the answer and kind of help me find the answer. So the answer to your question in a sentence is always start where you are. So that's the beauty of the Matrix Assessment Profile, which is a protocol that I've developed over a period of years based on research produced by NASA to monitor the health of the Apollo astronauts and the Matrix Assessment Profile means that we're assessing the matrix. Now, I don't want to do the same things with the words here that these doctors are doing with these diagnoses. So there's a method to the madness and there's a reason behind this name.

So an assessment of the matrix means that we're looking at more than just the symptoms that you're describing to me. We're looking at the potential causes for that symptom or group of symptoms within the human matrix, which is composed of structural, biochemical and a cycle of emotional or virtual realm that all interacts 24/7 to produce the experiences we have in life and so the Matrix Assessment Profile is an assessment of all of those realms. What do you do for a living? What kind of stress are you experiencing? What do you eat? What percentage of your diet is raw? How often do you eat out? How much water do you drink? Do you take supplements? How much sleep you get? What kind of spiritual beliefs do you have? These are all things that will contextually interact to produce symptoms as part of the human matrix.

Kevin: So the matrix is all the different things that are around you. Let me ask you this question. Is the matrix outside of you, or inside of you, or is it a combination of all of that?

Richard: It's very similar to the concept of zero point energy. It's the creative and life-sustaining force that contributes to the expression of everything in existence and maintains everything in existence. So the answer is that it's both inside and out.

Kevin: Okay. That's pretty cool. Now, you've seen over your time different elements that contribute to physical symptoms.

Richard: Yes.

Kevin: What are some of those? I know some of them are listed in your book. Can we just run over one or two or three of them?

Richard: Obviously, if you are in an automobile accident and you experience physical pain, then the cause-and-effect is relatively straightforward, although the reason for the accident may not be as easy to understand, but we won't go there yet. That's part of another realm, but then you experience physical symptoms and particularly if you don't know why you're experiencing them then, that's where we start with the analysis, is where you're experiencing the symptoms. So I'm experiencing physical pain. We look at the physical structure. It can be associated with repetitive movements, prolonged positional stress. It can be associated with a nutritional deficiency, or it could be associated with some kind of cycle or emotional imbalance or inconsistency that expresses itself as a physical symptom. For instance, a child that doesn't want to go to school, because he's being bullied gets this horrendous stomach ache and they take him to the doctor and they can't find anything, but they put him on bed rest and it becomes a recurrent experience, a physical experience and then over time it is identified and dealt with, it will lead to other forms of behavior and other physical experiences and things are just going to be unsolvable, because they're looking in the wrong place for the source of the physical pain or discomfort or symptoms.

Kevin: Wow. That's an incredible explanation of how it all works. How do you assess that, though, with modern or conventional medicine?

Richard: Well, once again, you always rule out the obvious. So most of the people who come to me have already been through all the conventional analysis and there are two ways to use conventional medicine at this point in trying to determine what's causing those symptoms. One is to have the test done, because you don't want to miss anything obvious, like a virus or IBS or irritable bowel syndrome, or celiac spruce. Some of the organic dysfunctions that can produce similar functions, you don't want to miss those. Once you've had the test done and they're negative, the next step of the process is to look at those tests and see if they come back normal, are there elements within those results that are high normal and low normal, because these are just as powerful a tool in terms of determining a pattern in the process of developing an imbalance in the process of developing a deficiency in the process of developing by looking at highs and lows in related chemistries and then if that's there, then we use that as an initial tool to start normalizing biochemistry.

If that's not there, then the next step in the process is to let me look at the Matrix. Let me look at the relationship between the child and the parents. Let me talk with a child. Let me ask some very explicit questions to the child that seem like I'm having a dialogue, but they're really designed to elicit responses that would be consistent with an imbalance in the emotional realm, so that I can either implement some treatment myself or recommend a course of treatment with a child psychologist or someone that might be more skilled in one or more of the areas that I'm not. So my role isn't necessarily to solve the problem of the symptoms, but to solve the problem, which may involve other people that I need to interface with professionally.

Kevin: Have you found that nutritional deficiencies can cause emotional behavior and emotional reactions?

Richard: About 80% of the emotional symptoms that I see have a nutritional basis.

Kevin: Wow.

Richard: So it's huge.

Kevin: When the nutritional deficiency is addressed, then that goes away?

Richard: Yes, because again, you're dealing with a symptom that appears to be emotional and if you treat it with pharmaceuticals, you treat it with therapy and it doesn't get any better and you're missing the obvious, which is nutritional imbalance or deficiency, then you've served no purpose.

Kevin: Wow.

Richard: So think about it this way, Kevin. One of the issues we have in this country is that the soil is depleted of vital nutrients. The last senate document I saw said that there were only three minerals left in the soil in this country and so if the nutrients aren't in soil, they're not in the food and if they're not in the food, they're not in the diet. If they're not in the diet, they're not in the body and the body was designed to operate and function on all of these nutrients. So it's a supply and demand problem. If the demands are that the lungs keep pumping and oxygen is delivered to the cells and the bowels move and the heart pumps blood and all of the other systems work the way they were designed and there are not enough raw materials to go round, the body has to begin to compromise function and prioritize the use of the raw materials that are available, which then sets
up a whole chain of events over a period of time based on a law of accumulation, which means that if something is done repetitively over a period of time, there's going to be a reaction to that given the fact that there is an insufficient supply to meet the demand for that function.

Kevin: It sounds so logical.

Richard: It is.

To read the rest of this transcript as well as access more information on creating and living a healthy lifestyle and hear from other health experts just like Richard DiCenso please visit (http://thehealthiestyearofyourlife.com) .

About the author

Kevin Gianni is a health advocate, author and speaker. He has helped thousands of people in over 85 countries learn how to take control of their health--and keep it. To view his popular internet TV Show "The Renegade Health Show" (and get a free gift!) with commentary on natural health issues, vegan and raw food diets, holistic nutrition and more click here.


His book, "The Busy Person's Fitness Solution," is a step-by-step guide to optimum health for the time and energy-strapped. To find out more about abundance, optimum health and self motivation click here... or you're interested in the vegan and raw food diet and cutting edge holistic nutrition click here. For access to free interviews, downloads and a complete bodyweight exercise archive visit www.LiveAwesome.com.