Research Perspectives
A meaningful life is central to Positive Health An interview with Dr. Machteld Huber
Dr. Anna Towers and Pamela Hodgson sat down with Dr. Machteld Huber at the Fall 2019 National Lymphedema Conference, in Toronto, Ontario for an exclusive interview. The article below is edited and adapted (with permission) from its original transcription for ease of reading, continuity and brevity. Can you tell us about your background, your philosophy of care, and how you came to think about health in this way? Dr Huber: I am a general practitioner, and from a post-war generation, so the war was relevant. In my interactions with people who had terrible experiences, I wondered: how can you go through that and still remain healthy? At a young age, I was already interested in what I would now call resilience. Between the ages of 30 and 35 I had four different serious illnesses, the final one being cancer. Being a patient myself taught me that medical knowledge is wonderful but is only one component in healing and health. There are different parts of the personality, different parts in life, which have a very strong supportive influence. If you really address those both during your illness and afterwards, it enhances your recovery and your wellbeing. With the first illness I was surprised that I was not taught that in medical school, and so with my subsequent illnesses I used myself as a research subject to study being a patient. Once I was mostly recovered, I decided I wanted to work on that because if we address the situation more broadly, illness integrated
into a human being as a whole, you can really enhance well-being and real health. We understand you have a bachelor’s degree in philosophy, and an interest in nutrition as well? Dr Huber: Correct, I have broad interests. When I decided to go on this path of broadening the definition of health care, I decided it needed to be science based, or it would not be accepted by the medical profession. Besides my research, I worked with very damaged people (e.g. drug addicts and people with war traumas). I wanted to observe if the laws of health and resilience that I thought I had found in myself would work for them as well. I was very impressed with how much you can accomplish with these very damaged people. Please explain what your earlier research work entailed. Dr Huber: I was working at a multidisciplinary research institution where they did a lot of research on sustainable agriculture; different production systems and resulting effects on plants and animals. Genetically identical organisms, depending on how you raise them,
Anna Towers MD, is a palliative care physician and Director of the Lymphedema Program at the McGill University Health Centre in Montreal, Quebec. She was a founding member and co-chair of the Canadian Lymphedema Framework from 2009–2016 and still sits on the Pathways Editorial Board. Pamela Hodgson RMT, MSc, is a retired lymphedema therapist who worked in private practice in St. John’s, NL then at the McGill University Health Centre Lymphedema Centre with Dr. Anna Towers, where she participated in both research and clinical care. She has been involved with the CLF since its inception.
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produce completely different adult plants and animals. These serve as nutrition for human beings. The defense system of the plants is in the micronutrients. When you fertilize plants intensively, you get enormous growth, but the plant’s micronutrients are diminished since they are protected with pesticides rather than their natural defense system. Given that micronutrients are important for food quality, could it be that if you fertilize less, and subsequently have fewer crops that these plants would be more nutritious? I worked on this for several years, conducting several research projects. In one very big study for the Dutch government, we studied multi-generations of animals, feeding them with either one production system or the other. Everything else was identical and all the food was nutritious according to the standards. Although all the animals were found to be healthy, (even though one group was slightly heavier), we couldn’t decide which group was actually healthier. But when we induced illness in the animals (a standardized challenge resulting in a kind of flu), and subsequently studied their recovery, the difference became apparent in their metabolism and immune system. One set of Ly m p h e d e m a p a t h w a y s . c a 5
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