Fascinated by Nutritional Therapy and Hydrogen Inhalation Therapy

From Occupational Health to Nutritional Therapy

It was six years ago that I turned my focus from occupational health to nutritional therapy. Since graduating from medical school, I had aspired to pursue preventive medicine, aiming to improve health at the stage before going to the hospital, rather than treating illnesses after they had occurred. Until then, I had been teaching lifestyle modification under the philosophy of preventive medicine, which is to "prevent diseases through proper lifestyle," but I was receiving earnest comments from people who had been trying to lead a healthy lifestyle, "Why did I get cancer when I was taking such good care?" We were receiving earnest comments such as, "Why did I get cancer when I had been so careful?

In addition, as an industrial physician, I was involved in the health management of workers, and the number of people suffering from mental health problems was increasing. At that time, as a university faculty member, I noticed that while consulting with students who were anxious and worried, I noticed that their eating habits were disordered. This was common among employees with depression, and in particular, students and employees who lived alone had diets that were heavily weighted toward convenience store box lunches, fast food, instant foods such as cup noodles, or noodles, rice balls, and other sugary foods.

Furthermore, there were cases where employees on leave for depression did not recover even though they continued to take psychiatric prescription medication, or where they recovered after taking a break with their parents, but relapsed when they returned to work after living alone. When I considered all of these factors, I came to the obvious conclusion that "nutrition is the key to physical and mental health. From there, I began studying Molecular Integrative Nutritional Medicine, which seeks to prevent and treat disease and promote health by balancing nutrition in the body.

My father's cancer and nutritional therapy

My father's battle with cancer was another impetus for me to pursue nutritional therapy. When I was a sophomore in high school, my father, who was 52 years old, developed kidney cancer and was told that he had only a few months to live due to multiple metastases to his lungs. One of the treatments my father adopted at that time was nutritional therapy. When I began studying nutritional medicine, I realized how important the sugar restriction and high intake of B and C vitamins that my father practiced at the time were.

My father also developed parotid cancer in 2017, which was highly malignant with metastases already in place, but he was fortunate to overcome this too through a combination of standard treatment surgery, radiation therapy, and anticancer drugs, and my integrative medicine*, and is still going strong today at 89 years old. The fact that the side effects of my father's radiotherapy were significantly reduced was a step forward in my research.

Practicing Nutritional Therapy

The human body is made of nutrition. The cells that make up the body are mainly made of proteins and lipids, and a lack of these substances causes a variety of disorders. In addition, vitamins and minerals are necessary for the mitochondria in cells to produce energy. Therefore, if these are not sufficient, energy deficiency will occur, resulting in loss of energy. It is not possible to provide adequate nutrition by eating only convenience store lunches and sugar-soaked meals. We have provided nutritional guidance to patients with physical and mental disorders, and when dietary intake is not sufficient, we have observed a surprising improvement with the use of supplements.

I continued my studies while working at a clinic where I practiced nutritional therapy on my days off, but I was faced with the dilemma of not being able to provide my ideal treatment at someone else's clinic, so I opened a small clinic at the end of 2016. We have a small clinic on Sundays and weekday evenings when I can find time, by appointment only, and patients with various problems come to the clinic and recover with counseling and nutritional therapy. We also offer free e-mail consultations and focus on nutritional therapy for children with developmental disorders. We also see parents and children together to improve truancy, bullying, and withdrawal.

The wonderful health benefits of hydrogen

In addition to nutritional therapy, the clinic has also introduced hydrogen gas inhalation therapy, which is said to boost immunity. About one hundred patients have been introduced to this therapy so far, and the results have been spectacular.

Hydrogen has been confirmed to remove active oxygen in the body, promote blood flow, have an anti-inflammatory effect, have an anti-allergic effect, and have an effect of making the parasympathetic nervous system dominant, and is also expected to have an anti-cancer effect. In a study conducted at Keio University Hospital, it was found that cranial nerve and heart damage (ischemia/recanalization) was significantly suppressed after resuscitation when patients were brought to the hospital for cardiac arrest and hydrogen gas inhalation was performed, and the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare designated this as Advanced Medical Treatment B.

It is also said to have a wide range of effects on lifestyle-related diseases such as high blood pressure, cerebral infarction, myocardial infarction, pneumonia, dementia, hay fever, atopic dermatitis, asthma, and rheumatoid arthritis, as well as on reducing side effects of anticancer drugs and radiation therapy and improving sensitivity to cold.

In addition, various other effects have been observed in people who have actually inhaled the drug. In particular, the effect of improving sleep is remarkable, with many people reporting that they can now sleep soundly and have been able to stop taking sleeping pills for many years. There also seems to be an effect that when the parasympathetic nervous system becomes dominant, tension is released and feelings become brighter. And the most important point is that hydrogen inhalation therapy has absolutely no side effects and does not affect standard treatment.

Pursuing the dream of reducing medical costs through nutritional therapy and hydrogen

I have a grand dream to promote the use of nutritional therapy and hydrogen to improve health and lower medical costs. 2018-2019 I studied at the Karolinska Institutet, a Swedish medical university, where I conducted basic research on the anticancer and radioprotective effects of hydrogen and vitamin C. The results were very good. We obtained very good results and are currently applying for a patent from Hosei University.

Although such integrative medicine is not covered by insurance, we are convinced that it can be useful for improving health. However, it is often difficult to gain understanding and sometimes denied by one's doctor, but I encourage people to "believe and try it out.

In my university lectures, I cover the topic of integrative medicine in order to increase healthy life expectancy in the age of 100 years of life and to raise awareness that the basis of health is nutrition. I sincerely hope that this type of treatment (health promotion methods) will gradually spread so that everyone can live a healthy and happy life.

*Therapies that combine modern Western medicine with complementary/alternative therapies and traditional medicine.

(First published in the January/February 2021 issue of Hosei, a public relations magazine)