Over the past few years, I have written about different aspects of the nutritional program that I offer. My articles about pancreatic enzymes in cancer, glandular products, and coffee enemas can now be found in the medical literature.

    The remaining topic, by far the most challenging, was the use of diet and minerals to adjust autonomic nervous system physiology. My colleague and friend, the late Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez, started a book on this subject in the early 2000s, but never completed it. It was published posthumously as Nutrition and the Autonomic Nervous System; I wrote a Foreword for it.

    Now, I am happy to report that my article “Adjusting Autonomic Physiology with Diet and Minerals to Improve Health” has come out. It appeared in the April 2026 issue of the peer-reviewed journal Integrative Medicine: A Clinician’s Journal. It is freely available on PubMed.

    The autonomic nervous system controls functions such as blood pressure or pulse that do not require conscious thought. It has two parts, the sympathetic nervous system, which manages response to stress, and the parasympathetic nervous system, which manages digestion and repair.

    A key principle of Dr. Gonzalez’ and my work is that the two parts of the autonomic nervous system are affected by diet and by the minerals calcium, magnesium and potassium. Our predecessor in this approach, Dr. William Donald Kelley, presented this model as if he figured it out himself. His explanation included his experience as a person with an overactive sympathetic nervous system, and that of his second wife, who had an overactive parasympathetic system. He then used these principles as he treated a large number of patients with a variety of illnesses.

    I certainly recognize the validity of his clinical experience, especially once confirmed by my own. But for most medical practitioners, that is not enough. I decided to delve into the sources for Kelley’s theories.

    In his training materials, Dr. Kelley mentioned the work of Francis Pottinger, Sr., M.D., a highly respected physician, the President of the American College of Physicians from 1932-1933. Kelley’s bibliography included Dr. Pottenger’s book Symptoms of Visceral Disease. I reread the book as I began to work on this article, but found very little about diet and mineral supplementation.

    However, Dr. Kelley’s training manual briefly mentioned research done in the early 1900s in Europe. That, plus some references in Dr. Pottenger’s book, led me to a treasure trove of materials from interwar Austria and Germany. As it turns out, many physicians were interested in autonomic balance and the role of diet and mineral supplementation in that era. I also found an article by Dr. Pottinger that was included in a medical textbook in 1946, discussing imbalances in autonomic physiology.

    My new publication discusses this history, as well as modern support for these principles. Many of the referenced works are old and were written in German. I used the Internet, Google Books, and Google Translate to find and read them. Prior to these tools becoming available, neither Dr. Kelley nor Dr. Gonzalez could have located this information without help from a very determined medical librarian.

    I want to thank my husband, who put hundreds of pages of books and articles through Google Translate for me. I also want to acknowledge some help from James Templeton. A few years ago, over dinner after a conference, he mentioned a conversation with Dr. Hazel Parcells (1889-1996), whom some have called the “grande dame of alternative medicine.” In 1931, after years of treatment for tuberculosis, her doctors told Dr. Parcells that she would die soon. She devised a nutritional treatment for herself and lived an additional 64 years. She was an avid student, getting advanced degrees in naturopathy and chiropractic.

    Dr. Parcells told Mr. Templeton that Dr. Kelley came to her when he got sick, she advised him, he got better, and he never gave her credit. (In fairness to Dr. Kelley, giving her credit would have put her in a spotlight she avoided.)

    Hearing this story stimulated me to see if Dr. Kelley’s theories about the autonomic nervous system rested on more than his own observations. As I researched this article, I gradually realized that all the aspects of Dr. Kelley’s treatment program that I have written about were known in the medical community in the 1920s and 1930s. That is when Dr. Parcells became ill, and successfully treated herself. A voracious student like Dr. Parcells would have undoubtedly heard of all these concepts.

    The mid-twentieth century was a time of great change in medicine, with the advent of pharmaceuticals and with advances in basic science research. While much of this change was good, many valuable concepts were tossed aside without proper testing. I hope that my articles will bring some of these concepts back into the awareness of the scientific community.