The 2005 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine has been awarded to Australians Barry J. Marshall and Robin Warren, for showing that stomach and intestinal ulcersare caused by bacterial infection rather than stress.

Their discovery, made in 1982, changed peptic ulcer from a chronic and disabling condition to an easily treatable one.

They established that the bacterium Helicobacter pylori is the most common cause of ulcers, an assertionthat went against the prevailing thought in the medical community at the time. Their discovery began a large-scale reassessment of the causes of other chronic inflammatory diseases, such as Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, rheumatoid arthritis, and atherosclerosis.

USA Today October 3, 2005

Dr. Mercola's Comment:When I read the headline for this article in USA Today ("2 Austalians Win Nobel Prize in Medicine"), I knew Dr. Marshall was one of the winners without even having to read the story. I have written about his novel therapy previously on the Web site. Congratulations are in order to him for going against the grain and turning the medical world upside down 23 years ago.

I remember VERY clearly in 1983 when I first read his intriguing work in Lancet and started putting many patients on his protocol with remarkable success. I also remember equally clearly the amazing resistance by every single GI expert I knew of. They all discounted the "theory" and said it was full of rubbish.

It was very clear to me back then that even though I was a brand new doctor, I knew my expert teachers were wrong. Time has proven that to be true. Similarly, it is even MORE obvious that nearly all of conventional medicine is dead wrong on how most disease operates. They are virtually 100-percentclueless about the true cause of disease.

Only this time I won't have to sit back and wait for the Nobel Committee to validate my belief. I am taking a far more proactive role and my primary passion and mission in life is to catalyze the transformation of health care in the United Statesto one that appreciates and operates on the foundational truths of health. And you and I both know that does not involve using drugs and surgery as the first option.

Getting back to Dr. Marshall though, even though his approach on peptic ulcers was far closer to the best way than using H2 blockers and proton pump inhibitors like Nexium (whichis one of the WORST approaches for ulcers), he still did not get it completely right.

Although it is clear that H. pylori bacteria play a major role in ulcers, the more foundational and primary reason why most people acquire ulcers is that they have an impairment in their immune system that allows the H. pylori infection to take hold.

So while I used the Marshall antibiotic protocol 20 years ago to take care of ulcers, I abandoned it over10 years ago in favor of optimizing food choicesand effective toolsto address the underlying emotional stresses that temporarily collapse the average person's immune system and make them susceptible to all sorts of infections.

Although antibiotics work, they rarely address the underlying cause of the problem. It makes far more sense to use the approach that I describe above, as it is inexpensive, virtually side-effect free and, most importantly, addresses the underlying cause of the problem.

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