Who Wrote Alcoholic Cirrhosis as a Syndrome?

When I found a paper on the Internet, Alcoholic Cirrhosis as a Syndrome it was that magic wand I had been looking for. I read it, digested it and applied the knowledge I gained from it. Had I not done so I have no doubt I would have been dead within months.

Since then many, many people have also read and benefitted from this remarkable piece of work and I know to my own certain knowledge that friends of mine who have come to me for advice when diagnosed with alcoholic cirrhosis have made unbelievable recoveries. As I have said before, it is not smoke and mirrors, it is not snake oil, it works.

So who wrote this remarkable paper? Was it a Doctor? Someone in the medical profession? How did they gain the insight into this disease and what drove them to write this paper?

I did find out who he was and I have spoken and communicated with his long time partner, Vicki Simmons. I searched long and hard to find a way to discover who he was but eventually that search paid off and an email to Vicki confirmed Horace as the author.

It is possibly my biggest regret in life that I never met Horace and it was with tragic coincidence the same month and year that I found Alcoholic Cirrhosis as a Syndrome, Horace passed away. I wish I had been able to talk with him, tell him about the remarkable change in my own health as well as many others. I wish I had been able to thank him for saving my life, I wish I could have met him in person.

 

A TRIBUTE TO HORACE SIMMONS

(1946-2009)

 

OBITUARY: HORACE O. SIMMONS (1946-2009:THE DAILY COURIER)

Horace O. Simmons of Prescott, Ariz., and Vancouver, Wash., passed away on June 11, 2009, at age 63 after a courageous battle with ALS. He was born in Boulder, Colo., attended school in Texas and lived in Alaska, Oregon, California, Washington and Arizona.

As a young man, he lived for several years in the back-country of Alaska, and later worked for many years as a commercial fisherman in Kodiak, Alaska. As the Director of the Kodiak Area Native Housing Authority, he oversaw the construction of dozens of new houses for the local Native American population.

Horace became the principal of a software consulting firm, and later became a clinical hypnotherapist, serving several years as president of the Oregon Hypnotherapy Association.

Horace is survived by his mother, Helen Simmons; his children, Tina, Selina, Anthony and Christine; siblings Ruth Anne and John; and beloved friend Vicki Nier.

The family would like to thank the staff of Granite Gate Senior Living Community and Family Hospice Care for their care and support.

A private celebration of his life by family and friends will take place on June 14, 2009.

I spoke at length with Vicki his partner and she kindly wrote some words which explain some more about this man.

“His name was Horace Orion Simmons III.  He was the first however to actually use the name.  His grandfather was known as Red and his dad was Buddy.  But poor Horace was destined to be Horace.  I imagine you’ve heard Johnny Cash’s song “A Boy Named Sue”?  Well, that was Horace, at least in his opinion of himself.  He changed his name briefly in high school, but his best buddy noted that there was much eye-rolling at the time.

He was born in Colorado, but his dad soon went to dental school and he was a toddler in Iowa and a young boy in Llano, Texas before completing high school and a couple of years of college in Lubbock, Texas.  After those two years of college he ran away to Alaska, but returned after becoming a commercial fisherman and finished up his philosophy degree at the University of Texas at Austin.  He rejected traditional religion, but had studied Zen as a young man and it was his preferred thinking pattern about such matters.

He had no children of his own but he adopted his first wife’s four children. Each of them feels he is much more their dad than their biological father is.  I think he and his wife came back down to the lower 48 in the mid- to late- 80s.  He lived in Kodiak, Alaska for about 25 years.  While he lived in LA a couple of times and in the SF Bay Area once to make money, he and his first wife chose Portland, Oregon as their preferred location after traveling up and down the west coast in a 5th-wheel trailer.  They lived there together for a few years and he and I moved back up there when he was done with his work in LA.

In mythology, Horus was the son of Isis and Osiris.  I just ran across something related in a travel article tonight that I hadn’t remembered (if I ever knew it).  It is a quote from a guide on a tourist boat on the Nile in the AAA Magazine.  The article mentions a temple dedicated to the falcon god Horus and the tour guide goes on to say “Horus is the morning bird that has the sharpest eyesight…”  He was always a morning bird!

His middle daughter got interested in Tad James’ version of NLP and loaned Horace her set of tapes.  He was already interested before he listened, and he dove in and became a Master Practitioner of NLP and a certified hypnotherapist.  He gave lectures at their annual meetings and was an online mentor with the International Medical and Dental Hypnotherapy Assn.

Are you familiar with the term orthomolecular medicine?  Horace used to go to a conference in Vancouver, BC every other year.  (In odd-numbered years the conference was in Toronto.)  It will be interesting to see how it goes now that Abram Hoffer, known as the father of orthomolecular medicine, and Harold Foster have passed on.  I was interested to see Peter’s Promise. Sounds like the two of you might get on quite well!

You might also enjoy the book “Roger’s Recovery from AIDS”.  If I remember correctly, it was written by his doctor.  You can read some of it on Amazon to get a feel for it.  I suggest it as a possible writing style.  Horace didn’t mind more the technical works, but I think he thought this was quite readable and yet had a lot of information in it.

Thanks for sending your chapter.  I’ll be interested to sit down with it. And honored to be a part of the project.

Be well,
Vicki

I believe I am correct in saying that a very good friend of Horace’s developed alcoholic cirrhosis and it was the suffering, lack of treatment and lack of understanding about this disease that led to him researching and subsequently writing this paper.

The paper is based on orthomolecular medicine which quoting from their web site:

Orthomolecular is a term that comes from ortho, which is Greek for “correct” or “right,” and “molecule,” which is the simplest structure that displays the characteristics of a compound. So it literally means the “right molecule.”

Two-time Nobel Prize winner, and molecular biologist, Linus Pauling, Ph.D.,coined the term “Orthomolecular” in his 1968 article “Orthomolecular Psychiatry” in the journal “Science.”

Orthomolecular medicine describes the practice of preventing and treating disease by providing the body with optimal amounts of substances which are natural to the body.

This extract is from Wikipedia which sums up both the practice and the controversy surrounding this method of treatment:

“Orthomolecular medicine is a form of complementary and alternative medicine aimed at maintaining health through nutritional supplementation, and the assertion (which conflicts with the scientific consensus) that dietary nutrition is generally inadequate in maintaining homeostasis.

The approach is sometimes referred to as megavitamin therapy as the practice evolved out of, and in some cases still uses, doses of vitamins and minerals many times higher than the recommended Dietary Reference Intake. Orthomolecular practitioners may also incorporate a variety of other treatment modalities into their approaches, including dietary restriction, megadoses of non-vitamin nutrients, and mainstream pharmaceutical drugs. Proponents argue that non-optimal levels of certain substances can cause health issues beyond simple deficiency and see balancing them as an integral part of health.

The term “orthomolecular” was coined by Linus Pauling to mean “the right molecules in the right amounts” (ortho is Greek for “right”). Proponents state that treatments are based on patients’ individual biochemistries.

The scientific and medical consensus is that the broad claims of efficacy advanced by advocates of orthomolecular medicine are not adequately tested as drug therapies, and it has been described as a form of food faddism and quackery. Proponents argue that mainstream sources have published research supporting the benefits of nutrient supplementation and that vitamins are used in conventional medicine as treatments for some diseases.

However, some vitamins have been linked to increased risk of cancer and death. The scientific consensus view is that for normal individuals, a balanced diet contains all necessary vitamins and minerals, and that routine supplementation is not necessary absent specific diagnosed deficiencies.”

I think the crux of the matter is best expressed by the reference to this treatment as ‘food faddism and quackery’ and that the claims are ‘not adequately tested as drug therapies’. This is undoubtedly true since there is little if any funding available to research the beneficial effects of natural substances on human health and this is DESPITE new evidence appearing on almost a daily basis on that often simple vitamins, minerals and diet hold the key to preventing and curing most fatal diseases.

As I have said so often in the past, the medical profession hides behind the Book of How Not To Get Sued, rather than practicing a form of medicine that has been known and understood by mere mortals for (in certain cases) centuries.

Alcoholic Cirrhosis as a Syndrome may not be a perfect piece of research, it may be medically inaccurate in places (according to my GI anyway), it may not provide all the answers BUT, it is readable, it is understandable and it does make a whole lot of sense to those of us who suffer with this disease.

What is more,  it saved my life. I have absolutely no doubt.

I know from this web site’s statistics how many times a day Horace’s work is read by people from all around the world.

While writing this piece I went back and looked over the number of ‘hits’ on this web site and the articles which were being hit the most. I had not done this before now and the results were very surprising to me. Out of the nearly 600 articles on this web site, the #1 article with the highest number of hits is…..

#1 Alcoholic Cirrhosis as a Syndrome with 1473 hits. My web site has had several incarnations where this paper has been published, so the figure quoted is just from this current site and since August 29th 2012.

Also of interest are the #2 and #4 articles.

#2 – Ascites, Weight, Protein and Hernias 1344 hits
#3 – Transplant Evaluation 1125 hits
#4 – Attitudes with 765 hits

The two articles above were both written by myself and I find it extremely pleasing that Alcoholic Cirrhosis as a Syndrome comes first but also that two other things close to my heart, that of protein, ascites and lousy attitudes come so high on the hit list as well!

So finally the secret is out of the bag and hopefully many, many people will read about Horace Simmons, his life and work and his incredible contribution to the world of cirrhosis.

May he Rest In Peace.

Craig