I lost my closest cousin to breast cancer. She was diagnosed in August of 1996 with metastatic breast cancer after feeling a lump a short time earlier and died 9 months later at the age of 38. I was so upset that I took a leave of absence from work and my medical education for several months to travel to all 50 states in an attempt to raise breast and overall cancer awareness and to try and increase government funding for cancer. I collected countless letters and took them with me to the Capitol and US Congress women and men and sent some of them to the White House including my letter (some excerpts from this letter are found at the end of this introduction).

A most unusual thing happened on my 50-state awareness, catharsis or self-medication tour (whatever you call it looking back over time). I would give a lecture and then I would receive countless questions on diet and lifestyle and alternative medicine and especially dietary supplements. I was constantly in awe and overwhelmed at the number and diversity of questions and there were many days I stayed after my lecture for 3, 4, and even more hours to answer them. I completely realized during this time there were few if any sources of objective (emphasis on objective) information on this topic especially in cancer. When I arrived home after all that time traveling I immediately dedicated myself to more than full-time to the field of complementary, alternative, holistic or the new and improved politically correct term “integrative medicine.” Still, isn’t evidence-based medicine just medicine, regardless if discussing a supplement or drug or acupuncture or dietary change or exercise? Sorry, I digressed-back to the story and this book.

I was going to be a full-time surgeon like my father and brother but quickly realized I had about as much talent for surgery as our family dog Chauncey. I also realized (as I should have at the age of 22 when I published my first medical journal article on cottonseed oil medicinal benefits and limitations) that my real passion and “calling” was for this field of integrative medicine that was then, and continues to be in dire need of full-time objective researchers, teachers, and clinicians. Not part-time but full time because this has become an overwhelming topic today with thousands of publications every year and countless new supplements. Yet it is tough to dedicate your life to this area because of the lack of even minimal financial resources or compensation especially for someone that does not proffer a serious or invasive procedure or even a royalty or sale of a dietary supplement out of their office. I recognized this very early in my career, which is why I am so grateful to the patients/friends (Epstein, Jenkins, Pokempner, Thompson, …) over the past 25 years that funded the dream so that we could help one starfish at a time (so to speak if you remember that story and its overall spiritual meaning). And the past and ongoing leadership of the surgical department I am a part of as a non-surgeon that took a chance on doing something different (from Dr. Montie and Dr. Pienta in the early days, to the “words cannot express my gratefulness now” to the current leadership of Dr. David Alan Bloom—mentor–friend–guidance counselor–voice-in-head—to always do the right thing). They taught me honor (along with my mom, Eva Moyad, and dad, Dr. Robert Moyad, best physician I have ever known), objectivity and most of all that to even slightly change the overall positive “system” you have to be a part of it, looking at it and dealing with its trials and tribulations/peaks and valleys from the inside and not from the outside looking in as many a Monday morning quarterback in integrative medicine have done almost as a profitable career unto itself.