User:BalanceofNature/sandbox/Dr. Douglas Howard

Dr. Douglas Howard
www.drhowardbiography.com

Dr. Howard has been keenly interested in healthcare since the early age of 14, when he began working at Pioneer Memorial Medical Center in St. George, Utah. At the age of 15 he was employed at the Sunrise Hospital & Medical Center in Las Vegas in nuclear medicine. Finally at the age of 16 he was a full-time employee working as an emergency room technician at Dixie Regional Medical Center. Avid in the pursuit of a medical career he was even given a special waver by the governor to receive his EMT-certification before the age of 18. That was just the beginning. Dr Howard developed an intense interest in lifestyle diseases and the immune system response in correlation to the nervous system. His pursuit for knowledge has been never ending. He studied homeopathy in Germany, chiropractic in the United States, and medicine in Russia. While in Russia he studied both at St. Petersburg Pediatric Medical Institute (now Saint Petersburg State Pediatric Medical Academy) and at the Pavlov First Medical Institute (aka Saint Petersburg State Medical University). In addition, internationally he has worked on clinical studies in Finland. Dr. Howard has been in practice in the United States for more than 15 years. After returning to the United States he turned much of his time and efforts to research in hope of discovering the key to enhancing proper immune system function. Today we are able to benefit from his research through the development of Balance of Nature and from the lectures he gives across the country and around the world.

Early life and education: Douglas Howard was born on December 4, 1960, in American Fork, Utah to Dayne Holt Howard and Helen Mae Baker. Shortly thereafter they moved to West Warren, Utah. Before the age of 2 the Howard family migrated to Las Vegas, Nevada to find profitable work. They resided there until 1970 when they moved to Enterprise, Utah, a small mountain town north of Saint George Utah. Enterprise was already of importance to the Howard family as it was the birthplace of Howard’s father. Being raised there, Enterprise became a focal point in his life as well. The small farming community included many farmers growing mostly potatoes, grain and alfalfa. Howard says this environment of hard work and good fun was perfectly selected ground for him to bloom and grow in. From his rearing, he also has a great love and respect for people of every walk of life. The 7th of 8 children, he grew up mostly in Enterprise Utah, but spent a great deal of his summer time in Las Vegas, Nevada, working with his father who commuted there for work as a firefighter and also ran a private landscaping and estate maintenance business there. Most of the work was done by Dayne Howard with his sons.

Teenage Years: Howard has always had a love for science. How and why were formative words for most of his thoughts and speech as a child and continued to be paramount in his search for truth. From a very young age he was catching animals and studying them to find out how they worked. His Mother, Helen Howard, has no recollection of him ever wanting to be anything but a doctor. In high school Howard was advanced into Biology a year early because of his intense interest and he had exhausted all other science classes available to his age group at that time. He was granted permission to perform surgery on a rabbit for his final science project, demonstrating to the class the observance of the heart and organs functioning live. The surgery was a success and the rabbit recovered well and survived. At the age of 15, a special science/research class was designed for him to study the effect of smoking on the lungs of guinea pigs. The year came to an end and the project needed further study, so Howard froze the specimens in the only freezer available to continue his work the following year. When the new Home Economics teacher discovered them in her freezer the following spring, she was quite beside herself and Howard was called in for explanation.

Dixie Regional Medical Center: In December of 1974 at 14 years of age he had his tonsils removed in the Small Hospital in Saint George, Utah (pioneer Memorial). There were volunteer candy stripers there that were only 2 years older than him, and Howard decided that if they could work in a hospital, so could he! The new hospital in Saint George was being finished and he offered to help the hospital staff move into the new hospital (Dixie Regional Medical Center). He was moving equipment into the new Emergency Room when he met a Ms. Gibson who was working there. She got to know him, took an interest in him, and allowed him to start volunteering there. As a young man Howard volunteered in the ER each weekend commuting from Enterprise where he lived (a 50 minute drive from Saint George). His mother would pick him up from school early on Fridays, drive him to the Hospital in Saint George arriving about 3:30 PM. He often worked until 1:00 or 2:00 AM taking vital signs, cleaning up; anything just to be there. After work on Friday nights, he stayed with his sister who lived in Saint George and returned to the ER on Saturday morning by 7:00 AM. He would work again past midnight then get up on Sunday morning, go to church, and return to the hospital until 7 or 8 PM. His mother would then pick him up and take him back to Enterprise so he could go to school on Monday morning. He had worked in the ER as a volunteer for over a year (1974).

Sunrise Hospital: In the summer of 1975 he was hired at Sunrise Hospital & Medical Center in Las Vegas, NV at the age of 15. There was a doctor in Las Vegas whom his father knew through the landscaping business, he was the Chief of Staff at Sunrise hospital. Again, Howard was technically too young to work at Sunrise. You had to be 18 and he was 15. He did not even have his driver’s license. But, this Dr. took an interest in Howard and told him; "just don't tell anyone how old you are". With special permission, hiring Howard was allowed. He worked there as an orderly in Nuclear Medicine. Part of his job was to get patients from their rooms and bring them down to get their nuclear and radiation therapies. .. very ill people. This summer at sunrise was foundational for his life and the decisions he makes even now.

Emergency Medical Technician: After that Summer Howard returned to school in Enterprise and resumed volunteering at Dixie Regional Medical Center. When Howard was 16 years old and had volunteered over 2000 hours Ms Gibson with whom he was working with again at DRMC, hurt her back and had to have surgery. When her back was healing, she told the hospital she would come back if she could have Howard to help her. Gibson only worked a few more months and then left on disability and they hired Howard to replace her, that is when he became officially on the pay roll at Dixie Regional Medical Center. By this time he was 16 years old and had his driver’s license. He was hired at that time as an ER tech and he ran the Emergency Room on the 3:00pm to 11:00pm shift; calling in doctors when needed. Howard commuted from Enterprise where he got out of school early and drove to the hospital each day. As a part of his job as an ER tech Howard needed to have an EMT and be qualified to drive an ambulance. Again, he was technically too young for this as the rules stated one must be 18 years old. So Dixie regional Medical center petitioned the governor stating that Howard had worked over 2000 volunteer hours in their hospital and they felt he was qualified in every way to be an EMT for Saint George. The permission was granted and Howard became the youngest person to ever become an EMT and ambulance driver in the state of UT. By the time he was 17 he had trained to the equivalent of a paramedic at that time, receiving his License for IV and Mass Trouser Modules. The year of 1976 was busy indeed as he worked in the ER, answered emergency ambulance calls and attended Dixie State College of Utah to attain his pre-med degree.

Mission and Marriage: From April 1980 to April 1982 Howard served a full time mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Hamburg Germany mission where he served the people there as well as teaching many about the principles of his faith. Upon returning home he married his childhood sweetheart, Susan Lynn Jackson. Their families had been friends all of their lives. Their fathers became fast and forever friends while working together at the Utah State Prison as guards before either Howard or Susan were born.

Work and Research: Dr. Howard earned his Doctor of Chiropractic degree at Cleveland Chiropractic College in 1986 and shortly thereafter began practicing in Salt Lake City, Utah. Howard served on the board of chiropractic examiners.

Pavlov First Medical Institute: After practicing in Sugar House for 5 years he was invited to study medicine at Pavlov first Medical Institute in Saint Petersburg, Russia, where he became Dean of Foreign Student Affairs. For almost a year Howard commuted to Russia caring for his practice for a month then going to Russia for a month, but after several months of this, he put his practice into the competent hands of Dr. Dan Guthrie and moved his family to Russia to expedite the whole experience. Dr. Howard and his wife Susan with their 5 children lived in Saint Petersburg, Russia for almost 2 years while he finished his medical degree.

Holistic and Pharmacological Medicine: While working in Russia, he was privileged to work with some wonderful scientists and Doctors. it was a great pleasure to work in an environment where the goal was to get the patient well, using whatever method was cheapest and the most effective, using holistic (Chiropractic, Acupuncture, Herbal, homeopathy), as well as pharmacological approaches and/or even surgery when deemed necessary. He learned first-hand the advantages of each discipline and that they are all valid when appropriately used. Conversely, he had also learned while working in the hospitals in America that there is abuse of all of these disciplines of practice as well.

Nutrition: It was while in Russia that his thoughts began to turn more and more toward nutrition. It was the first time in his life he had actually witnessed firsthand the effect of socio-economic diseases (diseases caused by social and or economic status, not just germ theory). The Iron Curtain had only recently fallen and most of the people of Russia were very poor at the time, many were living on black bread and water. It became very clear to him that those who could afford to buy or raise fruits and vegetables were healthy and those who could not, were sick. The line was distinctive.

Development of Balance of Nature: Upon Howard’s return from Russia his interest in nutrition had peaked. At first he joined the movement in search of that mysterious, magical phytochemicals. “The one that would cure all that ails you”. But that was a roller coaster ride because more and more were being discovered each day. It was a time when research on phytochemicals was just beginning and super fruits and super pills were jumping at you from all sides. Finally, he realized the insanity, there are 100’s of thousands of phytochemicals, some discovered and others yet to be discovered, and this will never stop as long as people look at things in this light. This thought coupled with his experience in Russia brought him to the epiphany that all of the “super” chemicals were being extracted from fruits and vegetables. Through eating enough fruits and vegetables, people would keep their bodies in balance while getting all of the phytochemicals it needs in the proper ratio. After coming to this understanding, in 1997 Dr. Howard developed Balance of Nature Fruits and Veggies, a supplement replacing multivitamins containing only flash dried fruits and vegetables therefore enabling people to acquire more than 10 servings of fruits and vegetables daily.