Crossroads Health Center welcomes Dr. John Maher

The human body is an extraordinary machine, capable of amazing achievements and endurance beyond the scope of imagination.
To keep this machine in proper working order, Dr. John Maher at Crossroads Health Center has a novel approach: listen to what your body is telling you.
The process is called Nutrition Response Testing (NRT) and Dr. Maher says it’s almost as simple as it sounds.
“The goal of this testing is to get the body’s own feedback to tell me, the doctor, whether or not there’s something wrong,” he says. “I’m not against laboratory testing or anything like that; there are definitely situations that require the use of x-rays and other tests like that. But as a doctor, if I can get a sick person well for the cost of just the battery of tests that patient will undergo in a hospital, then that’s something I want to do.”
To get information from the body about what’s going on inside, a doctor can use NRT to help zero in on a potential trouble area.
“We’re working with the body’s autonomic nervous system,” he explains. “That is, all the stuff that works on its own, like your heartbeat and breathing. Within the autonomic nervous system are the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous systems, which work like the gas and brake pedals in your car. When you’re healthy, they work together. But when something is off, then the systems don’t work the way they’re supposed to. And when they’re not working properly, the body is going to let us know that there’s something wrong.”
In order to find out what the body has to say about a particular area, Dr. Maher uses a gentle, non-invasive procedure. The patient lays on his or her back, facing up, with one arm pointing up at the ceiling. The doctor gently pushes against the upraised arm to get a baseline test of the patient’s muscular resistance. Then, the doctor puts his hand on the various areas of the body while testing the muscular resistance. When he finds a potential problem area, the muscular response tells him that something is off.
“By touching the skin, I’m calling the body’s attention to that particular area,” he says. “Since the skin uses the same nerve supply as the organs underneath, we’re putting the attention of the body on those same nerves that go to the heart, or to the stomach, or whichever part we’re testing. If the balance is correct, then there will be no change in the muscle response. But if there’s an imbalance, we’ll see that muscle response change.”
The results of the NRT help Dr. Maher better address the potential problems that the body of the patient indicates.
“The body knows what it needs,” he says. “So we ask the body, and we see the response. Not everybody responds to this type of testing, but we’ll screen you to see if you are a Nutrition Response Testing patient. If you are, then in my experience, nothing else will help as much. I have more than thirty years of education, experience and study, and I’m not saying that for gravitas. I’m just convinced that when you see something work over and over again, you have to start trusting the results.”
But the NRT is just the first step in what Dr. Maher hopes to accomplish with his patients. The overall goal, he says, is to design and implement a healthy lifestyle that is unique for each person.
“We have a free lifestyle risk analysis questionnaire that anyone is welcome to use,” he says. “You can take it at home, print it out and bring it in, and I’ll review it with you for free. Part of it is a plan of action, and my goal is to help you implement a healthy lifestyle.”
Dr. Maher is hosting a series of free health seminars at the Valley Center Library that will continue through March. He has already spoken about women’s health and hormones the first week and followed that with a seminar on stress and fatigue. Next, in the third of the six sessions, he will discuss digestive health, including natural approaches to heartburn, acid reflux, irritable bowel syndrome and Crohn’s disease. That seminar takes place on Feb. 17 at 6:15 p.m.
“I wanted to give the community an opportunity to take advantage of my experience and study to learn more about these areas,” he says. “And it’s a great way for people to ask questions, to meet me and to get to know me a little bit better.”
In his work at Crossroads, Dr. Maher also offers extended hours to better meet the community’s scheduling needs. He is available for appointments until 7 p.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and hopes to offer Saturday morning appointments soon. He is also offering a special price for new patients; a $140 exam for only $40 for new patients who mention the special in this article.
For more information about Dr. Maher, visit the Crossroads Health Center Web site at www.newnaturalmedicine.com or stop by the clinic at 28630 Valley Center Rd., Suite 9.

Horses Are Celebrities Too At VC History Museum

By Dan Kidder
Valley Center has long been known as a rustic getaway from the hustle and bustle of Southern California.
But those who live here may not know just how famous some of their neighbors might be. And not only their human neighbors, but some of Valley Center’s horses are celebrities in their own right.
“For a small, rural community, I’m constantly amazed at the number of celebrated individuals we have in town,” says Bob Lerner, curator of the Valley Center History Museum. “And animals too. Some horses are more famous than the movie stars. And the list keeps growing.”
To celebrate these celebrity horses, the Valley Center History Museum has put together an exhibit highlighting these famous animals and their Valley Center connections.
Disney’s new film Secretariat is captivating audiences with the story of the triple crown-winning racehorse. At the Valley Center History Museum, patrons can learn about the famous horse’s connection with our town through two of his descendants.
Other famous racehorses highlighted in the exhibit are Sea Orbit, the most successful foal of Seabiscuit in the racing world, along with a descendant of Seattle Slew and a championship-winning horse named Khemosabi.
For fans of the movies and of classic literature, one famous Valley Center horse will no doubt be of interest. Still residing in town is Blanco, the white Andalusian who played the role of Shadowfax in the Lord Of The Rings movies.
In addition, the Valley Center History Museum showcases some famous cowboys who have left their mark on our little community through years, including Randolph Scott, Gary Cooper, Big Boy Williams, and John Wayne.
“These were cowboys who rode their own horses,” Lerner says. “There were no stunt doubles.”
The museum has a wealth of artifacts from the estate of Steve Reeves, the actor best known for playing the title role in the 1957 movie Hercules. On display at the museum is Reeves’s saddle, which Lerner points out was present at Reeves’s memorial service when the actor died in 2000.
“A lot of people ask, ‘How did these people get here?’” Lerner says. “Of course, there is no one answer, but a few of us have speculated about it. Back in those days, movie stars had it in their contracts that they could only live a certain distance away from Hollywood. So we figured that some of these cowboys wanted to know how far they could get away from the big city and still honor their contracts, and Valley Center falls into that.”
The exhibit featuring Valley Center’s famous horse connections opened on Oct. 8 and will continue through December.
The museum, located at 29200 Cole Grade Rd. is open Tuesday-Saturday from 1–4 p.m. Admission and parking are free. For more information, visit the Web site at www.valleycenterhistory.org or call 760-749-2993.

Original Gangsters

Sneaking beer into a midnight premiere of a movie: a little crazy.

Sneaking beer bottles into a midnight premiere of a movie: definitely crazy.

Sneaking beer bottles into the midnight premiere of Public Enemies: straight gangster.

And apparently the quartet of little 16-year-olds sitting down the aisle from me are more hardcore than I am, because the four of them somehow managed to sneak in more than six bottles, which they downed before the previews were done and spent the remaining time kicking over the empties and squeezing past me to get to the bathroom. Between the booze to my left and the four homeboys to my right who apparently bathed in Axe body spray before they left the house, I couldn't even taste my popcorn by the end of the movie.

But there was a movie going on, despite the repeated bathroom breaks the drunkies to my left needed to take. And it was a pretty good movie...but not quite as good as it could have been.

The movie Public Enemies tells the story of 1930s bank robber John Dillinger. This guy was more notorious than Al Capone, but somehow came out on the other side drawing comparisons to Robin Hood. He was a suave, good-looking (relatively; a quick Google image search shows you what suave and good-looking meant in 1933), charming man who did what we all wish we could do when The Man gets us down -- he did whatever he wanted.

The real-life story of Dillinger is fantastic and compelling; the man broke his associates out of prison in Indiana, stole more than $300,000 (which is over $4 million by today's standards) in less than a year of bank robbing, attacked two state police arsenals to stock up on weapons and ammo, traveled to Florida, Texas and Arizona to stay hidden from the authorities, was arrested after a fire broke out in his hotel and he was found with stolen money and guns, escaped custody in Arizona by stealing the sheriff's car, and became the number one most wanted criminal on the FBIs list.

Public Enemies does a good job of telling the story, but I kept waiting for the movie to choose the genre path it would take. When a movie comes out about a subject like this, it usually goes in one of two directions: it can either be an action movie with lots of gunfights, snappy one-liners and a larger-than-life feel (like Goodfellas or Pulp Fiction), or it can be a dramatic movie that focuses on the details of the story, the development of the character's thoughts, emotions and relationships, and seeks to connect the audience to the main character in some way (Road To Perdition, Scarface, etc).

This movie kind of half did both things. There was good action, but it wasn't sustained enough. They showed a few of the bank robberies, including a scene with Dillinger's trademark vault over the bank teller's counter, but then another quiet, dramatic scene came in on its heels. I was waiting for one of those action-movie montages, where they would show one robbery after another with the captions of the date and place underneath and a loud soundtrack that gets you pumped up about what's happening on screen. None of these things happened, and even the music was mostly disappointing, other than one main theme featuring a distorted guitar and a banjo that they should have played a lot more. They didn't even show Dillinger's most famous robbery, in which he and his gang pretended to be filming a bank robbery scene for a movie, which drew applause from the customers and bank employees. There are some good one-liners, including my favorite from Dillinger: "Good thing he was pretty, because he sure ain't called Whiz Kid Floyd."

But on the the other side, I felt like they didn't spend enough time developing Dillinger's relationship with Billie Frechette (played by Marion Cotillard, who gets strangely more and more attractive as the movie goes on). They meet, Dillinger pursues as only Dillinger can, and they end up together. I suppose it was one of those whirlwind encounters that happen every now and then in life, but by the end, the two are so powerfully and resolutely devoted to each other that it left me wondering how they got to that point. The same happens with Dillinger's best friend and number two man, John "Red" Hamilton. To emphasize what I mean, I had to look up that character's name on IMDB.com to figure out who he was. He was Dillinger's right-hand man, and there's a scene where the two of them share what appears to be a deep connection, but the movie doesn't really develop this or show how it came to be.

Overall, I enjoyed the movie, because I enjoy almost every movie I see. It's a good story with some good action and some good genuine moments. But it turned out to be a tad disappointing because of how good it could have been.

As we were walking out, I could tell that the gangsta-wannabe kids were disappointed. They wanted to see Johnny Depp busting caps and rolling with shorties in his pimped-out gangsta ride...but instead they just saw a bunch of white guys in gray wool suits driving old Fords through the midwest. Not that we're stereotyping or anything. It's OK, they were Mexican. We're allowed to make fun of them, right?