Dr. Kevin Lau is the founder of Health In Your Hands, a series of tools for Scoliosis prevention and treatment. The set includes his book Your Plan for Natural Scoliosis Prevention and Treatment, a companion Scoliosis Exercises for Prevention and Correction DVD, and the innovative new iPhone application ScolioTrack.
Dr Kevin Lau is a graduate in Doctor of Chiropractic from RMIT University in Melbourne Australia and Masters in Holistic Nutrition from Clayton College of Natural Health in USA.
He was the first in Singapore to provide a non-surgical treatment for scoliosis in Singapore 2005 first by studying the Schroth Method of Exercises and then working in a clinic which implemented Clear Institute Methods. During this time he has been devoted to developing, practicing, and teaching others about non-surgical solutions for scoliosis. He has completed 3 thesis on "Scoliosis and Exercise", "Scoliosis and Nutrition" and "The role of calcium and vitamin D in the prevention of low bone density and Adolescent Idiopathic Scoliosis (AIS) in prepubertal women." With his research into spinal conditions he is the published author of Your Plan for Natural Scoliosis Prevention and Treatment which has been translated to Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, French and German. Dr. Lau combines a university education and a lifetime of practicing natural and preventive medicine to provide a unique approach to health care which encompasses body, mind, and spirit.
He made it his life's work to explore and share the truths about nutrition, diseases, health and healing. Educating patients from all walks of life and around the world some were as young as 7 while others as old as 91. He is a recipient of the Best Health-care Provider Award by the Straits Time, the leading newspaper publication in Singapore and featured on PrimeTime Channel News Asia.
Growing up I lived a happy and healthy life, oblivious to the challenges that my health would later pose. When I turned 14, I started working in a fast food outlet where all that I subsisted on was burgers and chips on a regular basis. I drank gallons of sodas and milkshakes as if these were water, but no matter what I ate, I never put on an ounce of extra weight. I started noticing bad acne appearing on my face which made me painfully self-conscious, so I started trying every face wash product available, including scores of lotions and creams.
Later, when I moved interstate to study chiropractic, my health really began to deteriorate, going from bad to worse. At the age of 21, I became chronically ill and clinically depressed!
Away from my mother’s cooking, I consumed instant ready-made meals and ate out of cans anything that could fill my stomach under a tight budget. I still remember going to the supermarket for the first time, ignoring the fruits and vegetables section and moving straight to the instant noodle, sugar-filled cereals and breakfast bars. As a consequence, gradually my skin began to worsen, but at the time I failed to connect the food and health together. Eventually my acne got so bad that I went to a medical doctor who immediately prescribed antibiotics.
The antibiotics did help initially, but I had to keep taking them, otherwise my skin would break out again. A few years of persistent dependence on antibiotics left me permanently scarred and riddled with digestive problems. I constantly felt haggard and tired, with the need to sleep all day. Intrinsically, I knew something was wrong with my system. My concentration and memory suffered; I went from a perfect “A” student to getting B’s and, eventually, C’s. Looking back on that period with the benefit of hindsight, I now understand that the majority of my problems were created by my naivety and a lack of understanding about the basic principles of nutrition. The antibiotics were merely treating the symptoms of acne and failed to treat the cause of which was due to poor diet.
Then something dramatic happened. One day, I “woke up,” and gained true clarity. It marked a turning point in my life when I decided to go completely off all prescription medicine and started reading ferociously about natural health.
I read a lot of literature at this point and began to realize that practically everything that I had been doing up until then was leading up to one possible outcome - a slow poisoning of my normal, metabolic functioning. I had in effect turned into my own worst enemy. A thoughtless consumption of vast quantities of bad fats, sugar, pharmaceutical concoctions and the rigors of my study life, had begun to take their toll on my mind and body and were slowly leading me on a path of disease and depression.
You might call it a moment of reckoning. I was at a major crossroad of my life when I had just finished my studies and embarked upon my ultimate vocation: learning how to rebuild my body and regain my health bit by bit with consistent efforts and deliberation. I remember telling myself, how could I be practicing as a health professional if I wasn’t a picture of good health?
From that point on I became a living example for my patients. Those that I attracted in droves were scoliosis patients because of modern medicines failure in effectively managing the condition. The results with these patients were at times so startling that I became convinced of my own methodology. Almost instinctively I knew I was on to something big; something that held the promise of health and hope to thousands of scoliosis patients around the world.
Today, as a practicing chiropractor and nutritionist, I am more certain than ever that scoliosis can be completely cured and treated. It may at one time have been one of the hardest and the most mysterious of all diseases, but today, with the application of the nutritional principles that I’ve incorporated, it can be completely arrested and the progress of the condition reversed. I’ve understood completely from my study of nutritional science that food alone has the miraculous healing properties to cure not only scoliosis, but a multitude of other diseases as well.
Over time, I’ve read practically every written word on traditional and alternative modes of healing. Some of this literature was inspiring and thoughtful; some contradicting and confusing. Nonetheless, since I was committed to total reformation, I began to make small but significant changes in my dietary and lifestyle patterns.
As my own patient, I started eating borderline vegetarian food and consuming 10 to 20 synthetic supplements a day, whilst drastically cutting out my sugar, processed foods and fat intake. I tried a host of things during this phase with mixed results, things as eccentric as spiritual healing to colonic therapy. I stuck to this routine for a few years in search of health truths.
Surprisingly for a major part of the day, although I still felt washed out, depressed and drained, I continued putting all my effort into my health, doing all the things that conventional knowledge said was bad, such as reducing fat, eating less meat and more vegetables. Yet I was not entirely happy with the progress (or lack thereof) that I was making. Things were not getting the momentum that I was hoping for.
After a meal, I still felt tired, mentally foggy and bloated. Digestive problems still plagued me to no ends to the point that food became my enemy. This was when I started a course in Masters in Holistic Nutrition and became inspired and hugely influenced by the work and writings of nutritional pioneers such as Dr. Weston Price, Dr. Joseph Mercola and Bill Wolcott. I admired other authors who were healed by nutritional therapies of incurable diseases where conventional drugs and surgery failed such as Gillian McKeith, TV presenter and author of “You Are What You Eat”; Mike Adams of NaturalNew.com and Jordan Rubin author of The Makers Diet.
Gradually, through their teachings, I learned to incorporate whole foods into my diet and started eating correctly for my Metabolic Type® and switched to consuming a lot of traditionally prepared probiotics like yogurt and kefir.
As I gained firmer knowledge of these fundamentals, I discovered that I was genetically “programmed” to be a protein type and that an over-emphasis on synthetic supplements was not helping. Indeed it was only making my health worse. By this time, I’d learned to read though the marketing hypes produced by food and supplement manufacturers and started to listen to my body.
I understood the importance of reducing grains and sugars from my diet and started to eat more protein and fat. Finally with all this and more, I understood the meaning of that well-known adage, “One person’s food can be another person’s poison.”
Slowly but surely, with each new change that I introduced in my diet pattern, my health began to totter back to normal and started improving with each meal. No longer did eating make me feel tired, sleepy or foggy in the head. Instead, I started feeling extremely charged up and bursting with energy, calmness and mental clarity.
Emboldened by this experience, I finally decided to devote my life’s work to exploring, gaining, and sharing more insights on nutrition, disease, health and healing with my patients, who trudged long distances to seek counsel with me.
This book is part of this endeavor.
In good health,
Dr. Kevin Lau
