ENDOCRINOLOGY & METABOLISM
ENDOCRINOLOGY & METABOLISM
John O'Dea was born in the
south of Ireland. He was raised and educated in Dublin, where he received his
undergraduate and medical education at the National University of Ireland. Upon
graduation from medical school, he moved to the US. He served his internship
and residency in Internal Medicine at St. Luke's Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio.
He then went on to receive full training in Endocrinology and Metabolism
through a NIH fellowship at Case Western Reserve University. Following the
completion of this two-year endocrine fellowship, which involved both clinical
and research experience, he moved to the Los Angeles area, where he is in
private practice.
Several factors have, over the
years, pressed O'Dea, despite his commitment to the scientific method, to move
to the beat of a different drummer. Experiences in his own practice told him
that modern medicine had many deficiencies. It often painted simplistic, linear
pictures of a complex reality, then treated the maps and forgot the territory.
It was too analytic and insufficiently inductive. It iconized structure and
components while ignoring process and systems. Many patients, particularly
women, got no answers out of this traditional form of medicine. When standard
treatments such as hormones for menopause caused them intolerable side effects,
their complaints were ignored. They were frequently dismissed with meaningless
labels, often pejorative, frequently psychiatric. Unfortunately these women
became the vanguard of a flight from science, moving from the reductionist
right to the irrational left, seeking any port in a storm. What they got was
touted as "natural" and seemed user friendly. It eliminated the side
effects of mainstream drugs but it was irrational and devoid of real help
despite its convincing veneer of junk science and voodoo logic. Today's
patients deserve better and O'Dea has spent the past twenty years finding it
for them.
It has been O'Dea's privilege
over the years to receive a novel understanding of the mind-body, one based on
reason rather than nebulous new age nonsense. It became obvious to him that our
body's hormones, particularly the steroid hormones of the adrenal and sexual
organs were much more powerful than doctors had always thought. That far from
simply supporting the body physically during periods of stress and sexuality,
these potent chemicals had a massive impact on the brain, acting as the glue
that bound mind to body and body to mind. And this effect was not just one that
occurred over the long term, slowly altering, for example, breast size or skin
oiliness, but one that in an exciting way, impacted on people emotionally,
cognitively, behaviorally and physically, from moment to moment. These
chemicals didn't just color the backdrop, they figured into every little piece
of the action.
To O'Dea the implications were
enormous. It became clear to him that a woman could have too much of the very
hormones that gave her femininity. She could become intoxicated by her own
estrogen, or experience estrogen withdrawal symptoms not unlike those seen in
drug addicts withdrawing from narcotics. Or the abnormal pattern of a person's
hormones might lead to the appearance of immune diseases such as lupus or
rheumatoid arthritis, conditions seemingly unrelated in any way to sexuality.
And since hormone disturbances could make one depressed, even psychotic, it
followed that hormone modulation might cure these problems. Sure enough, O'Dea
found that by re-balancing hormone imbalances or stabilizing erratic hormonal
patterns, he could control mood and behavioral problems and often dispense with
the mind numbing impact of psychotropic drugs. Resistant physical problems such
as obesity, headache, arthritis, angina or constipation, had a hidden hormonal
connection that allowed them to be approached from a whole new angle, unique to
women.
Realizing the new power of
hormones allowed O'Dea to design new models that linked mind with body. Far
from fleeing from science, these models embraced it, in a new and complex form.
Acting like Rosetta stones, his elegant models allowed sex hormones and their
patterns to become the language that made sense out of so many health problems,
mental, physical and "psychosomatic", and they offered the
possibility of real, effective prevention.
O'Dea has been married since
1976. His wife Carol, a native of New Jersey, has a doctorate in Institutional
Management and is a consultant in health care. They have two teenagers, one in
high school and the other in college. O'Dea is an avid reader, especially of
history, and has a deep interest in Asian philosophy, particularly Chinese Zen
of the Tang period. He continues to research the role of hormones as part of a
kinetic vision of the mind-body and is currently writing a book. He is an
experienced interviewer, having been on both Dateline NBC and BBC TV.