Long Valley doctor uses farm, food to heal

WASHINGTON – Fruits and vegetables are growing side-by-side with a primary-care medical practice on an historic farm in Long Valley.

Three years after purchasing the 275-year-old working farm on West Mill Road, Dr. Ron Weiss officially opened his unique practice there on Nov. 3 of last year.

A board-certified physician and assistant professor of clinical medicine at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, Weiss said that his Ethos Health farm, practice and learning center is a new model for wellness, focused on a plant-based, whole-food lifestyle designed to reverse chronic illness and prevent the diseases of aging.

“I see the farm as a giant canvas upon which I can work on addressing all these issues, our food system, our healthcare system, environmental health,” Weiss said during a stroll on the 342-acre property, which includes original farm buildings erected by immigrant German farmers in the mid 19th century.

Weiss, his wife and two children, ages 7 and 9, live on the property in an old home sitting next to a stone barn he hopes to restore into a wellness center. The practice itself inhabits a newer building converted from a residence into his medical office.

So far, the practice has attracted about 50 patients who have signed on for his “Year of Mindful Living” program. It begins with a “30-day challenge” of strict diet — consisting of green vegetables, a few starches, fruit and water — that serves as a full-body detoxification.

Blood tests before and after the detox chart the significant health benefits for patients and lead into nine more months of medical consultations, education programs and in some cases membership in a community-supported agriculture program — commonly known as a CSA, where members buy shares of the farm in exchange for regular produce deliveries during the growing season.

Weiss and family are all-in on this venture, having liquidated their assets to get the farm and practice up and running.

“Our family’s life is at stake,” he said. “Financially, professionally my life is at stake. We’ve dissolved most of our assets to do this. It’s a constant work in progress. It is often overwhelming at times.”

But a lifelong interest in farming and medicine, combined with seeing what he terms the deterioration of the food supply, environment and healthcare system, led him to the uniquely rich soil in Long Valley.

“I see it as the only way forward,” he said. “It’s the only way that makes sense.”

Weiss, 53, brings decades of experience to the practice, having worked as an emergency-room attending physician at Passaic General Hospital and establishing a practice in West New York. But treating patients with drugs and procedures, he says, do not address the root cause of illness. He saw diet as the key to reversing a troubling cycle.

“The way I think about it, we have a pharmaceutical- or procedure-based approach to medical care,” Weiss said. “Basically, what this does is take a pathway. There’s a problem, we create a solution which is a drug or a procedure, to intervene in that specific pathway. Let’s say a high-blood pressure pill. It’s just one highly focused molecule delivered in great amounts to thwart a biochemical pathway within us that is responsible for causing elevated blood pressure. The problem with that approach is that’s not the way health works. There is a derangement that is causing high blood pressure. A blood-pressure pill does not addresses the complex derangement. It just picks out a single pathway that knocks down the blood pressure. Because of that, that pill can manage the blood pressure, but the patient is still ill.”

He equates pills and procedures to finding someone in their living room with water dripping on them, and putting a bucket on their head.

“Well, you’re not getting wet any more, but did I go upstairs to see if the toilet is running?” he said. “Maybe there’s a hole in your roof. Plants address all of those problems. The way foods work, the plants, through a myriad of biochemical pathways, get at the root of the derangement and resolve it, so the blood pressure goes away.”

It sounds unconventional, but the plant-based approached goes back 2,500 years to Hippocrates, who equated food with medicine.

“We are what we eat,” he said. “Plants are the only organism on earth that can take energy from the sun, harness it, take the stardust from our planet that was created billions of years ago, assemble it, turn it into food and give it to us. We take this food in, it is broken down to a molecular level, we absorb these molecules through our amazing gastrointestinal mucosa and then we build ourselves with it.”

Meat, fish and processed foods interfere with the process, so Weiss insists on a diet rich in whole, unprocessed plants, many of which are grown right on the farm. More than half the property is covered with forest, while a commercial farmer leases the majority of the fields.

Weiss’ farm-based practice employs an organic farm manager, field manager and farm steward to cultivate about 15 acres reserved for the CSA. Another small field is in used for composting, enriched by daily deliveries of horse manure from a neighboring farm. Another 10 acres are being cultivated as a future holistic orchard.

Weiss chose the farm in part for its rich Washington loam soil and is taking additional steps to complete the three-year cycle required for certification as an organic farm. But Weiss says his farm already goes beyond the standards typically required of an organic farm, just as his diet goes beyond the label of vegan.

“I don’t like to say vegan, because vegan doesn’t necessarily indicate a healthful food,” he said. “Potato chips are vegan. Jelly beans are vegan. That’s why we like to say eat a plant-based, whole-foods diet, or a diet of unrefined whole-plant foods.”

Weis readily admits his program is not for everyone.

“It takes the desire to transform themselves into a new individual, psychically, mentally emotionally,” he said. “It really has everything to do with diet and nothing to do with diet. The plants become a tool.”

“Dr.Weiss’s program is not just what you eat, but the education you get,” said Anne Baker, 72, of Bedminster.

A breast-cancer survivor, Baker followed what she considered to be a generally healthy diet, but had been put on blood-pressure medication prior to signing up for Weiss’s year-long program.

“I was starting to see different family members and friends coming down with devastating illness, and I just didn’t want to go that route,” she said. “I signed up for an open house, and it was just exhilarating for me. I drove onto the farm property. I don’t know what it is, but peace just descends on you there. I signed up immediately.”

Ten months later, Baker says she has been transformed.

“I will never go back to eating the way I did before,” she said. “For me, it just worked. I stopped my blood-pressure medicine the day I started and I’ve never been back on it. My blood pressure was 118 over 62 on my visit a couple of weeks ago.”

Other than an ophthalmologist, Weiss is the only doctor Baker sees on a regular basis.

“He does participate in some insurances,” she said. “I do have Medicare and AARP and he does participate in that. All that is explained in the very beginning. You can ask any questions you want and they will answer honestly. It’s the only time I’ve ever gone to a doctor and enjoyed going for the visit.”

“It may not be for everyone, but if you make the commitment, and you know it’s going to going to help you and add extra years to your life, why not?” said John Palumbo, 60 of Ridgefield, a business administrator for a Bergen County law firm who was referred by another patient.

Palumbo entered the program at 5-foot-7 and 210 pounds.

“I’m now a healthier 160 pounds,” he said. “I stuck to it. Now they are introducing exercising as part of the program. I went to see a trainer, and he will keep in touch with Dr. Weiss. I feel very good. The body is still making some adjustments, but overall, I’m as happy as can be. I can’t thank him enough. Him and (practice manager) Asha (Gala).”

“To be having his farm, to be helping the people who come here, it makes me feel wonderful,” Weiss said. “And the people of Long Valley have been our champions. They have welcomed us here and have helped us every step of the way.”

Staff Writer William Westhoven: 973-917-9242; wwesthoven@GannettNJ.com.

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