Medical Medicine vs. Alternative

Odds of Intensive Care Medication Errors Are Over One Hundred Percent

2008-04-16T20:11:00.000-07:00

April 16, 2008 by: Heidi Stevenson

A report produced by PubMed Central states that 1.7 errors per day are experienced by patients in intensive care units (ICU). At least one life-threatening error occurs at some point during virtually every ICU stay. 78% of the serious medical errors are in medications.

1.7 errors per day times 78% equals the likelihood of experiencing a medication error while in an ICU of well over 100% per day. That means the odds are that you will receive the wrong medication or the wrong amount of a medication at least once every single day of an ICU stay.

If this is frightening, then consider that ICUs are where the patient is supposed to receive the highest quality of care. Try to imagine what that means about a routine hospital stay.

The article's introduction notes that there has been no improvement in patient safety since the 1999 report, "To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System" published by the Institute of Medicine. Why should this be?

Most businesses are involved with quality control. An industry based on this need exists. The reasons are obvious. If errors are not identified and resolved, then customers lose faith in the products and take their business elsewhere. However, in the medical industry, such concerns appear to be largely lacking. Use of systems like those of ISO, the primary quality standards agency, is lacking in nearly all hospitals.

Would you want to fly in a plane that was produced by a manufacturer without quality standards? That is the equivalent of what happens nearly every time someone enters a hospital. Our most precious possession, our health, is entrusted to a facility that does not deign to treat you as having as much value as a manufacturer's product.

The conclusion of the PubMed article states that "...the approach of identifying failures and redesigning faulty systems appears to be a more promising way to reduce human error." In other words, a solution to the incredibly high medication error rate lies in developing quality control systems.

The Number of People Harmed by Medication Errors

Thus far, we've addressed only the overall number of medication errors in hospitals. Another recent study addresses the number of ADEs (adverse drug events). A new method of identifying ADEs in hospital pediatrics was tested. Rather than assuming that self-reporting is accurate, the new method relies on triggers, events that are indicative of a bad drug reaction, such as the use of drug antidotes and results from lab tests.

The results were alarming. They found that about 15% of hospitalized children are harmed by ADEs. This is in sharp contrast to the results of self-reporting. The study indicates that only 4% of all adverse drug events are reported.

This is only one area of medical errors, drug events in hospitals. It doesn't get into sloppiness during surgeries, unneeded surgeries, failure of medical devices, adverse reactions or long term effects of vaccinations, or anything else. In this single area, it's obvious that the healthcare system is doing immense harm.

What You Can Do to Protect Yourself

The question is, what can you do about it? If you let the medical system do your thinking for you, then you look to it for solutions. Take a look at most patient support groups. They're full of people hoping that the medical system will do research on their particular problems. Even most groups that focus on iatrogenic issues, that is, doctor-induced errors, usually look to the system for a solution.

The solution does not exist within the medical system. That's the most important thing to comprehend. It is controlled by two things: pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers, and the profit motive. Patients are not products on which the system makes money. Patients are the devices on which the system makes money.

Solutions exist outside the paradigm of the modern medical system, not within it. Take your health into your own hands as much as possible. Rely on the system for extremely acute care only, for things like serious accidents and heart attacks. In other words, limit your exposure.

Stop eating junk foods. Limit your exposure to toxins. Get good exercise. When you need healthcare, consider the enormous range of alternative practitioners. Most of them survive only if they're successful in treating you. Their fees are generally just a fraction of those charged by MDs, and they rely on word-of-mouth. If you don't get better, then you don't refer others to them.

This is the opposite of the motivation within the modern medical system, where keeping you healthy means that you leave the system, so that money stops flowing into it. Keeping you unhealthy is to their benefit. If a drug produces diabetes, as many do, you'll likely spend the rest of your life accepting their drugs and medical treatments for the damage to your system. If it damages your endocrine system, as steroids do, you may end up with Cushing's disease and a resultant heart attack.

At the earliest signs of problems, see an alternative holistic practitioner. Homeopaths, acupuncturists, and several others can help integrate emotional concerns and resolve many health problems before they become serious. If you have acne and take it seriously as indicative of an underlying condition -- which is in complete contrast to the medical system's treatment by simply suppressing the symptom –- you are far more likely to get at the root of the issue, resolving not only the symptom, acne, but also its causes. The result is genuine health, not simply the temporary suppression of symptoms.

Conclusion

From the studies noted here, it's clear that the modern medical system is not concerned with adverse events. If it were, then it would have instituted methods for limiting harm decades ago.

To have any hope of real health, you need to take your care into your own hands. Treat your mind and body as the most valuable things you own. They are. Take good care of them. Feed them well. Keep them active. Treat them gently with natural healing methods. Most people can avoid the trap of the medical system their entire lives with these simple, common sense, steps.

References:

"Clinical review: Medication errors in critical care", by Eric Moyen, Eric Camiré, and Henry Thomas Stelfox (http://ccforum.com/content/12/2/208/?mkt=156312)

"Development, Testing, and Findings of a Pediatric-Focused Trigger Tool to Identify Medication-Related Harm in US Children's Hospitals", Glenn S. Takata, MD, Wilbert Mason, MD, MPG, Carol Taketomo, PharmD, Tina Logsdon, MS, Paul J. Sharek, MD, MPH ((http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/c...)

Have You Received Your Hiroshima Treatment Yet

2008-04-14T20:09:00.000-07:00

“Have You Received Your Hiroshima Treatment Yet”
By Robert H. Sorge, N.D., Ph.D., Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine

Orthodox drug medicine becomes more and more dangerous to the public health each and every single day. How they get away with their criminal mal-practices defies human reasoning.

If you think “Hiroshima” is a new type of alternative medicine treatment, think again. As unbelievable as it may seem, orthodox drug medicine doctors in the name of health care are exposing fellow citizens and human beings with more radiation than the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with every CT scan they administer.

What is a CT scan? A CT scan is a diagnostic tool that rotates around the body taking multiple x-rays of targeted organs and area’s of your body from various angles. These images are assembled by a computer into three-dimensional cross sections that provide much greater clarity and detail than every before. This is certainly a valuable diagnostic tool in an extreme emergency.

Here is the horror. CT scans are now being used in routine unnecessary and frivolous procedures. What you are not being told is you are being bombarded with 100 to 200 times the radiation of a chest x-ray. If you think you can be exposed to that much radiation and not greatly increase your chances of cancer, think again. Seventy million CT scans were performed last year in the U.S. Just think what that means to the career industrial complex. The orthodox, drug medicine, industrial complex is guaranteeing its financial future.

I didn’t use the name of “Hiroshima” just to get your attention or for dramatic effect alone. David Brenner and colleagues from Columbia University Medical Center reported in the New England Journal of Medicine that the typical radiation dose for a single CT scan is (15mSv). Most patients are required to take three or four CT scans over the course of their treatment. That’s as much radiation exposure as A-bomb survivors at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Did anyone stop to ask if the cancer rate increased after the A-bomb was dropped on these two Japanese cities?

The Columbia researchers tell us that CT scans are directly responsible for over 2% of the national total cancer and that’s just for starters. We’ll get the real numbers from the medical gang years later, like we usually do. For many it will be too late.

Of particular concern are the 15 million children who got the Hiroshima cocktail in the last three years. Their small developing bodies are much more sensitive to the adverse effects of radiation. With the orthodox drug gang pitching the benefits of CT scans, the growing popularity to view these wonderful, colored 3-D pictures at the insurance company’s expense, the financial interests of thousands of dollars a pop and the unbridled over use of this technology, how is it even remotely possible for cancer rates not to increase exponentially?

Radiation even in very small exposures is an immune suppressor. Every organ, gland, system, nerve and cell of your body is compromised, weakened and in some cases destroyed. It is no longer a matter of just cancer increasing. Everyone who has been exposed to this medical procedure, without exception, is now more prone to every potential degenerative disease that exists. Radiation exposure and its long term after effects, disables, maims and kills as we learned from the survivors of both Nagasaki and Hiroshima and 100 years of medical use.

Everyone has under performing systems, genetic pre-dispositions and individual weaknesses. Whatever they are, wherever they may be, modern day medicine has much magnified them many times over. You are now weaker, more susceptible and much more inclined to develop disease in that area of pre-disposition.

As surprising as it may seem, 93% of the doctors licensed to practice medicine and 53% of the nations radiologists, according to Julian Whitaker, M.D., editor of “Health and Healing” newsletter, were not aware of the adverse affects of the CT scan risk of cancer. Can you imagine this? It’s like the blind leading the blind.

Something seems to be wrong here. Where is our FDA, Center for Disease Control, American Cancer Society, Board of Medical Examiners, Consumers Protection Agency, Department of Health and Human Services, American Medical Society, and Medical News? Why aren’t they reporting this to you? Remember these are the same people who want to take our vitamins, herbs and natural treatments from us.

If you’ve received the Hiroshima/Nagasaki cocktail don’t think your thyroid is right. The thyroid is extremely sensitive to even very small doses of radiation. Every emergency doctor knows this. Why haven’t you been informed of this fact? After your thyroid has been Hiroshima/Nagaskied, next in sequence is your pineal. Then your pituitary, then your male/female hormones. In fact, it’s not possible for any hormone to be the same.

Most ground zero New Yorkers know what environmental diseases they suffered from 9-11 and they weren’t exposed to the after effects of an atom bomb. The people of Nagasaki and Hiroshima who were exposed to the atomic bomb radiation were never right. Even in the next generation, most were never healthy. Why should you think everything is O.K. for you if you’ve been exposed to the same amount of radiation?

Iaotrogenic disease (doctor induced) is the 3rd cause of death in the U.S. After heart disease and cancer comes seeing your orthodox drug medicine doctor and fulfilling his prescriptions. CT scanning will do much to maintain that statistic. Modern day orthodox drug medicine is a very dangerous practice.

CT scans are being prescribed like jelly beans these days. It’s all about the money. Most people don’t need them, ever. The questions you have to ask your doctor are, “Is this necessary?” “Is there a safer alternative?” “What about ultra sound or MRI?” and “What about watchful waiting?” Patients are being Hiroshima/Nagaskied these days as a screening tool for problems that don’t exist, may never exist or even imagined. Patients are being told that CT scans will detect problems in their early stages when they are treatable and as a result, save lives.

Julian Whitaker, M.D., says, “this is non-sense. Full body CT scans are more likely to reveal abnormalities of dubious importance which not surprisingly funnel patients into further testing and unnecessary medical procedures.” Dr. Whitaker further states that, “No research supports the benefits or safety of CT scans. In fact, the American College of Radiology and other medical organizations actively discourage their use.”

It seems that the orthodox drug medicine can’t help themselves. They can’t resist filthy lucre. They continue to repeat themselves, performing mindless stents, angioplasty, double, triple, quadruple, by-pass surgery, and chemotherapy, all scientifically unproven and dangerous procedures. Now they have added CT scans to their list of killer but money making procedures. What will be next?

The Hiroshima/Nagasaki effect is only the beginning of this Dr. Frankenstein. Minor irregularities will obviously be detected with this technology. What do you think happens next? Fear…..fear…..fear! The whoremongers of fear strike into patients. They specialize in triggering this emotion. Patients are told they have cancer or cancer is implied. What they are not told is 99.9% of the time this irregularity is meaningless. The body surrounds it, chews it up, annihilates it and spits it out. A strong immune system is the best cancer control on the planet.

I’ve seen scores of cases of women with perfectly fine breasts get them chopped off because of some nebulous finding on a CT scan. Hundreds of others getting lymph nodes chopped out, or other organs removed, harmful chemotherapy administered and other unnecessary and dangerous medical procedures performed after being CT scanned.

It is urgent if you have been CT scanned
for any reason in the last five years.

1 You must contact your alternative doctor immediately for a full evaluation.

2. After your test results come back discuss in detail what a radiation detox treatment program consists of. Your health and life could in danger. Radiation exposure has long term implications.

Be certain your thyroid is evaluated for optimal function. Do not accept the diagnosis, “it’s normal”. That is meaningless. You want your thyroid function to be tested against optimal function, not just disease.If you are fatigued or not repairing as quickly as before your CT scan, have your pituitary gland checked. Your human growth hormone production may be greatly curtailed. This affects your body’s ability to repair itself and remain youthful.

5. If your immune system has been compromised since your CT scan, discuss with your alternative medical doctor a personal I.V. nutrition, chelation, therapy program based on your individual needs. Do not wait for your health to collapse to take action

6. If you are suffering from chronic fatigue since your CT scan, discuss with your alternative medicine doctor, ozone infused far infrared sauna detoxification therapy, direct I.V. ozone therapy, and hyperbaric oxygen. Oxygen at the cellular level is key to cancer prevention and high level wellness.

7. Be sure to discuss with your alternative medical doctor bio- identical male/female hormone restoration therapy. Radiation exposure even in small exposures down regulates and ages hormones rapidly. You need optimal hormone production for a healthy immune system.

8. Radiation destroys cells. Discuss with your doctor a vitamin saturation therapy program based on your individual biochemistry.

9. If you are a cancer survivor, discuss with your doctor an alternative medicine, cancer nutritional, support program to aggressively help prevent re-occurrence.

10. Consider getting away to a body, mind, spirit, health, retreat to get reorganized to attack the long term destroying effects of Hiroshima/Nagasaki radiation exposure.

Coffee Enema: You must try it

2008-04-14T11:57:00.000-07:00

William Donald Kelley, D.D.S. ( November 1, 1925 — January 30, 2005)

William Donald Kelley, DDS, 79, went home Sunday, Jan. 30, 2005, to be with his parents and other loved ones as his children watched over him. A native of Arkansas City, Dr. Kelley lived the majority of his adult life in Texas, primarily in the Dallas/ Fort Worth area. He graduated from Baylor University with both his master’s and science and D.D.S. degrees and performed pioneering research relating to nutrition and alternative medicine. Dr. Kelley is survived by his brothers, Warren Richard Kelley and Lachlan Phillip Kelley, as well as his four children, nine grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his parents, William O. Butler and Velma (Prince) Kelley.

Dear Friends,

It is with a heavy heart that I report to you that my friend and mentor, Dr. William Donald Kelley, D.D.S., passed away on January 30, 2005. In September of last year he had an upper respiratory infection from which he never really recovered. His son knew there was something terribly wrong when his dad asked him to take him to the hospital on January 24, 2005. At the hospital they took tests that came back reading good for a 79-year-old man, but they showed that he had recently suffered a mild heart attack (his dad died of a heart attack at 51). The morning after his emergency hospital visit he couldn’t get out of bed and told his son he needed to go back to the hospital. He was admitted to the hospital and on Sunday morning at 2 am, January 30 th, he had another heart attack and at 6:03 pm he passed away.

Dr. Kelley was a brilliant cancer researcher and, after curing himself in 1963 of metastasized pancreatic cancer, never wavered in his belief that pancreatic enzymes, coffee enemas, and a diet based on your particular metabolic type are, together, the answer to healing and preventing cancer.

William Donald Kelley, D.D.S., Overcomes Pancreatic Cancer in 1963
Dr. Kelley, in 1963, when he was 37 years old, was diagnosed with metastasized pancreatic cancer. The doctors did a series of X-rays that showed that he had lesions in his lungs, a huge tumor in his right hip, his liver was swollen to three times it’s normal size and it appeared that he had a pancreatic tumor that had metastasized very quickly. The surgeon said Kelley was too sick to operate on and told Mrs. Kelley (his wife and the mother of his four children) that he had 4 to 8 weeks to live.

Dr. Kelley went home and began researching cancer. He read that in 1906 a Scottish embryologist, Dr John Beard, proposed that pancreatic enzymes represented the body’s main defense against cancer.

In 1911 Dr Beard published The Enzyme Therapy of Cancer, but after his death in 1923 the theory was basically forgotten, especially with the advent of Marie Curie and her radiation work.

Dr. Beard believed pancreatic enzymes had to be injected to prevent destruction by hydrochloric acid in the stomach.

In the 1930s and 1940s a number of documented experiments were published proving that orally ingested pancreatic enzymes in both animals and human studies are absorbed active and intact in the gut and serve a variety of physiological functions. The easiest way to document this is with a 24-hour check of the urine. If you feed a patient a large amount of pancreatic enzymes and check their urine for 24 hours, you can see how much of the enzymes are excreted in the urine. Virtually 100% of what you take orally is found in the urine, not in the intestinal tract, which means that they have to be absorbed.

Further evidence demonstrated that orally ingested pancreatic enzymes are acid stable, pass intact into the small intestine and are absorbed through the intestinal mucosa into the blood stream as part of an entero-pancreatic recycling process.

Kelley took the work of Beard and theorized that the formation of cancer was clear. Excess female hormones were responsible for changing a stem cell into a trophoblast cell. In simple English, this means that cancer is the growth of normal tissue, but at the wrong time and in the wrong place. It progresses because of a lack of cancer digesting enzymes in the body and Kelley believed the pancreas, through its enzymes, was the primary cancer fighter in the body. So his solution was to get pancreatic enzymes (freeze dried porcine pancreatic enzymes in capsules) to the cancer site and not only inhibit the growth, reverse the growth, but control the rate of attack, otherwise toxins would flood the body and cause all sorts of physical problems; high fever, chills, sweats, and other symptoms of a severe case of the flu.

Dr. Kelley went through his medical textbooks searching for some way of alleviating these symptoms and allowing the enzymes to work. The one thing that kept coming back to him was the coffee enema. For instance, he found that coffee enemas had been advocated in the Merck Manual from 1890 to 1977. When he reluctantly gave himself his first coffee enema he was amazed that within 30 minutes his temperature went from 104° to 99° and his muscle aches and pains resolved. It was then that he devised his on again, off again regime of taking the pancreatic enzymes, all the while taking 2 or 3 coffee enemas a day.

Dr. Kelley’s mother suggested the third part of his regime; change your diet from junk food to fresh fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds and whole grains. This made sense as, while researching enzymes, he learned that cooking kills the enzymes that are in raw food, which are needed to digest the food.

Within months of following his regime his doctor pronounced Dr. Kelley cancer free and, by word of mouth, people with cancer or with loved ones with cancer came from near and far to get Dr. Kelley’s advice on how to overcome it.

While helping others cure themselves of cancer, Dr. Kelley discovered 12 different Metabolic Types, in which different people, because of genetic heritage and environmental factors have different requirements for vegetarian or carnivorous diets, raw and/or cooked.

Thousands of cancer victims are alive today because they followed Dr. Kelley’s cancer eliminating regime that he published in his “Do-It-Yourself” booklets, One Answer To Cancer and Dr. Kelley’sSelf Test for The Different Metabolic Types (this booklet helps you discover your Metabolic Type and what foods are best for you).

Dr. Kelley Took Me Under His Wing in 1998
After reading one of my 1998 newsletters Dr. Kelley said he would like to help me continue writing the newsletter — he said by writing it I was helping people and that’s what we’re put on earth to do.

He helped me in many ways from introducing me to a banker that set me up with a credit card acceptance account to improving my relationship with Dale by sharing with me (and subsequently giving me permission to publish) his 1970’s Dr. Kelley’sSelf Test for The Different Metabolic Types booklet.

Scoring my Metabolic Typing test results proved that it is necessary for me to eat red meat to stay healthy. I do well without hydrochloric acid or pancreatic enzymes (except during allergy season when I have no allergies as long as I take plenty of pancreatic enzymes with each meal — otherwise I suffer with itchy eyes and a runny nose all of May and part of June in Walnut Creek).

Taking the test, which took several hours, was one of the best things I’ve ever done. Also, discovering Dale’s metabolic type (on a 1998 car trip from the San Francisco Bay area to Phoenix I read the questions to him and recorded his answers as he drove) was a real eye-opener. It turns out he is in the Balanced Category of Dr. Kelley’s Metabolic Chart (the chart comes with Dr. Kelley’sSelf Test for The Different Metabolic Types booklet), which means he falls in the middle between doing well as a vegetarian and doing well eating red meat, but he needs hydrochloric acid and pancreatic enzymes daily. He also needs a wide variety of foods either cooked or raw.

Dale does not have cancer, but he thrives on Dr. Kelley’s Formula PEP (formerly Formula CA+) (freeze-dried porcine pancreatic enzymes in capsules). Before adding them to his diet at every meal he did not digest his food at all well. He is a Type III in the Balanced Category of Dr. Kelley’s Metabolic Chart.

The chart also gives you general guidelines for the vitamins and minerals needed (and not needed) by meat eaters, vegetarians and those in the balanced category (those of us who can thrive eating both meat and vegetables). It was amazing to me that Dr. Kelley knew that I feel better on low amounts of B vitamins (50 mg. a day instead of 100 mg.) and I need high amounts of bioflavonoids (I’ve taken 1000 mg. or more daily since 1961 when I discovered I don’t bruise when I take high amounts and I do when I lower the amount).

Coffee Enemas A Way of Life for Dr. Kelley and Others
Another way Dr. Kelley helped me was by relieving me of my worries that I could be harming myself by taking a coffee enema every day, which I have done since November 1982. Dr. Kelley said taking daily coffee enemas was not only safe, but will help keep me healthy. The way I got started taking them was when I stayed a month in 1982 at the Gerson Cancer Clinic in Rosarita Beach, Mexico to overcome my allergies. At the clinic I took coffee enemas sometimes four times a day and I have continued to take at least one coffee enema every day since. Coffee enemas give me a sense of well being that I miss whenever I skip a day — and once, when I felt poisoned from eating Chinese food, a coffee enema seemed to save my life.

Dr. Kelley said he also took a coffee enema every day and had since 1963! He said thousands of his patients and many of the doctors and practitioners that he trained over the years in using his regime to help their cancer patients and to keep themselves healthy also take a daily coffee enema.

Dr. Kelley got started taking coffee enemas in 1963 when he became sick with flu-like symptoms — seven months into his original therapy of eating mostly raw fruits and vegetables, water soaked nuts, beans and brown rice (which is the correct way to eat for his metabolic type) and taking handfuls of freeze dried porcine-based pancreatic enzymes with and between meals. By the third day of feeling sick he started throwing up — every time he took the enzymes he would throw them up. When he realized it might be the enzymes that were making him throw up and feel like he had the flu he decided to stop taking them for a few days to test if that was true. In a few days he was feeling better and began taking the enzymes again. For two or three days he felt okay and then he got the flu symptoms back again. He also noticed that when he was not taking the enzymes he could feel (with his hands) the tumor in his pancreas get bigger and when he went back on the enzymes he could feel it get smaller. This really baffled him as he thought he should feel sick when the tumor was growing and feel better when it was shrinking.

Wanting desperately to continue to shrink his tumor he stayed awake day and night searching for the answer. He figured it out by comparing himself to a cancer patient who is throwing up while on chemotherapy. It was (and is) believed that people on chemotherapy throw up because 1.) Chemo is toxic, and 2.) The tumors that the chemo breaks up are toxic. The trick to successful chemotherapy is to kill the cancer before the chemo and the tumor debris kills the patient. Since he wasn’t taking chemo, Dr. Kelley figured he was throwing up because the enzymes were dissolving the tumor and the dissolving tumor material was toxic.

After he figured that out he went back to the medical journals searching for a way to detoxify himself while the enzymes dissolved his tumor.

Merck Manual Advocated Coffee Enemas from 1890 to 1977
This is when he decided to try coffee enemas, which became the most controversial part of his cancer therapy. He first read about coffee enemas in a revered compendium of orthodox treatments, the Merck Manual. The Merck Manual advocated coffee enemas, “when you take coffee rectally the caffeine stimulates the liver to release toxins,” from 1890 to 1977, when they were removed “more for space consideration than anything else,” according to the 1981 editor of the Manual.

Most nursing texts for the better part of the 20 th century recommended coffee enemas as well. Particularly during the 1920s and 1930s coffee enemas were used in the US and abroad to treat a variety of conditions, and there are numerous articles from that time discussing the wide-ranging effects on patients. Coffee enemas were frequently recommended because patients, whatever their underlying problem, tended to feel better after a coffee enema. Dr. Kelley followed thousands of his patients over the years that have done coffee enemas in some cases for decades and virtually all patients report an increased sense of well being.

Dr. Kelley said he found research going back to the beginning of the 20 th century that indicated that coffee enemas stimulate more efficient liver function and gallbladder emptying, and it is believed that is the primary therapeutic benefit. One article stated, “Particularly with cancer patients, who often have a very large tumor burden, as the body repairs and rebuilds and as tumors break down, enormous amounts of toxic debris can be produced, much of which must be processed in the liver. The coffee enemas seem to enhance this processing of toxic metabolic waste.” Interestingly, in Hospital Practice (August 15, 1999, page 128), which is a very orthodox journal of internal medicine, there is a summary of an article showing how coffee enemas seem to enhance gallbladder and liver function.

The first time Dr. Kelley took a coffee enema he went on the enzymes for about five days until he was feeling good and sick. He had purchased ground coffee at the market and an enema bag at the pharmacy (later he found the enema buckets that are available from Road To Health). When he had muscle aches, a fever of 104° and was vomiting he decided it was time to put the coffee enemas to the test. After taking his first coffee enema, within 30 minutes his fever went from 104° to 99°, his aches and pains disappeared and he stopped throwing up. From that day on he had one or more coffee enemas daily and continued doing them for the rest of his life.

The Coffee Enema
To take a coffee enema mix one-cup strongly brewed coffee with three cups distilled water to make a coffee enema solution. I use Yuban coffee, which was recommended at the Gerson clinic. Dr. Kelley recommends that you take a plain water enema (distilled water) before your coffee enema. This allows water to hydrate your colon (when a person is dehydrated and the coffee solution is used without a water enema being taken first the coffee is absorbed into the fecal matter and is wasted for the purpose of detoxification). For detoxification to occur the caffeine in the coffee solution must get to the hepatic portal vein and deliver the caffeine to the liver, which causes the bile duct to dilate and dump the stored bile in the gall bladder (the caffeine in a coffee enema gently stimulates this much needed dumping).

[The liver receives two types of blood from the hepatic portal vein: 1.) arterial blood from the hepatic artery, which brings fresh, oxygenated blood from the aorta and 2.) portal (venous) blood which has previously passed through the intestine and spleen, which carries not only nutrients and, in the case of a person who has just taken a coffee enema, caffeine, but also various contaminants (drugs, toxins from food, bacteria, byproducts of blood-cell recycling). These two types of blood mix together in the hepatic sinusoids and, after the liver performs a diversity of functions, including the detoxification of drugs and poisons and the formation and secretion of bile — which often contains drugs and poisons — to the bile duct and gall bladder, which eventually dumps into the intestine) the blood then passes out of the liver.]

To take the enema I lie on my right side on the floor or on a low bench and insert the enema tube letting the whole-quart of either water or the coffee solution go in and I hold it for about 5 to 10 minutes. Both Gerson and Kelley recommend holding the coffee enema 15-20 minutes, especially if you are in a “healing crises,” which is what Gerson calls the flu-like symptoms that Dr. Kelley experienced. A healing crises is the goal of every patient at the Gerson clinic and of Dr. Kelley because, even though you feel terrible, you know the treatment is working when you go into a healing crisis. Your job is to keep taking coffee enemas until the crisis is past and at that point you know you have improved your health (by dissolving toxins with the pancreatic enzymes and getting them out of your body with the coffee enemas).

I also make a coffee concentrate that was taught at the Gerson Clinic: Bring to a boil 4 quarts of distilled water and add 3 cups of Yuban coffee. Boil for 3 minutes, turn down the heat and simmer for 20 minutes, cool, strain into quart glass bottles (makes about 3 quarts, 1 cup) and refrigerate. Use one cup of concentrate to 3 cups of distilled water for your coffee solution.

On the question of getting a caffeine high from coffee enemas, patients almost universally report a relaxing effect, not the stimulation you find with coffee taken orally. Even people who have never been able to tolerate drinking coffee due to it causing an amphetamine like response, report always feeling relaxed when doing a coffee enema.

DEATH BEGINS IN THE COLON

2008-04-14T11:56:00.001-07:00

DEATH BEGINS IN THE COLON

IMPORTANT DISCUSSION ON ALIMENTARY TOXEMIA BEFORE THE

ROYAL SOCIETY OF MEDICINE OF GREAT BRITAIN

Recently the subject of alimentary toxemia was discussed in London before the Royal Society of Medicine by fifty-seven of the leading physicians of Great Britain. Among the speakers were prominent surgeons physicians, and specialists in the various branches of medicine.

POISONS OF ALIMENTARY INTESTINAL TOXEMIA

The following is a list of the various Poisons noted by the several speakers: Indol, skarol, phenol, cresol, indican, Sulphurretted hydrogen. ammonia, histidine, indican, urrobilin, methylmercaptan, tetramerhy-lendiamin, pentamethy lendiamine, Putrescin, cadaverin, neurin, cholin, muscarine, butyric acid, bera-imidazzolethy-lamine, methylgandinine, ptomarropine ne, botulin, tyramine, agamatine, tryptophane, sepsin, idolethylaynine, sulpherroglobine.

Of the 36 Poisons mentioned above, several are highly active, producing most profound effects, and in very Small quantities. In cases of alimentary toxemia some one or several of these Poisons is constantly bathitig the delicate body cells and setting up charges which lirally result in grave disease.

SYMPTOMS AND DISEASES DUE TO ALIMENTARY TOXEMIA

It should be understood that these findings afe not mere theories, but are the results of demonstrations In actual practice by eminent physicians. Of course it is not claimed that alimentary toxemia is the only cause of atl the symptoms and diseases named: Although of many it rnay be the sole or principal Cause, some of them are due to ot;ier causes as well. In the following summary the vdrious symptoms and disorders mentioned in the discussion in London, to which reference has been made above, are grouped and classified.

THE DIGESTIVE ORGANS

Duodenal ulcer causing partial or complete obstruction of the duodenum; pyloric spasm; pyloric obstruction; distension and dilation of the stomach; gastric ulcer; cancer of the stomach; adhesions of the omentum to the stomach and liver; inflammation of the liver; cancer of the liver.

The muscular wall of the intestine as well as other muscles atrophy, so that the passage of their contents is hindered. The abdominal viscera lose their normal relationship to the spine and to each other, on account of weakening of the -abdominal muscles: these displacements are much more marked and Serious in women. Other conditions are: Catarrab of the intestines; foul gases and foul smelling stools; colitis; acute enteritis; appendicitis, acute and chronic; adhesions and "kinks" of the intestines; visceroptosis; enlargement of spleen distended abdomen, tendernesss of the abdomen, summer diarrhea of children: inflammation, of Pancreas; chronic dragging abdominal pains; gastritis; cancer of pancreas; iniammatory changes of gall bladder; cancer of all bladder; gallstones; degeneration of liver; cirrihosis of liver; infection of the gums and decay of the teeth; ulcers in the mouth and pharynx.

HEART AND BLOOD VESSELS

Wasting and weakening of the heart muscles; micorbic cyamosis from breaking up of blood cells; fatty degeneration of the heart; endocarditis; myocarditis, subnormal blood pressure; enlargement ofthe heart; the dilitation of the aorta; high blood Pressure; arteriosclerosis; permanent dilation of arteries.

Dr W, Bezley says: "There are a few phases of cardiovascular trouble (disease of heart and blood vessels) with which disorder of some part of the alimentary tract Is not causatively associated,"

THE NERVOUS SYSTEM

Headaches of various kinds -- frontal, occupital, temporal, dull, or intense, hemicrania; headache of a character to lead to a mistaken diagnosis Cf brain tumor. Dr. Lane tells of iw case where a surgeon had proposed an operation for the removal of a tumor from the frontal lobe of the brain; the difficulty was wholly removed by the exclusion of the colon.

More on Coffee Enemas from Doctors

2008-04-14T11:54:00.000-07:00

Dr William D. Kelley, DDS, MS:

"A coffee enema should be given every morning for one month; then twice a week for eight months. The coffee enema is very stimulating to the liver, and is the greatest aid in eliminating its toxic poisons."

"The word detox does not appear in the main textbook on cancer or the main medical textbook...the word in medicine refers to heroin addicts and getting them off heroin...they do not conceive that their are such things as toxins created by a tumour...where do they think it all goes?"-----Ralph Moss

Dr Jethro Kloss, MD Back to Eden (Page 862)

(here are many reasons for doing enemas, including)"...enemas taken with only a relatively small amount of fluid in order to cleanse the rectum and lower colon; astringent enemas, taken to relieve inflammation in diarrhea, dysentery, etc.; nourishing enemas, given in wasting diseases, unconsciousness, and other conditions where it becomes necessary to administer food by rectum....(and) enemas taken to thoroughly cleanse the entire length of the colon'

James A. Balch, MD. (Prescripton for Nutritional Healing Pages 323,324)

.……cleansing enemas are not retained or held in the body; they are used to flush out the colon...(A coffee enema) is beneficial in treatment.. .because it stimulates the liver to excrete toxins or 'poison bile.' It's called a retention enema because it is held in or retained for fifteen minutes."

Dr Patrick Quillin, PhD, RD (Beating Cancer With Nutrition)

"enemas are one of the oldest healing modalities in human literature...Coffee enemas have been in the Merck Medical Manual for decades, until 1977, when editors of the manual claimed that this revered therapy was eliminated for 'lack of space' in the new manuscript. The reality is that coffee enemas became the focal point in criticizing alternative cancer therapies".

Dr Max Gerson, M.D. (A Cancer Therapy)

"In as much as detoxification of the body is of the greatest importance, especially in the beginning, it is absolutely necessary to administer frequent enemas, day and night (on the average, we give coffee enemas every four hours, day and night, and even more frequently against severe pain, nausea, general nervous tension and depression)...Some patients take enemas every two hours, or even more frequently, during the first days of the treatment. More advanced cases are severely intoxicated and the absorption of the tumor masses, glands, etc., intoxicates them even more. Many years ago I lost several patients by coma hepaticum, since I did not know, and therefore neglected, the vital importance of frequent and regularly continued elimination of poisonous substances, with the help of juices, enemas, etc."

Dr Alan Nittler, M.D. (A New Breed of Doctor)

"(Coffee enemas for gallbladder problems)..'The coffee enema causes a relaxation in the liver-gallbladder region which gives rapid relief of pain. If you are lucky, you could even pass a gallstone or two. Maybe more. If you are not lucky, the pain returns and you must repeat the process until help can arrive for more definitive care. In either event, you have jeopardized nothing. This is the one and only time I recommend coffee. As a drink, it is a no-no for hypoglycemics, which applies to most people".

"Some metabolic therapists insist on daily enemas, including coffee enemas (excellent detoxifiers of the liver) in order to cleanse the system.."-----Dr Harold W Harper, MD ( How You Can Beat the Killer diseases 169)

Dr John Sessions, DO (Coping With Cancer page 29) The coffee enema stimulates the liver, alkalines the duodenum, and helps eliminate toxic wastes. It dissolves encrusted wastes that have accumulated along the colon walls, and the caffeine content encourages peristaltic muscle contraction to loosen deposits which may show up as 'ropes' of mucus. Gradually, as protein metabolism improves, the colon's muscle tone also improves and bowel movements become normal without the aid of an enema."

Dr Elson Haas, M.D. (Staying Healthy With Nutrition)

"During a basic dietary detox programme, other, more subtle colon stimuli are usually used to enhance colon action. These may include herbal or pharmaceutical laxatives, fiber and colon detox supplements, such as psyllium seed husks alone or mixed with other agents, for example, aloe vera powder, bentonite clay, and acidophilus culture. Enemas using water, herbs, or even diluted coffee (stimulates liver cleansing) may also be used".

Dr Linda Rector Page, ND, PhD (Healthy Healing Page 32)

Coffee enemas have become standard m natural healing when liver and blood related cancers are present. Caffeine used in this way stimulates the liver and gallbladder to remove toxins, open bile ducts, encourage increased peristaltic action, and produce necessary enzyme activity for healthy red blood cell formation and oxygen uptake"

Mostly taken from newsletter of Health Quarters, PO Box 62130, Colorado Springs, CO 80962, USA. Tel: 001 719 593 8694. Fax ---488 1196. Anne Frahm advice & support centre.
Cancer & Detox guru: Dr Shultze, School of Natural Healing, PO Box 3628, Santa Monica, California 90408-3628, USA. Tel: 001 310 576 6565. Fax: ---6575.

COFFEE: THE ROYAL FLUSH by Ralph W. Moss, Ph.D

Coffee Enema's Science right from Merck Manual from 1890 to 1977!

2008-04-14T11:44:00.000-07:00

When I first began my research efforts, I was very surprised to find that the coffee enemas, often portrayed as one of the most bizarre aspects of alternative medicine, came right out of the Merck Manual, a revered compendium of orthodox treatments. When I was completing my immunology fellowship, I had an interesting correspondence with the then editor of the Merck Manual, who confirmed that the coffee enemas had been advocated in the Merck Manual from about 1890 right up until 1977!

Most nursing texts for the better part of the century recommend coffee enemas. Particularly during the 1920s and 1930s coffee enemas were used in the US and abroad to treat a variety of conditions, and I have put together a library of articles from that time discussing the wide ranging effects on patients. Coffee enemas were frequently recommended because patients, whatever their underlying problem, tended to feel better after a coffee enema. I have followed thousands of patients over the years who have done coffee enemas in some cases for decades: virtually all patients report an increase sense of well being.

There is research going back to the earlier part of the century that indicated that coffee enemas stimulate more efficient liver function and gallbladder emptying, and we believe that is the primary therapeutic benefit. Particularly with cancer patients, who often have a very large tumor burden, as the body repairs and rebuilds and as tumors break down, enormous amounts of toxic debris can be produced, much of which must be processed in the liver. The coffee enemas seem to enhance this processing of toxic metabolic waste. Interestingly enough, in Hospital Practice (August 15, 1999 page 128), a very orthodox journal of internal medicine, I read a summary of an article showing coffee seems to enhance gallbladder and liver function.

The issue of a caffeine high is often raised. I don’t believe this is the case at all. First, patients almost universally report a relaxing effect, not the stimulation you find with coffee taken orally. Many patients, in fact, fall asleep while doing the enemas. I, myself, have never been able to tolerate drinking coffee because coffee, when drunk, causes in me an amphetamine like response. However, I always feel relaxed when I do a coffee enema and often fall asleep. Something completely different is going on with the enemas.

The Merck Manual carried this procedure as an instruction until 1977. It was pulled without explanation or advance notice.

Healers that apply the Gerson Therapy use the caffeine dialysis non-invasive process to instantly remove all pain killer medications from incoming terminal cancer patients. No morphine, no opium derivatives, all of which are immune system suppressors. The pain relief is immediate and persistant. Terminal patients get the coffee enema every three or four hours while they disgorge pounds of awful stuff on their way to complete cures.

The mineral selenium proves itself as powerful anti-cancer medicine

2008-04-14T09:47:00.000-07:00

Abunda Life Selenium

One of the most effective naturally occurring weapons against cancer is, like most healthy things, something many of us are not getting enough of. The mineral selenium has been shown in multiple studies to be an effective tool in warding off various types of cancer, including breast, esophageal, stomach, prostate, liver and bladder cancers. Not many people get the recommended dose of 200 micrograms a day. Most Americans only get between 60 and 100 micrograms of selenium daily from dietary sources, according to the Life Foundation's Disease Prevention and Treatment. That means daily supplements might be worth considering.

Selenium was first used in conventional medicine as a treatment for dandruff, but our understanding of the mineral has come a long way since then. Today, research shows selenium, especially when used in conjunction with vitamin C, vitamin E and beta-carotene, works to block chemical reactions that create free radicals in the body (which can damage DNA and cause degenerative change in cells, leading to cancer).

Selenium also helps stop damaged DNA molecules from reproducing. In other words, selenium acts to prevent tumors from developing. "It contributes towards the death of cancerous and pre-cancer cells. Their death appears to occur before they replicate, thus helping stop cancer before it gets started," says Dr. James Howenstine in A Physician's Guide to Natural Health Products That Work.

Selenium makes chemotherapy safer, more effective ( If you choose this chemotherapy blunder)
In addition to preventing the onset of the disease, selenium has also been shown to aid in slowing cancer's progression in patients that already have it. According to the Life Extension Foundation, the use of selenium during chemotherapy in combination with vitamin A and vitamin E can reduce the toxicity of chemotherapy drugs. The mineral also helps "enhance the effectiveness of chemo, radiation, and hyperthermia while minimizing damage to the patient's normal cells; thus making therapy more of a 'selective toxin,'" says Patrick Quillin in Beating Cancer with Nutrition.

A 1996 study by Dr. Larry Clark of the University of Arizona showed just how effective selenium can be in protecting against cancer. In the study of 1,300 older people, the occurrence of cancer among those who took 200 micrograms of selenium daily for about seven years was reduced by 42 percent compared to those given a placebo. Cancer deaths for those taking the selenium were cut almost in half, according to the study that was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

While the study concluded the mineral helped protect against all types of cancer, it had particularly powerful impacts on prostate, colorectal and lung cancers. Jean Carper, in Miracle Cures, called Dr. Clark's findings an "unprecedented cancer intervention study" that "bumped up the respectability of using supplements against cancer several notches."

Food sources of selenium
Although too much selenium can actually be toxic to the system, research indicates the majority of the population is not getting enough of the essential mineral. So, how can we up our intake of selenium and help our bodies fight cancer? The good news is there are some good dietary sources of selenium: Mushrooms, egg yolks, seafood, poultry and kidney, liver and muscle meats contain the mineral. Vegetables -- garlic, onions, broccoli, asparagus, tomatoes and others -- as well as whole grains and seeds can also be good sources of selenium.

However, because the amount of selenium in vegetables and grains depends on the selenium content in the soil in which they are grown, it can be hard for average consumers to know how much of the mineral they are actually getting in their diets. "The selenium content of food is largely dependent on the content of volcanic ash in the soil on which the food was grown, with higher volcanic ash content yielding higher selenium levels. Soil that is irrigated by seawater, such as much of California's cropland, also contains higher levels of selenium," says Sue Gebo in What's Left to Eat. Gebo adds that, in general, soil in the western United States is richer in selenium than soil in the eastern part of the country.

Accordingly, geography can have a significant impact on diet. In Antioxidants Against Cancer, author Ralph Moss PhD, says one theory for why cancer rates are so high in Linxian, China, dubbed "the 'world capital' of cancer," is that the soil is deficient in the essential minerals selenium and zinc. In Earl Mindell's Supplement Bible, Earl Mindell RPh PhD, suggests part of the reason American men are five times more likely than Japanese men to die from prostate cancer could be because, in general, "the Asian diet contains four times the amount of selenium as the average American diet."

Another reason it seems to be difficult for Americans to get enough selenium is the processing many of our foods go through before they make it onto grocery store shelves. Mindell points out, for example, that processing wheat into white flour strips it of a great deal of its selenium. One way to get more selenium in your diet might be to eat more organically grown foods, which some studies have shown to contain more selenium as well as higher levels of beta carotene and vitamin E. These two work together with selenium in cancer prevention, according to Alternative Medicine author Burton Goldberg.

Perhaps a more surefire way to boost your selenium intake is to add supplements to your diet. Mindell advocates the use of supplements, saying, "To me, taking selenium supplements, in addition to eating selenium-rich foods, is good insurance against disease." However, for those who oppose taking pills, Dr. Andrew Weil in Ask Dr. Weil says eating just one shelled Brazil nut -- grown in the selenium-rich soil of central Brazil -- provides 120 micrograms of the mineral, getting you that much closer to the daily target of 200 micrograms.

Although extremely high doses of selenium can have toxic effects, most people are not at risk for such an overdose, and could, in fact, use more of the mineral. Simply adding more selenium-rich foods, such as organically grown vegetables and fruits to your diet, along with supplements, can help reduce your risk of cancer. And another positive side effect of selenium, according to Eat and Heal, by the Editors of FC&A Medical Publishing, is that it can actually improve your mood. Those editors write, "People who don't eat enough selenium-rich foods tend to be grumpier than people with a high dietary intake, according to recent research." So, go ahead and crack a Brazil nut open and smile.

The experts speak on selenium and cancer

Selenium Mechanisms
There are several possible mechanisms for the protective effect of selenium. Selenium activates an enzyme in the body called gluthathione peroxidase that protects against the formation of free radicals—those loose molecular cannons that can damage DNA. In this situation, selenium may work interchangeably (and in synergy) with vitamin E. In test tube studies, selenium inhibited tumor growth and regulated the natural life span of cells, ensuring that they died when they were supposed to instead of turning "immortal" and hence malignant. Because of this particular action, the University of Arizona researchers say that selenium could be effective within a fairly short time frame.
Ask Dr Weil by Andrew Weil MD, page 207

Numerous studies suggest that an inverse association exists between selenium levels and cancer incidence (Hocman, 1988; Willett and Stampfer, 1986; Milner, 1985). Associations appear to be particularly strong with cancers that are also associated with high-fat, low-fiber diets (i.e., breast, colon, prostrate, etc.). The mechanism for selenium's reported protective effects is likely due to its function in antioxidant synthesis. Glutathione peroxidase, the primary enzyme that converts hydrogen peroxide to water (and thus prevents lipid peroxidation) is selenium-dependent. Inhibition of lipid or bile acid oxidation may account for its protective role (reviewed by Linder 1991:496-7). Selenium may also act as an immune stimulant. Selenium deficiency inhibits macrophage-mediated tumor destruction, and inhibits tumor necrosis factor-alpha production in animals (Kiremidjian-Schumacher et al., 1992). Dietary supplementation with selenium produced the opposite effects.
Cancer And Natural Medicine by John Boik, page 146

The safest antioxidants are vitamin C, vitamin E, selenium, and beta-carotene. Together, they block the chemical reactions that create free radicals, which can damage DNA and promote a variety of degenerative changes in cells. Chemotherapy and radiation generate free radicals; that is how they kill dividing cells.
Ask Dr Weil by Andrew Weil MD, page 47

At the Yunnan Tin Corporation in China there is a very high rate of lung cancer among the miners. Forty healthy miners were given selenium supplements for a year. The selenium, which increased in their blood, boosted a key detoxifying enzyme system while simultaneously decreasing dangerous lipid peroxide levels by nearly 75 percent. It also protected against cancer-causing substances and ultraviolet radiation. Doctors at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences concluded that selenium supplements were a safe and effective food supplement for people.
Cancer Therapy by Ralph W Moss PhD, page 112

Numerous mechanisms have been explored to explain the modulation of carcinogenesis by selenium (Medina 1986, El-Bayoumy 1991). The best characterized function of selenium in mammalian cells is as a component of the seleno- enzyme, glutathione peroxi-dase. This enzyme is localized in the cytosol and mitochondrial matrix, and it eliminates organic peroxides from the cell (Medina 1986). However, available evidence suggests that the prevention of carcinogenesis by selenium is not related to its function in glutathione peroxidase (Medina 1986). Other seleno- proteins have been identified, but their impact on carcinogenesis is not defined (Medina 1986). There is some evidence that selenium may alter the metabolism of carcinogens or the interaction of chemical carcinogens with DNA, but there is considerable controversy in the literature (Medina 1986). Additional mechanistic studies suggest that selenium may alter cell proliferation and/or immunologic responses (Medina 1986, El-Bayoumy 1991). Further research is needed to understand the mechanisms whereby selenium prevents cancer.
Carcinogens Human Diet by National Research Council, page 100

Selenium is needed to produce glutathione peroxidase, an antioxidant enzyme that protects the body from free radical damage. It is also important in preventing cancer and cardiomegaly an enlargement of the heart that causes premature aging and early death.
Complete Encyclopedia Of Natural Healing by Gary Null PhD, page 11

The best known functions of selenium at nutritionally adequate, but not at excessive, levels are its role as a part of the enzyme glutathione peroxidase and its interaction with heavy metals. Glutathione peroxidase destroys hydroperoxides and lipoperoxides, thereby protecting the constituents of the cells against free radical damage. Ip and Sinha (1981) have shown that selenium, through its function in glutathione peroxidase, could well be involved in protecting against cancer induced by high intakes of fat, especially polyunsaturated fatty acids. Glutathione peroxidase activity in human blood increases with increasing selenium intakes, but reaches a plateau at intakes well below those customary in the United States (Thomson and Robinson, 1980). Thus, if the antitumorigenic effect of selenium is mediated through its function in glutathione peroxidase, attempts to increase the enzyme activity by selenium supplementation, superimposed on an adequate diet in the United States, would not be successful. The second function of selenium is to protect against acute and chronic toxicity of certain heavy metals. Although selenium is known to interact with cadmium and mercury, the mechanism of action is not known. Selenium does not cause an increased elimination of the toxic elements, but, rather, an increased accumulation in some nontoxic form (National Academy of Sciences, 1971). It is conceivable that carcinogenic effects of these, and perhaps other heavy metals, could be counteracted by selenium, in a manner similar to its protection against their general toxicity.
Diet Nutrition Cancer by National Research Council, page 168

Selenium's main function in the body is to convert hydrogen peroxide to water, which is important for cellular health. Herbal Medicine Healing Cancer by Donald R Yance Jr, page 193 All of the body's tissues contain selenium, but it is most plentiful in the liver, kidneys, spleen, pancreas, and testes. Selenium works synergistically with vitamin E to protect tissues and cell membranes, aid in the production of antibodies, and help maintain a healthy heart and liver
Prescription For Dietary Wellness by Phyllis A Balch, page 44

Selenium Dosage/Administration
It has been reported that selenium doses of about 250-300 micrograms a day (diet and supplements) would be helpful in preventing cancer. If an average person consumes 125 to 150 micrograms of selenium a day, an additional supplemental amount of 100 micrograms is unlikely to produce any major side effects.
Choices In Healing by Michael Lerner, page 612

Recommendation: Take selenium aspartate in a dose of 100 to 200 micrograms daily..
Doctors Complete Guide Vitamins Minerals by Mary D Eades MD, page 496

Selenium is a mineral with anticancer activity. But the anticancer effects of selenium are greatly reduced when there is an insufficient intake of vitamin E. Rats who receive a normal amount of vitamin E in their diets showed a 45 percent decrease in tumors when they were given selenium. But they only had a 25 percent decrease if their diet was low in vitamin E. In fact, vitamin E was considered more important than selenium in decreasing "oxidant stress" to the fat of the breast.
Cancer Therapy by Ralph W Moss PhD, page 74

In the treatment of cancer the dosage is generally about 10,000 micrograms, still nearly one hundred times the National Academy of Science's recommended dose. Revici's treatment is more complicated than just organic selenium. He only uses selenium in patients whom he deems to be in a "catabolic," as opposed to an "anabolic," state. He has devised a number of urine tests to find whether a patient is in one condition or the other. Selenium is given when the urine has a low specific gravity, a high surface tension and a pH above 6.0. The alkalinity of the urine is supposed to reflect the state of the body's defenses against tumors.
Cancer Therapy by Ralph W Moss PhD, page 112

Selenium levels show a U-shaped correlation with prostate cancer. In other words, both low and high blood levels of selenium increase risk. This simply means that we need enough selenium to maintain good health, yet too much can be dangerous. A practical compromise is to use a supplement that provides 100 I.U. of vitamin E (up to 400 I.U. would be fine), and about 50 micrograms of selenium.
20 Natural Ways To Reduce The Risk Of Prostate Cancer By James Scala PHD, page 60

Unlike selenomethionine, which is incorporated into protein in place of methionine, SMSC is not incorporated into any protein, thereby offering a completely bioavailable compound. In animal studies, SMSC has been shown to be 10 times less toxic than any other known form of selenium. The recommended dose of Se-methylselenocysteine (SMSC) is 200-400 mcg a day for cancer patients.
Disease Prevention And Treatment by Life Extension Foundation, page 316

Selenium Sources
You need just three Brazil nuts to get the 200 micro-grams of selenium that studies have shown to have a potent anti-cancer effect. As a bonus, when you eat Brazil nuts, which grow best in the Amazon rain forest, you support the conservation of one of my favorite places on earth. So you're not only protecting your body, you're saving the environment.
Anti-Aging Prescriptions by James Duke PhD, page 90

The Garlic Connection. It has long been noted that people who ate garlic, onion, broccoli, and whole grains had a reduced risk of cancer. It turns out that all of these foods are rich in selenium, in fact, selenium is one of the reasons that these particular foods are so healthful for us.
Antioxidants Against Cancer by Ralph Moss PhD, page 77

If you're not fond of popping pills, you can get 120 micrograms of selenium in just one Brazil nut. Buy the shelled kind—they're grown in a central region of Brazil where the soil is richest in the mineral. Other good sources are tuna fish, seafood, wheat germ, and bran.
Ask Dr Weil by Andrew Weil MD, page 207

One good food source is Brazil nuts, which happen also to contain at least one other anticancer substance, ellagic acid. One large nut can provide over 50 mcg of selenium. When Cornell scientist Donald J. Lisk and his colleagues ate six Brazil nuts a day for three weeks, their blood levels of selenium rose between 100 and 350 percent.
Cancer Therapy by Ralph W Moss PhD, page 122

Selenium - An essential trace mineral found in fruits and vegetables, selenium helps the body produce functional glutathione peroxidase, an enzyme essential for detoxification. Low dietary levels of selenium have been correlated with a higher incidence of cancer; accordingly, supplementation of this nutrient acts as a deterrent against cancer in general.
Alternative Medicine by Burton Goldberg, page 591

Red clover is also rich in calcium, manganese, and selenium, which is a key cancer-fighting antioxidant. I munch the flower heads, but not everyone likes them. Some people dry the flower heads, turn them into a powder, and add them to soups.
Anti-Aging Prescriptions by James Duke PhD, page 61

The debate continues regarding the active ingredients in garlic, but they may include amino acids (like the branched chain amino acids of leucine and isoleucine), S-allyl cysteine, allicin, and organically-bound selenium…Garlic grown on selenium-rich soil was more effective than selenium supplements at inhibiting carcinogen-induced tumors in animals. A study published in the Journal of the National Medical Association referred to garlic as "..a potent, non-specific biologic response modifier."
Beating Cancer With Nutrition by Patrick Quillin, page 147

A particularly worthy form of selenium is Se-methylselenocysteine, currently available and attracting positive attention. This is the form of selenium found naturally in plants such as broccoli and garlic. A suggested selenium dosage (as a preventive) is 200 mcg a day. The optimal dose for the cancer patient is unknown at this time, but suggestions have ranged from 200-400 mcg a day. Depending upon the selenium content of the soil, foods considered to be good sources of selenium include Brazil nuts, grains, onions, tomatoes, broccoli, chicken, eggs, garlic, liver, seafood, and wheat germ. Americans typically get from 60-100 mcg of selenium a day from dietary sources.
Disease Prevention And Treatment by Life Extension Foundation, page 243

Stephen Cann, associate researcher at the University of British Columbia, gives advice to women who want to fight breast cancer with diet, "Eat different types of seaweed." These include wakame, kombu, and the more common nori — sea vegetables that might fight cancer because of their iodine and selenium. "We think it's very important for the breast," Cann says about iodine. This mineral, he believes, may prevent and even shrink breast tumors by combining with certain fatty acids and stopping cancerous cells from multiplying. And without the selenium, iodine doesn't do its job properly.
Eat and Heal by the Editors of FC&A Medical Publishing, page 317

In parts of Europe, pumpkin seeds are the standard treatment for benign prostate enlargement. The seeds are rich in zinc, selenium and other minerals that have been shown to reduce prostate cancer risk. Typical daily dosage: Eat one-quarter cup of the seeds.
Bottom Line Yearbook 2002 by Bottom Line Personnel, page 76

The intake of selenium and other nutrients from plant foods may be influenced by the type of farming practices used. In a preliminary investigation, organically grown foods were, in some cases, nutritionally superior to conventionally grown foods (Smith, 1993).
Cancer And Natural Medicine by John Boik, page 147

The Journal of Nutrition reported that selenium-enriched broccoli is protective against chemically induced mammary and colon cancer in rats (Davis et al. 2002). Note: While selenium is contributing to the lower incidence of malignancy, the anticancer affects of broccoli should also be factored into the defense.
Disease Prevention And Treatment by Life Extension Foundation, page 242

You can find selenium in grains, shellfish, poultry, garlic, and egg yolks.
Natural Cures And Gentle Medicines by The Editors of FC&A Medical Publishing, page 266

Commercial preparations of selenium include inorganic selenium (sodium se-lenite) and various organic compounds of selenium. It has been reported that sodium selenite is not absorbed adequately, whereas organic selenium, including yeast-selenium, is absorbed very well. For this reason, yeast-selenium is considered best for human consumption
Choices In Healing by Michael Lerner, page 612

Throughout history and around the world, people from Mexico to Russia have given mushrooms magical powers. In reality, there's nothing miraculous about these fungi at all, but they can make you healthier. Although mushrooms are largely made up of water, they are also high in protein, carbohydrates, and fiber. They are a potent source of vitamin D, riboflavin, and niacin, plus minerals like potassium, selenium, and copper.
Eat and Heal by the Editors of FC&A Medical Publishing, page 252

In addition, some foods, such as lima beans, soy beans, and other soy products, seem to have medicinal capabilities because of the presence of isoflavones and phytoestrogens, or plant estrogens. These substances actually curb the activity of the excess estrogen in the body's tissues. Phytoestrogens can also be found in other vegetables and in fruits, along with useful amounts of nonsoluble fiber, beta-carotene, and selenium.
Complete Encyclopedia Of Natural Healing by Gary Null PhD, page 72

A new approach is now being explored: how to enrich our food with antioxidant and protective agents. The simpler approach is to add antioxidant vitamins to basic foods. Studies address the genetic engineering of food to prevent heart disease and cancer [105], and such measures as growing garlic with selenium fertilization [95]. The authors of these studies state that "in view of the impossible task of persuading the public to eat only those foods that are presumably good for their health . . . the time has come to enrich our foods with known cancer preventive agents so that their benefit can be realized fully over the life span of the individual."
Every Persons Guide To Antioxidants by John R Smythies MD, page 103

Plentiful in poultry, selenium may help to protect against cancer, cataracts, heart disease, and macular degeneration. Dark-meat turkey is particularly high in this mineral (3 ounces of cooked turkey have 35mcg of selenium, or 50% of the Daily Value).
Fight Back With Food by Readers Digest, page 73

To get more selenium in your diet, try tuna; a three-ounce can serves up a full 99 micrograms. Or treat yourself to an ounce of baked tortilla chips for a whopping 284 micrograms.
Healing With Vitamins by Alice Feinstein, page 64

Selenium comes from the soil, and fruits and vegetables that come from selenium-rich soil are more likely to contain the mineral.
Natures Medicines by Gale Maleskey, page 363

If you eat a normal diet with plenty of unprocessed foods, you should be fine. You'll find selenium in many grains, nuts, and vegetables; meat, especially organ meats like liver; and seafood.
Natural Cures And Gentle Medicines by The Editors of FC&A Medical Publishing, page 242

A new form of selenium is Se-methylselenocysteine (SeMC), a naturally occurring selenium compound found to be an effective chemopreventive agent. SeMC is a selenoamino acid that is synthesized by plants such as garlic and broccoli.
Disease Prevention And Treatment by Life Extension Foundation, page 277

Essiac formula was given to nurse Rene Caisse more than 80 years ago by a woman whose breast cancer had been healed by this Ojibway Indian herbal preparation. The formula is composed of four herbs (burdock root, slippery elm, sheep sorrel, and Indian rhubarb). The burdock root contains inulin, which improves the function of white blood cells. This root also contains Vitamin A and selenium, which scavenge free radicals and chromium which regulates blood sugar levels.
A Physicians Guide To Natural Health Products That Work By James Howenstine MD, page 156

Selenium Anti-Cancer Effects
Some forms of cancer are the result of free radical oxidation that destroys or damages the part of the DNA that regulates cell multiplication. When that happens, the cells can begin to multiply abnormally, damaging the healthy tissue until your whole body is invaded by these wildly proliferating cells. Since selenium can protect you from free radical oxidation, one way to minimize your risk of developing this type of cancer is to eat selenium-rich foods like whole grains or their products with each meal. If you already have cancer, selenium may be useful in slowing its progression. A way to get it in even more concentrated doses than in foods is to take brewer's yeast or supplements.
Complete Guide Health Nutrition by Gary Null, page 483

Laboratory studies have shown that selenium can inhibit the growth of breast, cervical, colon, and skin cancer.
Antioxidants Against Cancer by Ralph Moss PhD, page 79

Regular intake of yellow and green vegetables, as well as foods containing calcium, selenium and other micro-nutrients, lowers the risk of colon cancer.
Cancer Therapy by Ralph W Moss PhD, page 197

Selenium is protective against many types of cancers, promotes apoptosis, is a powerful antioxidant, and improves quality of life during aggressive cancer therapies According to P.D. Whanger (professor of agricultural chemistry), nearly 200 animal studies have been conducted to evaluate the effects of supernutritional levels of selenium on experimental carcinogenesis using chemical, viral, and transplantable tumor models. Two thirds of the studies found that high levels of selenium reduced the development of tumors at least moderately (14-35% compared to controls) and, in most cases, significantly (by more than 35%) (Whanger 1998).
Disease Prevention And Treatment by Life Extension Foundation, page 242

Selenium has been used in combination with vitamin A and vitamin E to reduce the toxicity of chemotherapy drugs, particularly Adriamycin (Faure et al. 1996; Vanella et al. 1997). The synergistic effect of vitamin E and selenium together to enhance the immune system is greater than either alone. A new form of selenium is Se-methylselenocysteine (SeMC), a naturally occurring selenium compound found to be an effective chemopreventive agent. SeMC is a selenoamino acid that is synthesized by plants such as garlic and broccoli. SeMC has been shown to induce apoptosis in certain ovarian cancer cells (Yeo et al. 2002) and to be effective against breast cancer cell growth both in vivo and in vitro (Sinha et al. 1999). SeMC has also demonstrated significant anticarcinogenic activity against mammary tumorigenesis (Sinha et al. 1997). Moreover, a study has demonstrated that SeMC is one of the most effective selenium chemopreventive compounds, inducing apoptosis in leukemia HL-60 cell lines (Jung et al. 2001a). Some of the most impressive data suggest that exposure to SeMC blocks clonal expansion of premalignant lesions at an early stage. This is achieved by simultaneously modulating certain molecular pathways that are responsible for inhibiting cell proliferation and enhancing apoptosis (Ip et al. 2001). Unlike selenomethionine, which is incorporated into protein in place of methionine, SeMC is not incorporated into any protein, thereby offering a completely bioavailable compound for preventing cancer. Therefore, 200—400 mcg of SeMC a day is suggested for cancer patients. Please note that selenium also possesses antioxidant properties, so its use before, during, or immediately after chemotherapy could theoretically inhibit the actions of certain chemotherapy drugs.
Disease Prevention And Treatment by Life Foundation, page 277

Scientists have confirmed that vitamins C and E along with the mineral selenium afford some prostate cancer prevention. This is not surprising to anyone who understands diet, biochemistry, and how antioxidants work. Glutathione peroxidase destroys free radicals and superoxides. Its name means that it destroys peroxides (the potent oxidants that form in tissues) and uses glutathione as a helper. Glutathione requires selenium to function; and wherever selenium is at work, vitamin E can't be far away because they function together.
20 Natural Ways To Reduce The Risk Of Prostate Cancer By James Scala PHD, page 54

For prostate cancer management, stay on a low fat diet, eat tomato products often, take a multivitamin, vitamins C, E and selenium.
A Physicians Guide To Natural Health Products That Work By James Howenstine MD, page 151

Men with higher intakes of antioxi-dants such as vitamin C, vitamin E, and the trace mineral selenium have lower levels of prostate cancer.
Alternative Cures by Bill Gottlieb, page 519

Selenium Statistics
In a December 1996 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. Larry Clark presented evidence that supplemental selenium could reduce cancer death rates by as much as 50%. 1,312 patients were given 200 mcg. of selenium daily. The patients receiving selenium had a rise of 67% in their blood selenium level.
A Physicians Guide To Natural Health Products That Work By James Howenstine MD, page 148

The patients receiving selenium had a 67% decrease in cancer of the prostate, a 58 percent decrease in colon or rectal cancer and a 45% decrease in lung cancer. This suggests that possibly up to 100,000 lives a year might be saved in the USA by the simple addition of selenium to the diet.
A Physicians Guide To Natural Health Products That Work By James Howenstine MD, page 149

An article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) by Clark et al. (1996) showed that 200 mcg of supplemental selenium a day reduced overall cancer mortality by 50% in humans compared to a placebo group not receiving supplemental selenium. This 9-year study demonstrated that a low-cost mineral supplement could cut the risk of dying from cancer in half in certain individuals.
Disease Prevention And Treatment by Life Extension Foundation, page 1255

In a recent five-year study of nearly 30,000 rural Chinese people, researchers from the NCI found that daily doses of these three nutrients reduced cancer deaths by 13%.
Alternative Medicine by Burton Goldberg, page 590

But what if you already have cancer? Again, the research shows a prolongation of lifespan with proper supplementation. In a study in Cancer Letters (Evangelou et al. 1997), animals with malignant tumors given high doses of vitamins C and E and selenium manifested a significant prolongation of the mean survival time. Complete remission of tumors developed in 16.8% of the animals.
Disease Prevention And Treatment by Life Extension Foundation, page 1256

Dr. Raymond Shamberger was also among the first to discover the link between low selenium content in the soil and increasing numbers of deaths from cancer. In 1976, he pointed out that the cities and states with high selenium content in the soil also had significantly lower rates of cancer, especially of the digestive and urinary systems.
Antioxidants Against Cancer by Ralph Moss PhD, page 77

A Powerful Antioxidant "selenium is a crucial mineral in the battle against prostate cancer," says Dr. Schachter. In one study of hundreds of men, a daily intake of 200 micrograms of selenium cut the incidence of prostate cancer by 60 percent.
Alternative Cures by Bill Gottlieb, page 518

The statistics for breast cancer are particularly striking. "The higher the selenium, the lower the breast cancer," said Prof. Ladas. Similar associations have been found with leukemia, as well as cancers of the intestines, rectum, ovary, prostate, lung, pancreas, skin and bladder. In Yugoslavia, scientists studied 33 patients with breast cancer. These women had selenium levels in their bloodstream only half those of healthy volunteers.
Cancer Therapy by Ralph W Moss PhD, page 112

Although the study failed to show the effectiveness of selenium in altering the course of either basal or squamous cell carcinoma, selenium impacted the incidence of other types of malignancies with amazing success (Clark et al. 1996). The overall reduction in cancer incidence was 37% in the selenium-supplemented group; a 50% reduction in cancer mortality was observed over a 10-year period. The following are the site-specific reductions in cancer incidence observed in the study: colon-rectal cancers (58%), lung cancer (46%), and prostate cancer (63%). A selenium deficiency appears to increase the risk of prostate cancer fourfold to fivefold. It was determined that, as the male population ages, selenium levels decrease, paralleling an increase in prostate cancer (Brooks et al. 2001).
Disease Prevention And Treatment by Life Extension Foundation, page 242

In a study published in the journal of the National Cancer Institute, the relationship between serum levels of selenium and the development of upper digestive tract cancer was explored (Mark et al, 2000). The relative risk of esophageal cancer was 0.56 in individuals in the highest quartile of selenium level compared with those in the lowest quartile. The corresponding relative risk of gastric cardia cancer was 0.47. Based on the data, the researchers calculate that 26.4% of esophageal and gastric cardia cancers are attributable to low selenium levels.
Disease Prevention And Treatment by Life Extension Foundation, page 242

Selenium Recommendations
The Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) is 50 to 100 micrograms (not milligrams) but few people get even that much. Selenium is so important that I believe that practically every adult should take a 200 microgram selenium supplement every day. This is readily available in health food stores at a minimal price. Organic selenium derived from yeast may be better absorbed man the mineral form, sodium selenite. Very high doses of either can be toxic, however, and should only be taken under a doctor's prescription. To summarize: selenium has a strong ability to prevent cancers, especially of the internal organs. There is no evidence that selenium interferes with chemotherapy, radiation or a combination of both. On the contrary, there is evidence that it decreases the side effects of such treatments
Antioxidants Against Cancer by Ralph Moss PhD, page 81

The supplements that I'd recommend for cancer prevention are the antioxidants: vitamins C and E, beta-carotene, and the mineral selenium.
Anti-Aging Prescriptions by James Duke PhD, page 90

Moderate doses of zinc, beta-carotene, selenium and vitamin E are safe and inexpensive. I believe these results are valid and are an accurate reflection of what antioxidants can do. The finding that two terrible cancers could be prevented by a few pennies worth of supplements received little attention in the mainstream media.
Antioxidants Against Cancer by Ralph Moss PhD, page 83

The National Academy of Sciences advises that no more than 150 micrograms of selenium be taken orally daily. But Revici's "bivalent negative selenium"— a combination of the mineral with various organic substances, such as the fatty acids of sesame oil—is said to be so non-toxic that huge amounts, up to one million micrograms, have been injected (in the treatment of drug addiction), apparently without any ill effects. In the treatment of cancer the dosage is generally about 10,000 micrograms, still nearly one hundred times the National Academy of Science's recommended dose.
Cancer Therapy by Ralph W Moss PhD, page 112

But in the meantime, I will continue to take my 200 micrograms of selenium a day—the same dose used in the study—and I suggest that you do, too. Excess selenium has been associated with toxicity, so don't go overboard. If you're not fond of popping pills, you can get 120 micrograms of selenium in just one Brazil nut. Buy the shelled kind—they're grown in a central region of Brazil where the soil is richest in the mineral. Other good sources are tuna fish, seafood, wheat germ, and bran.
Ask Dr Weil by Andrew Weil MD, page 207

While everyone needs selenium on an everyday basis, there are certain situations in which the human need for selenium may be increased, or in which additional selenium may be helpful in the treatment of a disease. If you are a male, your selenium needs are greater than if you are female. If you suffer from heart disease or muscular disorders, additional selenium may help you. The same can be said if you suffer from cataracts, diabetes, cystic fibrosis, liver necrosis, iron deficiency anemia, joint problems, heavy metal poisoning, or cancer.
Complete Guide Health Nutrition by Gary Null, page 479

Now, Dr. Mark A. Nelson, a professor and researcher at the Arizona Cancer Center, says, "The Nutritional Prevention of Cancer (NPC) Trial tripled the intake and suggests that higher levels of selenium may be necessary for cancer prevention." Until nutritionists conduct more research, though, no one can recommend the best, safest amount you should get. Experts warn selenium is a toxic mineral, which means too much of it, especially from supplements, is unsafe.
Eat and Heal by the Editors of FC&A Medical Publishing, page 98

Doctors at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences concluded that selenium supplements were a safe and effective food supplement for people. There have also been a number of reports of selenium's toxicity or even its alleged ability to cause cancer. There is no question that excess selenium in the soil (in the form of its compounds, selenite or selenate) can kill grazing animals and could probably in sufficiently large doses kill humans as well. The symptoms of selenium poisoning are readily apparent without a doctor's assistance, according to Dr. Gerhard Schrauzer, a world expert on the topic. These symptoms include a heavy garlic odor, pallor, nervousness, depression, a metallic taste, skin eruptions, irritability, discolored teeth and hair loss. There is some doubt about the carcinogenicity studies. For instance, one study showed toxic effects for inorganic, but not organic, forms of the mineral.
Cancer Therapy by Ralph W Moss PhD, page 112

General / History of Selenium
Selenium (Se) is a metal that is chemically similar to sulfur. It was first discovered in 1817 and because of its silvery color was named for Selene, the ancient goddess of the moon. Selenium is an essential component of two important antioxidant enzymes and is also the helpmate of vitamin E.
Antioxidants Against Cancer by Ralph Moss PhD, page 76

Initially, selenium's importance in human health was underrated. In fact, its main use in conventional medicine was as a treatment for dandruff!
Antioxidants Against Cancer by Ralph Moss PhD, page 76

Strange as it may seem, toenail levels of selenium are considered a good indicator of long-term selenium intake. They found that the people whose toenails had the highest levels of selenium had half of the rate of lung cancer compared with those whose toe-nails were low in selenium.
Healing With Vitamins by Alice Feinstein, page 143

Emmanuel Revici, MD based his treatment on correcting an imbalance between fatty acids and sterols in the cancer patient; called "biological dualism". Revici was considered a very dedicated physician and developer of selenium as an anti-cancer agent. -Ewan Cameron, MD, a Scottish surgeon first popularized the use of high dose vitamin C in terminal cancer patients.
Beating Cancer With Nutrition by Patrick Quillin, page 45

Some scientists still do not accept the need for selenium supplements and argue against its protective effect against cancer and other diseases. Others endorse the value of moderate amounts of selenium added to the diet. In the laboratory, selenium has shown a wide range of anticancer effects.
Cancer Therapy by Ralph W Moss PhD, page 109

Aside from Revici's work, little has been done to investigate the use of this mineral as a cancer treatment. In 1911, Prof. August von Wasserrman achieved growth inhibition, shrinkage and eventually the disappearance of tumors by injecting selenium directly into mouse tumors. Four years later, two doctors caused the shrinkage and the eventual disappearance of small tumors in cancer patients, although larger tumors failed to respond.
Cancer Therapy by Ralph W Moss PhD, page 112

After critically examining this book, I came to the conclusion that Dr. Revici is an innovative medical genius, outstanding chemist and a highly creative thinker [emphasis added]. I also realized that few of his medical colleagues would be able to follow his train of thought and thus would be all too willing to dismiss his work. Because of my own professional interest in selenium, let me merely focus on this aspect of his work. Selenium containing medications were introduced into cancer therapy as early as 1911 by none less than the great physician August von Wasserman. Working with experimental animals, von Wasserman was able to show his selenium compounds produced liquefactive necrosis of solid tumors, an unheard of event at the time, hailed as a major success. However, von Wasserman's compounds were too toxic and thus could not be employed in the treatment of human cancer. Dr. Revici deserves credit for having discovered pharmacologically active selenium compounds of very low toxicity. The same was achieved years later by one other great physician, Dr. Klaus Schwarz, in collaboration with a leading organic chemist, Dr. Arne Fredga, of Uppsala University. The National Cancer Institute has recognized the importance of selenium only within the past few years. Would one thus not have to conclude that Dr. Revici, in this one instance, was 40 years ahead of his time? The same could be said for many of his other researches which form the basis of his therapy.
Choices In Healing by Michael Lerner, page 614

Dr. Gerbhard Schauzer, a biochemist at the University of California in San Diego, … believes that if every woman in America began taking selenium supplements today or followed a diet high in selenium, the breast cancer rate in this country would decline drastically in a few years.
Miracle Medicine Herbs by Richard M Lucas, page 16

Asia has considerable quantities of selenium in its soil, making the Asian diet rich in the mineral; not surprisingly, cancer and heart disease occur considerably less often in Asian cultures than in the West.
Optimum Health by Stephen T Sinatra MD, page 123

Additional Benefits of Selenium
Antioxidants, like beta carotene, vitamin C, vitamin E, and selenium appear to enhance the effectiveness of chemo, radiation, and hyperthermia while minimizing damage to the patient's normal cells; thus making therapy more of a "selective toxin." An optimally nourished cancer patient can better tolerate the rigors of cytotoxic therapy.
Beating Cancer With Nutrition by Patrick Quillin, page 18

Patients with advanced rectal cancer were treated with a combination of selenium, the drug 5-FU, and radiation. Scientists reported a protective effect of selenium on quality of life.
Antioxidants Against Cancer by Ralph Moss PhD, page 80

Selenium-deficient animals have more heart damage from the chemo drug, adriamycin.43 Supplements of selenium and vitamin E in humans did not reduce the efficacy of the chemo drugs against ovarian and cervical cancer. Animals with implanted tumors who were then treated with selenium and cisplatin (chemo drug) had reduced toxicity to the drug with no change in anti-cancer activity. Selenium supplements helped repair DNA damage from a carcinogen in animals. Selenium was selectively toxic to human leukemia cells in culture.
Beating Cancer With Nutrition by Patrick Quillin, page 56

While most nutritionists agree on the importance of growth (proliferative) nutrients, few nutritionists respect the importance for anti-proliferative nutrients. For every force in the body, there must be an opposing force to regulate that mechanism. There are agents that cause fluid loss from the kidneys (diuresis) and other agents that stem this fluid loss when it is excessive (anti-diuretic hormone). Just as there is a need for nutrients to augment growth, there is a need for nutrients to control excessive growth and shut down the process. Selenium, fish oil, garlic, Cat's claw, Maitake D-fraction, vitamin E succinate, vitamin K, quercetin, genistein, and bovine cartilage all may assist the cancer patient in this manner.
Beating Cancer With Nutrition by Patrick Quillin, page 80

Vitamin E and selenium supplements in animals helped to reduce the heart toxicity from adriamycin. Selenium and vitamin E supplements were given to 41 women undergoing cytotoxic therapy for ovarian and cervical cancers, with a resulting drop in the toxicity-related rise in creatine kinase.
Beating Cancer With Nutrition by Patrick Quillin, page 107

One of the foremost selenium investigators, Gerhard Schrauzer of the University of California at San Diego, says: Apart from its functions as an essential micronutrient, selenium also appears to have other physiological functions in which it acts as a physiological resistance factor [emphasis added]. Its cancer protecting effects fall into this category. In addition, selenium protects against free radicals, mutagens, toxic heavy metals and certain bacterial, fungal and viral pathogens. The selenium requirement increases under stress, just as the requirement for certain vitamins increases during infections. Selenium, according to Schrauzer, is most effective as a form of nutritional cancer prophylaxis. In animal research, its protective effect is greater the earlier in life it is given, and its shielding effect against virally induced cancer disappears if the nutrient is no longer fed to the animal. Nevertheless, selenium does have an effect on slowing the rate of growth of established spontaneous or transplanted breast tumors in animals, and in reversing the development of some malignant cell lines when used at pharmacological levels. Further, selenium has shown a general capacity to stimulate the immune system in several animal models, which may add to its anticancer effects. It is of special relevance to cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy that selenium "has by now been shown to prevent or retard tumorigenesis induced by virtually all the major known carcinogens," probably, Schrauzer believes, "by modulating the rate of cell division."
Choices In Healing by Michael Lerner, page 612

Just as selenium protects you against toxic metal poisoning, it can also protect you against radiation, whether you are exposed to it through the environment or more directly through medical treatments. A particularly effective form of selenium for this purpose is selenoaminoacid compounds (selenium plus amino acids). Selenium also protects you against compounds called epoxides, as it breaks them down. What are epoxides? Formed when an enzyme named aryl hydrocarbon hydroxylase binds with a carcinogenic substance, epoxides could be called the immediate cause of cancer. The carcinogens cause your body to produce them, and then cancer may ensue.
Complete Guide Health Nutrition by Gary Null, page 483

Reports from Germany indicate that selenium supplementation in patients undergoing radiation therapy for rectal cancer improved quality of life and reduced the appearance of secondary cancers (Hehr et al. 1997) It appears that selenium acts as an immunologic response modifier, normalizing every component of the immune system (Life Extension Report 1995).
Disease Prevention And Treatment by Life Extension Foundation, page 243

Macrophages—those garbagemen of the bloodstream—are capable of keeping your body clear of tumor cells. Also, since they produce interferon, they can help eliminate the viruses that cause some forms of cancer. But to do their job properly, they need adequate selenium.
Complete Guide Health Nutrition by Gary Null, page 483

Some of the known natural compounds that can reduce insulin resistance include omega-3 fatty acids, curcumin, flavonoids, selenium, and vitamin E. Dietary risk factors must be managed. Therefore, besides restricting dietary sugars, individuals should eat an adequate amount of fruits and vegetables because phytochemicals in fruits and vegetables act as potent anticancer agents.
Disease Prevention And Treatment by Life Extension Foundation, page 598

Selenium can prevent solar damage, pigmentation and dark spots, but because the selenium content of soil varies across the country, not everyone is getting enough to be beneficial," says Dr. Burke, citing the Southeast in particular as an area deficient in selenium. To quench the free radicals caused by sun exposure and to prevent skin damage, Dr. Burke recommends daily supplements of 50 to 200 micrograms of selenium in the form of 1-selenomethionine, depending on where you live and your family history of cancer. Selenium can be toxic in doses exceeding 100 micrograms, so if you'd like to try this therapy to protect your skin, you should discuss it with your doctor.
Healing With Vitamins by Alice Feinstein, page 64

The importance of selenium to cardiovascular health was demonstrated in the provinces of China where the mineral was deficient. This correlation can be seen throughout the world. Ray Shamberger, M.D., and Charles Willis, M.D., of the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, reported in 1976 that people who live in low-selenium areas have three times more heart disease than those living in areas where the soil and water are rich in the mineral.
Saturated Fat May Save Your Life by Bruce Fife ND, page 142

Selenium also appears to help stimulate antibody formation in response to vaccines. This immunostimulating effect is also enhanced by vitamin E; the presence of these two nutrients can increase antibody formation by 20-30 times, as shown by research.
Staying Healthy With Nutrition by Elson M Haas MD, page 213

Selenium may also aid in protein synthesis, growth and development, and fertility, especially in the male. It has been shown to improve sperm production and motility. Thus, selenium may prevent male infertility; however, we do not know whether selenium deficiency will actually cause male infertility. These are only some of the conjectures about other selenium functions.
Staying Healthy With Nutrition by Elson M Haas MD, page 213

Selenium Interactions
Certain metals such as lead, cadmium, arsenic, mercury and silver block the action of selenium. . . . Recent laboratory experiments have shown that high doses of zinc block the action of selenium. Therefore, one has to be careful about taking excessive amounts of zinc (over 20 milligrams per day from diet and supplements) while taking selenium [emphasis added].
Choices In Healing by Michael Lerner, page 619

I think the selenium and saffron complement one another. Selensaff, a product made by Scientific Botanicals (see Resources), is used in cancer therapy to create a redox effect—a process of improving cell function by enhancing both oxygen uptake and the excretion of oxygen waste.
Herbal Medicine Healing Cancer by Donald R Yance Jr, page 148 Zinc is important because it is an antagonist to selenium and may in itself enhance or inhibit different tumors. Selenium in minute quantities is essential to human health. According to Prasad, among the minerals, "only selenium has been shown to have a role in cancer prevention":
Choices In Healing by Michael Lerner, page 619

Vitamin E and selenium protected animals against the potent carcinogenic effects of DMBA from tobacco.
Beating Cancer With Nutrition by Patrick Quillin, page 164

Selenium acts as an antioxidant and strengthens the body's immune defense system. Thus, many of the effects which are produced by vitamin E deficiency can be reversed or prevented by selenium. Some laboratory experiments have suggested that the combination of vitamin E and selenium is more effective in preventing cancer than either of them alone.
Choices In Healing by Michael Lerner, page 619

However, one experiment has demonstrated increased susceptibility to DMBA-induced tumors when selenium deficiency was aggravated by high dietary levels of polyunsatu-rated fatty acids, and protection by a physiological supplement of selenium (0.1 pg/g) to the diet (Ip and Sinha, 1981). The interpretation of these results is further complicated because of the varied protocols used in these experiments and the knowledge that selenium interacts with many other nutrients, such as heavy metals in the diet.
Diet Nutrition Cancer by National Research Council, page 169

In some experiments, dietary zinc exceeding nutritional requirements has been shown to suppress chemically induced tumors in rats and hamsters, but when given in drinking water it counteracts the protective effect of selenium in mice...While the evidence on the effect of zinc on tumor development is complex, it strongly suggests that, in general, one should be cautious about taking zinc supplements if one has cancer. And since selenium has a wide spectrum of demonstrable anticancer effects, cancer patients should be particularly cautious with zinc, since it is a selenium antagonist. I have seen many cancer patients taking moderately large amounts of zinc as part of a comprehensive megavitamin nutritional supplement program. In view of the available scientific evidence, this is another critical example of an area where uninformed nutritional supplementation may do harm.
Choices In Healing by Michael Lerner, page 612

In addition, statistically significant protection from high levels of selenium and alpha-tocopherol occurred only when gamma- tocopherol concentrations were also high (Helzl-sourer et al. 2000).
Disease Prevention And Treatment by Life Extension Foundation, page 258

Selenium and co-enzyme Q-10. Exhibits anticancer activity especially in blocking development of colon cancer and spread of breast cancer.
Food Your Miracle Medicine by Jean Carper, page 481

Abunda Life Selenium

Alternative to Baby Aspirin - Nattokinase !

2008-04-14T09:42:00.000-07:00

Fortunately, there is a much better alternative for preventing heart disease than a daily aspirin. nattokinase contains a powerful enzyme called nattokinase -- derived from the food natto -- that has been safely used for 20 years to help circulatory problems, joint pain, vision problems, bone density and other chronic health problems. If you are looking for an alternative to aspirin for heart health, nattokinase is a safer, more effective and healthier option.

Is Aspirin Really Good for Heart Disease? NO!

By Dr. John G F Cleland

Despite the vast size of these meta-analyses, the evidence in support of aspirin preventing atherosclerotic events is still inconclusive.

The third meta-analysis from the Antithrombotic Trialists' Collaboration contains data on over 100 000 patients at high risk of atherosclerotic events, representing more than 250 000 patient years of follow up.1

This meta-analysis and its predecessors form the major argument for the current widespread fashion of prescribing aspirin to such patients. 2 3 It is an enormous body of research and the collaboration is to be congratulated for having gathered so much data. However, quality as well as quantity matters. And the quality is such that the results can only be inconclusive.

Summary Points:

The series of meta-analyses on the antiplatelet activity of aspirin overvalues aspirin's effectiveness and safety
All the large long term trials of aspirin after myocardial infarction show no effect on mortality
Aspirin may change the way vascular events present rather than prevent them
This may lead to a "cosmetic" reduction in non-fatal events and an increase in sudden death
Data on the safety and cost-benefit of aspirin are inadequate
Advocating the use of aspirin for preventing atherosclerotic events diverts attention from other, more effective, drugs

Trials Do Not Show That Aspirin Saves Lives

Meta-analysis is increasingly viewed either as a way of verifying that the outcome of an individual trial is consistent with the rest of the known data or as a way of generating a hypothesis.

However, in the absence of a definitively positive trial, many consider meta-analysis inadequate evidence for clinical decision making. The series of meta-analyses from the trialists' collaboration contains serious additional flaws.3-6

It is remarkable and probably statistically significant how seldom trials of antiplatelet agents have shown benefit on their selected primary outcome. The choice of the primary endpoint by the Antithrombotic Trialists' Collaboration is arbitrary and suspect.

Antiplatelet agents seem to be substantially more effective in reducing the incidence of non-fatal events than in reducing death. Indeed, among large long-term trials after myocardial infarction there is no evidence that aspirin saves lives.

An intervention can reduce non-fatal events in three ways: by genuinely reducing them, by concealing them, or by converting non-fatal events into fatal ones.

The failure of aspirin to reduce mortality despite a reduction in non-fatal events in many studies suggests that aspirin may conceal, rather than prevent, vascular events.6

Epidemiological data suggest that 25% of non-fatal myocardial infarctions are silent. 4 5 As aspirin, even at low doses, is an analgesic and because it may provoke dyspepsia, which may create confusion about the cause of chest pain, it is not difficult to believe that aspirin could increase the proportion of silent events from 25% to 30%. This could explain all the benefits of antiplatelet agents on non-fatal myocardial in the meta-analysis.

Aspirin increased the risk of sudden death in every long-term study after myocardial infarction that reported such events.

This increase was from 4.4% on placebo to 5.6% on aspirin in the persantine-aspirin reinfarction (PARIS) study; from 2.0% to 2.7% in the aspirin myocardial infarction study (AMIS); and from 2.0% to 2.4% in the persantine-aspirin reinfarction study (PARIS-II).9

This could reflect an increased risk of sudden death among concealed, and therefore untreated, events. Another possible mechanism by which aspirin may convert non-fatal events into fatal ones is by increasing the risk of hemorrhagic conversion of cerebral and myocardial infarctions.

All cause mortality and, arguably, disabling stroke are the only robust markers of benefit with an antiplatelet agent. It is not clear that antiplatelet agents reduce the risk of either.

Some trials that were included lost more than a quarter of their patients to follow up.10 In similar circumstances, with other agents, it has been suggested that all patients lost to follow up in the active treatment group should be considered to have died and none of those in the control arm. Such an analysis would neutralize the benefit observed in one of the few seemingly convincingly positive studies of aspirin, the ISIS-2 trial.11

Bias In Interpretation

The Antithrombotic Trialists' Collaboration shows bias in the analysis and interpretation of their results. We are given scant detail on how the numbers of events credited to each trial changed between meta-analyses. 2 3 Trials were retrospectively reanalyzed, resulting in resurrection of a number of apparently dead patients and the discovery of a number of new deaths.

Most interventions probably help some people some of the time and harm others some of the time. A small benefit could reflect a small overall benefit in a large population or a substantial benefit in some patients and harm in others.

Aspirin could exert a short-term benefit followed by long term harm, in which case the benefits and safety of aspirin could be increased by using only a short term course of therapy.14 Aspirin may be harmful in patients with coronary disease and heart failure. 5 6 12

The evidence for an adverse interaction between aspirin and angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors observed in the SOLVD (studies of left ventricular function) and HOPE (heart outcomes prevention evaluation) trials is also a matter for concern. 6 12 These are important issues that have not been adequately addressed.

Neither Safe Nor Cheap

Many believe that, even if aspirin is not effective, it is safe. Aspirin does appear to be relatively safe for the patients included in clinical trials, but as these studies excluded by design patients at risk of adverse events with aspirin and tended to include younger patients with lower multiple morbidity it is likely that aspirin is not as safe as suggested.

Low dose aspirin for cardiovascular prophylaxis may account for more than 30% of all major gastrointestinal hemorrhage in patients aged over 6, 4 6 15 and may also be associated with an increased risk of renal failure.

Finally, there is a widespread view that aspirin is cheap. However, when evaluating the costs of treatment the amount and type of benefit and the costs of managing adverse effects also need to be evaluated. Very few economic appraisals of aspirin have been done.

One such analysis, recently commissioned by the chief scientist's office in Scotland, suggested it may cost more than £80 000 to prevent one event with aspirin for primary prevention and more than £3000 for secondary prevention.16 These analyses have assumed that aspirin is as effective as the meta-analyses suggest, which may not be true.

A Diversion

Perhaps the greatest potential detriment of aspirin on health care, however, is that it diverts attention away from treatments that are of unequivocal benefit to many groups of patients.

The reader should not accept the conclusions of the Antithrombotic Trialists' Collaboration uncritically but rather read the original papers on which their conclusions are based.

Daily Aspirin Use Increases Risk of Pancreatic Cancer

2008-04-14T09:40:00.000-07:00

Women who take aspirin regularly may be at an increased risk of pancreatic cancer, a particularly deadly form of cancer. Researchers found that taking two or more aspirins a week for 20 years or more increased the women's risk of pancreatic cancer by 58 percent, and women who took 14 tablets or more per week had an 86 percent greater risk. Millions of women take aspirin daily in order to protect against heart disease and to treat aches and pains.

Women in the study who took between six and 13 aspirins a week had a 41 percent higher risk than women who did not use any, compared with an 11 percent greater risk among women who took one to three aspirins a week.

Although pancreatic cancer affects only 31,000 Americans a year, most patients die within three years. The cause behind pancreatic cancer remains unknown, however a previous study found that taking aspirin regularly may cause an inflammation of the pancreas known as pancreatitis, which sometimes leads to pancreatic cancer.

Yahoo News October 27, 2003

Sugar and No Exercise Increase Pancreatic Cancer

2008-04-14T09:37:00.000-07:00

Obesity and physical inactivity contribute to the risk of cancer of the pancreas.

The body becomes less sensitive to the glucose-lowering effects of insulin with obesity and inactivity, and diminished sensitivity to insulin leads to higher blood levels of insulin. Higher levels of insulin are thought to increase the risk of cancer of the pancreas.

But previous attempts to link inactivity and obesity with pancreatic cancer brought inconsistent results. The investigators used body mass index (BMI), a measure of weight in relation to height, to determine whether or not patients were obese.

Men and women with high BMI faced a pancreatic cancer risk 1.5 to 2 times higher than those with low BMI.

Dieting, however, apparently lowered the risk, the report indicates, as both men and women who reported a 10% to 12.5% decrease from their maximum lifetime weight had only about half the risk of cancer of the pancreas faced by others.

Exercise lowered the risk. The researchers note that men who exercised strenuously at least 8 hours a month had only 59% of the pancreatic cancer risk of men who exercised less.

International Journal of Cancer 2001;94:140-147

Gene Therapy May Destroy Pancreatic Cancer Cells

Using a new two-pronged attack, researchers were able to destroy deadly pancreatic cancer cells in the test tube and in lab animals.

Researchers were interested in using a tumor-stopping protein from a newly discovered gene known as mda-7, which has been found effective in destroying other types of cancer cells.

However, the investigators had previously found that mda-7 alone, delivered to pancreatic cancer cells in the lab, could not destroy the cancer cells.

In this study, they added a small piece of DNA that blocked the expression of the K-ras gene to the mda-7. The K-ras gene is associated with uncontrolled cell growth when mutated, and it is mutated in 85% to 95% of pancreatic cancer cells, including the cells the experimenters used.

The combination of the two killed the pancreatic cancer cells in the lab after a few days, Lebedeva said. The researchers also found the combination killed tumor cells in lab animals.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2001;98:10332-10337

Sunscreen is skin caner in a bottle, just try it!!!

2008-04-12T22:11:00.000-07:00

Did you know that 97 percent of Americans have been found to be contaminated with oxybenzone, a chemical that actually increases the risk of skin cancer by making it more sensitive to light? It's called a "photocarcinogen," meaning that people who use it are increasing the risk of cancer when they expose their skin to sunlight. And yet this is the chemical being used in sunscreen! Amazing, huh? Check out our feature story by Ellen Holder (below) to learn more details.

CDC Finds 97 Percent of Americans Contaminated by Sunscreens

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) released a new study showing that nearly all Americans are contaminated with oxybenzone, a widely-used sunscreen ingredient. This chemical so far has been linked to allergies, hormone disruption, and cell damage, as well as low birth weight in baby girls whose mothers are exposed during pregnancy. Oxybenzone is also a penetration enhancer, a chemical that helps other chemicals penetrate the skin. So where has the FDA been on this?

Apparently in the back pocket of the sunscrene industry. The Food and Drug Administration, again, has failed in its duty to protect the public from toxic chemicals like oxybenzone. Caving to the industry lobbyists, the agency has delayed final sunscreen safety standards for nearly 30 years. FDA issued a new draft of the standards last October under pressure from the Environmental Working Group (EWG), but continues to delay finalizing them because of pressure from the industry.

In their online cosmetic safety database, EWG identifies nearly 600 sunscreens sold in the U.S. that contain oxybenzone, including leading brand names like Hawaiian Tropic, Coppertone, and Banana Boat, and many facial moisturizers as well. On top of that, they also show many of these so-called sunscreens offer inadequate protection from the sun. In fact, they found that sunlight also causes oxybenzone to form free radical chemicals that may be linked to cell damage, which is the exact opposite reason many women mistakenly use the sunscreen - to protect them from damaging free radicals which lead to premature aging.

And interestingly, as sunscreen sales have risen, so has the rate of skin cancers. Go figure. We've been pressured to believe that the sun is our enemy and we need to slather on loads of sunscreen to protect ourselves, when in actuality we need sunlight for our bodies to manufacture vitamin D. For those of us who are either fair skinned or just plain vain and worry about age spots and wrinkles, limiting our unprotected sun exposure to 20 minutes a day is adequate for our daily dose of vitamin D. For more fun in the sun, overexposure can be avoided by using a natural or organic sunscreen with a reflective barrier like zinc, instead of chemical sunscreens. Even a small amount of shea butter rubbed into the skin daily offers a bit of natural UV protection. Whatever you do, don't wait for the FDA to help you in your choice. Based on their history in this category, it could be another 30 years before safety standards are improved.

References:
1. Environmental Health Perspectives: Concentrations of the Sunscreen Agent, Benzophenone-3, in Residents of the United States: National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2003–2004
http://www.ehponline.org/docs/2008/1126...

2. Environmental Working Group: Comments from EWG on the U.S. FDA's Proposed Amendment of Final Monograph for Sunscreens
http://www.ewg.org/node/25705

3. Environmental Working Group: Americans Carry 'Body Burden' of Toxic Sunscreen Chemical
http://www.ewg.org/node/26212

Fergie's Vinegar Shots?

2008-04-11T19:46:00.000-07:00

In a recent Glamour interview, Fergie Ferg revealed that one of her diet tricks is shots of organic apple cider, unfiltered. She said:

"Two tablespoons. For some reason I've noticed a difference on my stomach. I just trusted [my trainer] on this one. I'm sharing. I'm all about sharing secrets."

WebMD is skeptical, but they are a front for big pharma, who cannot patent Apple Cider Vinegar!

DHA & EPA: Omega-3s for Healthy Hearts, Minds and More

2008-04-11T19:28:00.000-07:00

People are becoming increasingly aware of how important omega-3 fatty acids are in promoting good cardiovascular health. In fact, the American Heart Association has endorsed omega-3 fatty acids for this benefit. The recommendation calls for about 1 gram each day in the combination of DHA and EPA. Although the American Heart Association's statement identified oily fish as an ideal source, they also noted that fish oil, either in capsule or liquid forms, was also an acceptable option. The data regarding cardiovascular events is extremely clear cut. There have been three large randomized placebo-controlled trials involving about 32,000 individuals, noting a reduction in cardiovascular events anywhere from 19% to 45% compared to the placebo groups.

Omega-3 fatty acids however do a lot more than maintain healthy heart function. In the March 2008 edition of the British journal Rheumatology¹, researchers performed a double-blinded randomized controlled study in patients that had inflammation of the joints. A total of 97 patients participated and were randomized to receive either an effective dose of 2.2 grams of DHA/EPA (from 10 grams of cod liver oil) or placebo. The trial was conducted for a total of nine months. It was found that those patients given the fish oil reduced their daily intake of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) by more than 30% which was highly statistically significant. They noted that cod liver oil supplements containing omega-3 fatty acids could be used as an NSAID-sparing supplement in patients with inflammatory joint health concerns.

Another area of benefit is concerns poor mood. In the March 2008 edition of The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry², researchers enrolled 36 pregnant women to receive either 3.4 grams a day of omega-3 fatty acids or placebo for eight weeks. At the end of the study, those individuals given the omega-3 fatty acids had significantly better mood compared to the placebo group. They concluded that the omega-3 fatty acids may offer health benefits regarding poor mood during pregnancy.

Finally, there was another study just published in the April 2008 edition of the British Journal Dermatology³ that caught my attention. Fifty three patients with an allergic skin condition, ranging in age between 18 to 40 years old, were randomized to receive either 5.4 grams a day of DHA or a placebo agent for eight weeks. It was found that those individuals given DHA had a statistically significant clinical improvement in their skin conditions compared to placebo.

1. Galarraga B, Ho M, Youssef HM, Hill A, McMahon H, Hall C, Ogston S, Nuki G and Belch JJF, Cod liver oil (n-3 fatty acids) as an non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug sparing agent in rheumatoid arthritis, Rheumatology, published online on March 24, 2008.

2. Su K, Huang S, Chiu T, Huang K, Huang C, Chang H, and Pariante C, Omega-3 Fatty Acids for Major Depressive Disorder During Pregnancy: Results From a Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Trial, The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, March 18, 2008.

3. Koch C, Dölle S, Metzger M, Rasche C, Jungclas H, Rühl R, Renz H, Worm M, Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) supplementation in atopic eczema: a randomized, double-blind, controlled trial, British Journal of Dermatology, Volume 158 Issue 4, Page 786-792, April 2008.

Lipo-Dissolve - an insane scam

2008-04-11T19:04:00.000-07:00

Can shots safely dissolve fat deposits? Fat-Dissolving Injections:
Fat-Dissolving Injections Too Good To Be True?

Lipodissolve, a non-surgical alternative to liposuction, is attracting a steady stream of customers looking to trim problem fat from their bodies, while health officials debate the product’s safety.

From 50,000 to 100,000 Lipodissolve treatments have been conducted in the United States and Europe, according to The American Society of Non-Surgical Aesthetics.

Liposuction is currently far more popular -- there were 300,000 procedures performed in the United States in 2006 -- but Lipodissolve procedures are expected to grow to 500,000 a year in the United States.

During a Lipodissolve treatment, a chemical found in lecithin (phosphatidylcholine deoxycholate) is injected into fatty areas such as “love handles” and “bra rolls,” where it dissolves fat cells.

However, the injectable compound is not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and no long-term studies have been conducted on Lipodissolve’s safety.

Among the chief questions about the procedure is where do the fat cells go once they are dissolved. Lipodissolve practitioners say the cells are excreted by your body naturally, but no one really knows for sure.

According to the FDA, Lipodissolve is a “buyer-beware situation.”

After receiving complaints related to Lipodissolve, including pain, nausea, diarrhea, elevated liver enzymes, and lumps at the injection site, the Kansas State Board of Healing Arts, which regulates Kansas doctors, has moved to ban marketing and sales of Lipodissolve. They are the first state to do so.

Proponents of the procedure maintain that it is safer than liposuction because it doesn’t involve surgery, and, according to The American Society of Non-Surgical Aesthetics, Lipodissolve does not require FDA approval because it isn’t a drug, but a treatment.

Recent Survey

2008-04-09T09:25:00.000-07:00

Distrusted News Sources: (And what percent of survey participants noted the source as "untrustworthy")

FDA.gov (99% distrusted)
Associated Press (95% distrusted)
CNN (93% distrusted)
Quackwatch (92% distrusted)
Reuters (86% distrusted)
WebMD.com (66% distrusted)
CSPInet.com (66% distrusted)

-----------------

Stephen Barrett, the Quackwatch guy
Dr. Stephen Barrett is the operator of Quackwatch (www.Quackwatch.com), a website with an interesting history that's described in part on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Barrett

Here's how the survey participants rated Dr. Stephen Barrett of Quackwatch:

3% Humble / 97% Not
4% Generous / 96% Not
2% Healthy / 98% Not
6% Authentic / 94% Not
11% Intelligent / 89% Not
4% Honest / 96% Not
5% Informed / 95% Not

-----------------------
Dr. Sanjay Gupta
Known best as the health corresponded for CNN, Dr. Gupta is also an advocate of Gardasil (the HPV vaccine being used on teenager girls), and was the host of a television program called "Accent Health," which was primarily sponsored by Merck, the maker of the Gardasil vaccine. Dr. Gupta is also well known for his argument with Michael Moore of the incorrect statement of facts in Moore's movie, Sicko. A YouTube video of that argument is available here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR2U_SAWHdQ

Here's how the survey participants rated Dr. Sajay Gupta:

29% Humble / 71% Not
31% Generous / 69% Not
67% Healthy / 33% Not
37% Authentic / 63% Not
77% Intelligent / 23% Not
32% Honest / 68% Not
23% Informed / 77% Not

As these results show, Dr. Gupta was not rated highly by the survey participants. The only person receiving more negative scores was Dr. Stephen Barrett. I believe that the negative ratings on Dr. Gupta may stem, in part, from the perception that Dr. Gupta is a friend of the pharmaceutical industry and Merck in particular, especially due to his vocal support of the Gardasil vaccine used on teenage girls.

Doctors Are The Third Leading Cause of Death in the US, Killing 250,000 People Every Year

2008-04-08T13:17:00.000-07:00

This article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) is the best article I have ever seen written in the published literature documenting the tragedy of the traditional medical paradigm.

The author is Dr. Barbara Starfield of the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health and she desribes how the US health care system may contribute to poor health.

ALL THESE ARE DEATHS PER YEAR:

12,000 -- unnecessary surgery
7,000 -- medication errors in hospitals
20,000 -- other errors in hospitals
80,000 -- infections in hospitals
106,000 -- non-error, negative effects of drugs

These total to 225,000 deaths per year from iatrogenic causes!!

What does the word iatrogenic mean? This term is defined as induced in a patient by a physician's activity, manner, or therapy. Used especially of a complication of treatment.

Dr. Starfield offers several warnings in interpreting these numbers:

First, most of the data are derived from studies in hospitalized patients.
Second, these estimates are for deaths only and do not include negative effects that are associated with disability or discomfort.
Third, the estimates of death due to error are lower than those in the IOM report.

If the higher estimates are used, the deaths due to iatrogenic causes would range from 230,000 to 284,000. In any case, 225,000 deaths per year constitutes the third leading cause of death in the United States, after deaths from heart disease and cancer. Even if these figures are overestimated, there is a wide margin between these numbers of deaths and the next leading cause of death (cerebrovascular disease).

Another analysis concluded that between 4% and 18% of consecutive patients experience negative effects in outpatient settings,with:

116 million extra physician visits
77 million extra prescriptions
17 million emergency department visits
8 million hospitalizations
3 million long-term admissions
199,000 additional deaths
$77 billion in extra costs

The high cost of the health care system is considered to be a deficit, but seems to be tolerated under the assumption that better health results from more expensive care.

However, evidence from a few studies indicates that as many as 20% to 30% of patients receive inappropriate care.

An estimated 44,000 to 98,000 among them die each year as a result of medical errors.

This might be tolerated if it resulted in better health, but does it? Of 13 countries in a recent comparison, the United States ranks an average of 12th (second from the bottom) for 16 available health indicators. More specifically, the ranking of the US on several indicators was:

13th (last) for low-birth-weight percentages
13th for neonatal mortality and infant mortality overall
11th for postneonatal mortality
13th for years of potential life lost (excluding external causes)
11th for life expectancy at 1 year for females, 12th for males
10th for life expectancy at 15 years for females, 12th for males
10th for life expectancy at 40 years for females, 9th for males
7th for life expectancy at 65 years for females, 7th for males
3rd for life expectancy at 80 years for females, 3rd for males
10th for age-adjusted mortality

The poor performance of the US was recently confirmed by a World Health Organization study, which used different data and ranked the United States as 15th among 25 industrialized countries.

There is a perception that the American public "behaves badly" by smoking, drinking, and perpetrating violence." However the data does not support this assertion.

The proportion of females who smoke ranges from 14% in Japan to 41% in Denmark; in the United States, it is 24% (fifth best). For males, the range is from 26% in Sweden to 61% in Japan; it is 28% in the United States (third best).
The US ranks fifth best for alcoholic beverage consumption.
The US has relatively low consumption of animal fats (fifth lowest in men aged 55-64 years in 20 industrialized countries) and the third lowest mean cholesterol concentrations among men aged 50 to 70 years among 13 industrialized countries.

These estimates of death due to error are lower than those in a recent Institutes of Medicine report, and if the higher estimates are used, the deaths due to iatrogenic causes would range from 230,000 to 284,000.

Even at the lower estimate of 225,000 deaths per year, this constitutes the third leading cause of death in the US, following heart disease and cancer.

Lack of technology is certainly not a contributing factor to the US's low ranking.

Among 29 countries, the United States is second only to Japan in the availability of magnetic resonance imaging units and computed tomography scanners per million population. 17
Japan, however, ranks highest on health, whereas the US ranks among the lowest.
It is possible that the high use of technology in Japan is limited to diagnostic technology not matched by high rates of treatment, whereas in the US, high use of diagnostic technology may be linked to more treatment.
Supporting this possibility are data showing that the number of employees per bed (full-time equivalents) in the United States is highest among the countries ranked, whereas they are very low in Japan, far lower than can be accounted for by the common practice of having family members rather than hospital staff provide the amenities of hospital care.

cholesterol myth

2008-04-08T13:09:00.000-07:00

Why has there never been a record of cholesterol having blocked a vein in the body! What is it about arteries that makes cholesterol attach itself to their walls, while leaving the veins alone? It is really the sticky nature of cholesterol that is behind the blockage of healthy blood vessel walls?

The answers to these questions may surprise you. The body actually uses the lipoprotein cholesterol as a kind of bandage to cover abrasions and tears in damaged arterial walls just as it does it for any other wound. Cholesterol is nothing less than a life-saver. However, for the past thirty-eight years, this lipoprotein has been stigmatized to be the number one cause of deaths in the rich nations - heart disease.

This is how the theory goes: For reasons not really known, a form of cholesterol that has earned the name "bad" somehow increases in the bloodstream of millions of people today; it sticks to the walls of arteries, and eventually, it will starve the heart muscle of oxygen and nutrients. Accordingly, the masses are urged to reduce or ban cholesterol-containing fats from their diet so that they can live without the fear of arterial occlusion and dying from a heart attack.

The tremendous concern of being attacked by this "vicious" lipoprotein has finally led to innovative technologies that can even extract cholesterol from cheese, eggs, and sausages, thus making these "deadly" foods "consumer-safe." Products that claim to be low in cholesterol, such as margarine and light-foods, have become a popular choice of "healthy eating."

Cholesterol is Not the Culprit After All

But as INTERHEART and other studies have shown, cholesterol isn't a serious risk factor for heart disease at all. An earlier study sponsored by the German Ministry of Research and Technology showed that no exact link exists between food cholesterol and blood cholesterol. Even more surprising, in Japan, the cholesterol levels have risen during recent years, yet the number of heart attacks has dropped. The largest health study ever conducted on the risks of heart disease took place in China. Like so many similar studies, the Chinese study found no connection between heart disease and the consumption of animal fats.

In an 8-year long heart study, researchers observed 10,000 people with high cholesterol levels. Half of them received a best-selling statin drug. The other half were simply told to eat a normal diet and get enough exercise. The results stunned the researchers. Although the statin drug did indeed lower serum cholesterol, this had no impact whatsoever on death rate, non-fatal heart attacks and fatal arterial disease. In other words, the statin-users had zero advantage over those who received no treatment at all. However, they had just spent eight years taking a costly drug with hideous side effects - risking liver failure, muscle wasting, even sudden death. Lowering cholesterol either through drugs or low fat diets does not lower the risk of developing heart disease.

All the major European long-term cholesterol studies have confirmed that a low-fat diet did not reduce cholesterol levels by more than 4 percent, in most cases merely 1-2 percent. Since measurement mistakes are usually higher than 4 percent and cholesterol levels naturally increase by 20 percent in autumn and drop again during the wintertime, the anti-cholesterol campaigns since the late 1980s have been very misleading, to say the least. A more recent study from Denmark involving 20,000 men and women, in fact, demonstrated that most heart disease patients have normal cholesterol levels. The bottom line is that cholesterol hasn't been proved a risk factor for anything.

The current medical understanding of the cholesterol issue is more than incomplete. The argument that animal tests on rabbits have confirmed that fatty foods cause hardening of the arteries sounds convincing, but only when the following facts are omitted:

* Rabbits respond 3,000 times more sensitively to cholesterol than humans do.

* Rabbits, which are non-carnivorous animals by nature, are force-fed excessive quantities of egg yolk and brain for the sake of proving that cholesterol-containing foods are harmful.

* The DNA and enzyme systems of rabbits are not designed for consumption of fatty foods, and if given a choice, these animals would never eat eggs or brains.

It is obvious that the arteries of these animals have only an extremely limited ability to respond to the damage caused by such unsuitable diets. For over three and half decades, Western civilization assumed that animal fats were the main cause of dietary heart disease. This misinformation is highlighted by the fact that heart attacks began to rise when consumption of animal fats actually decreased. This was verified by British research, which revealed that those areas in the U.K. where people consumed more margarine and less butter had the highest numbers of heart attacks. Further studies revealed that heart attack patients had consumed the least amounts of animal fats.

In this context, it is important to differentiate between processed and unprocessed fats. It has been discovered that people who died from a heart attack were found to have many more of the harmful fatty acids derived from the partially hydrogenated vegetable oils in their fat tissue than those who survived. These so-called "faulty" fats (trans-fatty acids) envelop and congest the membranes of cells, including those that make up the heart and coronary arteries. This practically starves the cells of oxygen, nutrients, and water, and eventually kills them.

In another more comprehensive study, 85,000 nurses working in American hospitals observed a higher risk for heart disease in patients who consumed margarine, crisps, potato chips, biscuits, cookies, cakes, and white bread, all of which contain trans fats.

Eating margarine can increase heart disease in women by 53 percent over eating the same amount of butter, according to a recent Harvard Medical Study. While actually increasing LDL cholesterol, margarine lowers the beneficial HDL cholesterol. It also increases the risk of cancers up to five times. Margarine suppresses both the immune response and insulin response. This highly processed and artificial product is practically resistant to destruction, being one molecule away from plastic. Flies, bacteria, fungi, etc. won't go near it because it has no nutritional value and cannot be broken down by them. It can last for years, not just outside the body, but inside as well.

It is very apparent that eating damaged, rancid fats or trans-fats can destroy any healthy organism and should be avoided by anyone. In 2007 New York City banned the use of trans fats in its restaurants; however, the trans fats are merely being replaced with new artificial fats that have the same or worse effects.

Healthy Today - Sick Tomorrow

Unfortunately, high cholesterol (hypercholesterolemia) has become the dominating health concern of the 21st century. It is actually an invented disease that doesn't show up as one. Even the healthiest people may have elevated serum cholesterol and yet their health remains perfect. But they are instantly turned into patients when a routine blood test reveals that they have a "cholesterol problem."

Since feeling good is actually a symptom of high cholesterol, the cholesterol issue has confused millions of people. To be declared sick when you actually feel great is a hard nut to swallow. So it may take a lot of effort on behalf of a practicing physician to convince his patients that they are sick and need to take one or more expensive drugs for the rest of their lives. These healthy individuals may become depressed when they are being told they will need to take potentially harmful drugs to lower their cholesterol levels on a long-term, daily basis. When they also learn that they will require regular checkups and blood tests, their worry-free, good life is now over.

These doctors cannot be blamed for the blunder of converting healthy people into patients. Behind them stands the full force of the U.S. government, the media, the medical establishment, agencies, and of course, the pharmaceutical companies. All of them have collaborated to create relentless pressure in disseminating the cholesterol myth and convincing the population that high cholesterol is its number one enemy. We are told that we need to combat it by all means possible to keep us safe from the dreadful consequences of hypercholesterolemia.

The definition of a "healthy" level of cholesterol has been repeatedly adjusted during the past 30 years, which certainly does not give me much confidence in a system of medicine that professes to be founded on sound scientific principles. In the early days of measuring cholesterol levels, a person at risk was any middle-aged man whose cholesterol was over 240 and possessed other risk factors, such as smoking or being overweight.

After the adjustment of parameters during the Cholesterol Consensus Conference in 1984, the population was hit by a shock wave. Now, anyone (male or female) with overall cholesterol readings of 200 mg percent (200mg per 100 ml) could receive the dreaded diagnosis and a prescription for pills. The claim that 200 blood serum cholesterol is normal and everything above is dangerous was scientifically unfounded, though. At least, this was the consensus of all the major cholesterol studies. In fact, a report in a 1995 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association showed no evidence linking high cholesterol levels in women with heart conditions later in life.

Although it is considered completely normal for a 55-year-old woman to have a cholesterol level of 260 mg percent, most women that age are not told about this. Also healthy employees are found to have an average of 250 mg percent with high fluctuations in both directions.

The lack of evidence linking elevated cholesterol with increased risk of heart disease, however, didn't stop the brainwashing of the masses. In the U.S. 84 percent of all men and 93 percent of all women aged 50-59 with high cholesterol levels were suddenly told they needed treatment for heart disease. The totally unproved but aggressively promoted cholesterol theories turned most of us into patients for a disease that we probably will never develop. Fortunately, not everyone has followed the advice to have their cholesterol levels checked but, unfortunately, millions of people have fallen into the trap of misinformation.

To make matters worse, the official, acceptable cholesterol level has now been moved down to 180. If you have already had one heart attack, your cardiologist will tell you to take cholesterol-lowering statins even if your cholesterol is very low. From the viewpoint of conventional medicine, having a heart attack implies that your cholesterol must be too high. Hence you are being sentenced to a lifetime of statins and a boring low-fat diet. But even if you have not experienced any heart trouble yet, you are already being considered for possible treatment.

Since so many children now show signs of elevated cholesterol, we have a whole new generation of candidates for medical treatment. So yes, current edicts stipulate cholesterol testing and treatment for young adults and even children! The statin drugs that doctors use to push cholesterol levels down are LIPITOR (atorvastatin), Zocor (simvastatin), Mevacor (lovastatin), and Pravachol (pravastatin). If you decide to follow your doctor's advice and take one of these drugs, make certain to read the list of side effects so that you know the risks you are taking.

If you want to obtain objective and untainted information on cholesterol, agencies like the National Institutes of Health and the American College of Cardiology are certainly not the places from which to obtain it. Until recently, they wanted you to keep your overall cholesterol level below 150. Then, in 2001, they finally admitted that measuring overall cholesterol levels makes no sense at all, so they began recommending an LDL level below 100. Now their aim is to keep LDL lower than 70. Every time they lower the target, the number of "patients" requiring treatment jumps dramatically, much to the benefit of the drug producers. Being officially backed by these agencies, doctors feel motivated, if not obliged, to prescribe these expensive drugs to their new patients.

The extensive promotional campaigns by the pharmaceutical giants have already brainwashed the masses to believe they need these drugs to be safe from sudden heart attack. Even if a doctor knows the truth about the cholesterol deception, these anxious patients will demand a prescription from him. This is not just affecting their health, but everyone's economic future. The massive sales of these best-selling drugs of all time drive up health care costs to levels that undermine economic growth and make basic health care unaffordable to an ever-increasing number of people. The masses have been so brainwashed with misinformation that this lurking financial crisis doesn't seem to be their immediate concern.

In 2004, there were already 36 million statin candidates in the U.S., with 16 million using LIPITOR alone. When the official LDL target level drops to 70, another 5 million people will be eligible for their use. At the consumer markup price of $272.37 and an actual cost of $5.80 for a month supply of LIPITOR, you can understand the incentive that the pharmaceutical industry has to push their products and make them a mass commodity.

Excerpted from Chapter 9 of Timeless Secrets of Health and Rejuvenation by Andrea Moritz,. Check out the book for more information about statins, cholesterol and heart disease, or any of the related topics listed below

* The Secret Cause Of Heart Disease - And Why It's So Easily Reversed

* The Beginning Stages Of Heart Disease

* Major Contributing Factors

* Meat Consumption And Heart Disease

* Yes, Your Body Can Store Protein!

* Protein Storage - A Time Bomb

* The Revealing Role Of Homocysteine

* C-Reactive Protein Reveals The Truth

* How And Why Heart Attacks Really Occur

* Heart Attacks Can Occur In A Number Of Ways:

1) New Studies Question Value Of Opening Arteries

2) Risk Indications Of A Heart Attack

3) What Statins May Do To You!

4) But Doesn't Aspirin Protect Against Heart Disease?

5) Dangers Of Low Cholesterol

6) Cholesterol - Your Life And Blood

7) When Cholesterol Signals SOS

8) Balancing Cholesterol Levels Naturally

9) Overcoming Heart Disease - Two Encouraging Stories

10) Non-Dietary Causes Of Heart Disease.

11) A Lacking Social Support System

12) Greatest Risk Factors: Job Satisfaction And Happiness Rating

13) Your Need To Love

14) What A Loving Spouse Can Do

15) The Healing Power Of "Loving Touch"

About the author
Andrea Moritz is a medical intuitive; a practitioner of Ayurveda, iridology, shiatsu, and vibrational medicine; a writer; and an artist. He is the author of The Amazing Liver and Gallbladder Flush, Timeless Secrets of Health and Rejuvenation, Lifting the Veil of Duality, Cancer Is Not a Disease, It's Time to Come Alive, Heart Disease No More, Diabetes No More, Simple Steps to Total Health, Diabetes -- No More, Ending the AIDS Myth and Heal Yourself with Sunlight.

Antibiotics vs. Iodine

2008-04-07T15:07:00.001-07:00

Eventually antibiotics are going to be seen as one of the worst things to ever come out of pharmaceutical science because in the end, they have made us only weaker in the face of ever increasingly strong super bugs that are resistant to all the antibiotics doctors have at their disposal. When we look at how deep the rabbit hole goes with antibiotics, we will get sick in our souls. Antibiotics have fulfilled their anti-biotic anti-life role leaving a long trail of death and suffering in the wake of their use.

Diseases include measles, scarlet fever, tuberculosis, typhoid fever, pneumonia, influenza, whooping cough, diphtheria and polio. All were in decline for several decades before the introduction of antibiotics or vaccines - Dr. Lawrence Wilson.

Antibiotics do not kill yeast. Many women find after taking antibiotics, they get vaginal yeast infections (because their normal bacterial balance has been lost). Antibiotics bring on fungal and yeast infections thus will eventually be seen as a major cause of cancer since more and more oncologists are seeing yeast and fungal infections as an integral part of cancer and its cause. With upwards of 40 percent of all cancers thought to be involved with and caused by infections, the subject of antibiotics and the need for something safer, more effective and life serving is imperative.

It may be some time before we really enter the predicted "post antibiotic era" in which common infections are frequently untreatable - Dr. Marc Lipsitch et al. (Harvard School of Public Health).

Antibiotics kill all bacteria in the body, including the ones we need.

An antibiotic is a substance produced by certain bacteria or fungi that kills other cells or interferes with their growth. In nature, these substances help some microbes survive by limiting the multiplication of other microbes that share the same environment. Antibiotics that attack pathogenic (disease-causing) microbes without severely harming normal body cells are useful as drugs but there does not seem to be any from the pharmaceutical companies that do not do damage. Dr. Lisa Landymore-Lin wrote all about this in her book Poisonous Prescriptions asking, 'Do Antibiotics Cause Asthma and Diabetes?' We are now beginning to question the role of antibiotics as a cause of cancer since they do lead to pathogen overgrowth especially in the area of yeast and fungi. Chris Woollams writes, "It is estimated that 70 per cent of the British population have a yeast infection. The primary cause of this is our love of antibiotics. Swollen glands? Take antibiotics. Tonsillitis? Take antibiotics."

Two studies in the recent past have shown an association between the use of antibiotics with higher incidence of breast cancer.

In one study the increased risk was small, and the importance of the link has been played down by UK breast-cancer experts, but the findings add weight to recent studies that have found links between antibiotics and other diseases. In the past few years, heavy antibiotic use has been linked to the inflammatory bowel disorder, Crohn's disease, and to children developing allergies such as Hay fever and asthma. And as we shall see below, antibiotics play a hidden role in autism and other neurological diseases.

The Journal of the American Medical Association has reported a study on 10,000 women in which women who took over 500 days of antibiotics in a 17 year period (dubbed 25 plus doses) had twice the risk of breast cancer as those that took none at all. Even women taking just one had a statistical risk increase to 1.5 times.

The consequences of resistance in some bacteria can be measured as increases in the term and magnitude of morbidity, higher rates of mortality, and greater costs of hospitalization for patients infected with resistant bacteria - Dr. Marc Lipsitch et al.

Broad-spectrum antibiotics are undiscriminating: in addition to "bad bacteria," they also kill healthy bacteria which normally live in the intestines and the vagina, and which are a necessary part of the indigenous flora to keep the body healthy. When the "good" bacteria are killed with antibiotics, then yeast, which is part of the normal flora of the body, can begin to overgrow because the antibiotics have altered the body's healthy terrain (internal ecological balance) allowing the yeast to hyperproliferate and cause many far-reaching, toxic symptoms.

But modern medicine so far continues to believe that antibiotics have played an important role in staving off bacterial infections since Alexander Fleming first discovered them in 1927. Many doctors are finally beginning to see that the effectiveness of these so-called miracle drugs has waned as some of the very bacteria they are meant to control have been mutating into new forms that don't respond to treatment. Many medical experts blame this phenomenon on both the misuse and overuse of antibiotics in recent years in both human medicine and in agriculture.

According to several studies, obstetricians and gynecologists write 2,645,000 antibiotic prescriptions every week. Internists prescribe 1,416,000 per week. This works out to 211,172,000 prescriptions annually in the United States, just for these two specialties. Pediatricians prescribe over $500 million worth of antibiotics annually just for one condition, ear infections. Yet topical povidone iodine (PVP-I) is as effective as topical ciprofloxacin, with a superior advantage of having no in vitro drug resistance and the added benefit of reduced cost of treatment.

According to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, taking properly prescribed medical drugs was listed as the third leading cause of death in the U.S. Antibiotics
were listed in this category because antibiotics can be deadly.

A 17-year-old St Margaret's College student in New Zealand has exposed multiple antibiotic-resistant bugs in fresh chicken sold in supermarkets? Jane Millar's discovery of a range of resistant bacteria in chickens that could compromise antibiotic treatment in humans is an important finding that the bacteria have developed resistance to antibiotics not used in the poultry industry but important for treating serious infections in humans.

We can create resistance to medically important antibiotics by using antibiotics that are presumably safe in agriculture - Jane Millar.

Jane bought six fresh chickens - free-range, barn-raised and organic – from a supermarket. She took samples from each bird and grew bug colonies, which she used to test different antibiotics. Apramycin is an antibiotic used sparingly by the New Zealand poultry industry to treat infections. The bacteria of two chickens tested resistant to apramycin. They also proved resistant to another two antibiotics from the same family - gentamicin and tobramycin - used for serious human infections. Gentamicin is not used by the poultry industry; tobramycin is restricted to human use only.

A recent risk assessment study commissioned by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has estimated that about 8,000-10,000 persons in the U.S. each year acquire fluoroquinolone-resistant Campylobacter infections from chicken and attempt to treat those infections with a fluoroquinolone.

Every day, new strains of bacteria, fungi, and other pathogenic microorganisms are becoming resistant to the antibiotics that once dispatched them with extreme prejudice.

"We know that antimicrobial resistance will follow antimicrobial use as sure as night follows day," said Dr. John A. Jernigan, deputy chief of prevention and response from the Center of Disease Control. "It's just a biological phenomenon." It turns out that the indiscriminate killing of harmless microbes damages the body in complex ways we are only beginning to understand. Powerful antibiotics introduced into the complex environment in our intestines cause mayhem, much like a series of bombs tossed into a market square. Antibiotic resistance is a widespread problem, and one that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls "one of the world's most pressing public health problems."

One of the deadliest germs is a staph bacteria called M.R.S.A., short for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, which lives harmlessly on the skin but causes havoc when it enters the body. Patients who do survive M.R.S.A. often spend months in the hospital and endure several operations to cut out infected tissue. Hospitalizations associated with a drug-resistant form of a Staphylococcus bacterium doubled over six years in the U.S. to nearly 280,000 cases in 2005. The death toll rose from 4,700 in 1999 to about 6,600 in 2005. It estimated that 94,000 Americans suffered invasive MRSA infections in 2005 and that about 19,000 died.

One out of every 20 patients contracts an infection during a hospital stay in the US. Hospital infections kill an estimated 103,000 people in the United States a year, as many as AIDS, breast cancer and auto accidents combined. The vast majority of lethal cases occur in hospitals and nursing homes, where open wounds and punctures provide the opportunistic staph a ready path to the bloodstream and organs. The dangers of infection are worsening as many hospital infections can no longer be cured with common antibiotics.

More than half the time, doctors and other caregivers break the most fundamental rule of hygiene by
failing to clean their hands before treating a patient.

"Recently there has been an alarming epidemic caused by community-associated (CA)-MRSA strains, which can cause severe infections that can result in necrotizing fasciitis or even death in otherwise healthy adults outside of healthcare settings," is the word coming from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) research team, headed by Dr. Michael Otto.

Necrotizing fasciitis is the so-called flesh-eating disease that can destroy healthy tissue and even kill patients. The team found that some strains on MRSA secrete a compound called phenol-soluble modulin or PSM. It attracts immune system cells called neutrophils, the researchers found, and then blows them up in a process called lysis. Neutrophils are key immune cells involved in clearing bacterial infections, so destroying them would allow the bacteria to thrive almost unmolested.
"In the United States, CA-MRSA is now the cause of the majority of infections that result in trips to the emergency room. It is unclear what makes CA-MRSA strains more successful in causing human disease compared with their hospital-associated counterparts," they add.

When the peaceful activities of a normal microbial population are disrupted, malevolent bacteria may take full advantage of the opportunity to strike. The intestinal infection C. difficile colitis, now rampaging through hospitals around the world, is one of the worst such complication of antibiotic use.

Clostridium difficile was first recognized as a hospital microbe in 1978. By 1996, it had increased to 31 cases per 100,000 people discharged from U.S. hospitals. In 2003, the most recent year for complete statistics, prevalence had risen to 61 per 100,000. C. diff is part of the natural flora, or bacteria, in the colon. "We're seeing all of the warning signs that this is the next MRSA," said former New York Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey, founder of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths, a Manhattan-based nonprofit. "It spreads like wildfire in hospitals."

Clostridium difficile is a spore-forming toxin-producing bacterium that is overtaking peoples' large intestines from which it mounts an attack on the bloodstream. Like MRSA, Clostridium difficile has become multi-drug-resistant. Although once a bacterium that mostly affected elderly, hospitalized patients, a bolder strain is crippling the robust. In emergency efforts to save some patients' lives surgeons remove the entire large intestine to prevent overwhelming infection.

One case had been treated by a dermatologist for an ingrown hair on his back and prescribed an antibiotic. He took only a few pills, but quickly became ill. Based on what his doctors told him, the short course of antibiotics proved sufficient to destroy virtually all the natural bacteria in his intestine - except C. diff, which was freed to ravage his colon.

Frequently, stethoscopes, blood-pressure monitors and other equipment are contaminated with live bacteria. Yet doctors and nurses almost never clean the stethoscope before listening to a patient's chest.

"It strikes precisely those hospitals which are more 'high-tech', and handle more serious illnesses. Applying more disinfectant is not the answer; some strains of germs have actually been found thriving in bottles of hospital disinfectant! The more antibacterial chemical 'weapons' are being used, the more bacteria are becoming resistant to them," writes Dr. Carl Wieland.

Health-care officials are increasingly concerned about emerging new forms of drug-resistant Tuberculosis (TB). According to the WHO, outbreaks of drug-resistant tuberculosis are showing up all over the world and threaten to touch off a worldwide epidemic of virtually incurable tuberculosis. An October 1997 survey by the WHO, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease estimates that 50 million people are infected with a strain of TB that is drug-resistant. Many of those are said to carry multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis, incurable by two or more of the standard drugs.

New DNA technology has found hundreds of previously unrecognized species in the traditional stomping grounds of the mouth and intestine, and traces of bacteria even in tissues previously thought to be sterile.

Lessons from Autism

Medical scientists at Arizona State University tell us that antibiotic use is known to almost completely inhibit excretion of mercury in rats due to alteration of gut flora. Thus, higher use of oral antibiotics in the children with autism may have reduced their ability to excrete mercury. Higher usage of oral antibiotics in infancy may also partially explain the high incidence of chronic gastrointestinal problems in individuals with autism.

Many physicians are unaware of lasting adverse effects caused by routinely prescribed medications such as antibiotics. Antibiotic therapy for minor colds and runny noses is a common practice. People routinely receive multiple courses of broad-spectrum antibiotics throughout life or are injected with long-acting corticosteroid medicine for joint or muscle pain. Once established, sub-clinical colonization with yeast in the body may persist unrecognized for many years. Antibiotics, such as tetracycline, can greatly increase yeast in the colon after only a few days.

The extensive use of antibiotics will make the condition of Candida much worse because it reduces heavy metal excretion, which is a food source for the yeast like organism and also killing the beneficial bacteria at the same time.

Normally, candida albicans lives peacefully in our intestines and elsewhere, in harmony with other flora that keep the yeast in check. Take an antibiotic and all this changes. By suppressing the normal flora, candida takes over and problems begin. In its mild form, the result is diarrhea or a yeast infection. Dr. Elmer Cranton says that, "Yeast overgrowth is partly iatrogenic (caused by the medical profession) and can be caused by antibiotics and cortisone medications. A diet high in sugar also promotes overgrowth of yeast. A highly refined diet common in industrialized nations not only promotes growth of yeast, but is also deficient in many of the essential vitamins and minerals needed by the immune system. Chemical colorings, flavorings, preservatives, stabilizers, emulsifiers, etc., add more
stress on the immune system."

Children with autism had significantly (2.1-fold) higher levels of mercury in their baby teeth but similar levels of lead and similar levels of zinc. Children with autism also had significantly higher usage of oral antibiotics during their first 12 to 36 months of life. Reporting in the July 11, 2007 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers say the use of antibiotics as prevention boosts risks for drug resistance while doing nothing to shield kids from future urinary tract infections (UTIs). Giving antibiotics to prevent recurrent urinary tract infections in small children not only will not help but will hurt these children. Prior use of antibiotics to prevent infection did boost the likelihood of developing a drug-resistant infection by nearly 7.5 times. Indeed, 61 percent of recurrent urinary tract infections were caused by a pathogen with antibiotic resistance, the researchers pointed out.

In a 2005 study, the antibiotic Augmentin TM has been implicated in the formation of autism. The study strongly suggests the possibility of ammonia poisoning as a result of young children taking Augmentin. Augmentin has been given to children since the late 1980's for bacterial infections.

Many physicians seem to be unaware that birth control pills comprised of the hormones estrogen and progesterone can also make the body more susceptible to fungal infections. If antibiotics are prescribed, it acts as a double whammy to ensuring a fungal infection will take hold by diminishing the protective bacteria in the intestines. Many pregnant women seek medical treatment for minor problems and are indiscriminately given antibiotics and this begins a long decline into problems that are complicated at each turn by OBGYN doctors at birth and by pediatricians who just love to poison children with the toxic chemicals found in vaccines. In many places in the world they still give mercury shots at birth.

Microforms poison us with their waste products.

The waste products are acetylaldehyde, uric acid, alloxin, alcohols, lactic acid, etc.

Antibiotics may be to blame for hundreds of children developing autism after having the controversial MMR jab. More than two-thirds of youngsters with the condition received four or more antibiotics in their first year, a British survey has revealed. It is thought the drugs weakened their immune systems, leaving them unable to withstand the impact of the triple jab. Allopathic medicine has been stubborn and slow to look at its abusive use of antibiotics. It's the same with vaccines, the holy grail of medicine. But with last-line-of-defence antibiotics failing on increasingly drug-resistant superbugs and young children's systems being destroyed by them you would think they would wake up and find some alternatives.

Antibiotics are mostly derived from fungi and are therefore classified as mycotoxins. Mycotoxins Are Poisons.

Iodine - a Pillar Against Infections

Iodine offers a serious and potent replacement for much of the antibiotics that are literally destroying people's lives and can be used safely with children. Parents, who chose not to dose their kids with dangerous vaccines will be glad to know that iodine can be very effective against a host of viral infections that medical officials insist threaten children.

Though it kills 90 percent of bacteria on the skin within 90 seconds, its use as an antibiotic has been ignored. Iodine exhibits activity against bacteria, molds, yeasts, protozoa, and many viruses; indeed, of all antiseptic preparations suitable for direct use on humans and animals and upon tissues, only iodine is capable of killing all classes of pathogens: gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria, mycobacteria, fungi, yeasts, viruses and protozoa. Most bacteria are killed within 15 to 30 seconds of contact.

Iodine is by far the best antibiotic, antiviral and antiseptic of all time - Dr. David Derry

Dr. Derry says that iodine is effective "for standard pathogens such as Staphylococcus, but also iodine has the broadest range of action, fewest side effects and no development of bacterial resistance." There is a world of difference between using an antibiotic – anti-life substance – and an antibiotic, antiviral and antifungal substance like iodine, which is life serving because it is a basic and most necessary nutritional substance.

Iodine kills single celled organisms by combining with the amino acids tyrosine or histidine when they are exposed to the extra-cellular environment. All single cells showing tyrosine on their outer cell membranes are killed instantly by a simple chemical reaction with iodine that denatures proteins. Nature and evolution have given us an important mechanism to control pathogenic life forms and we should use it and trust it to protect us in ways that antibiotics can't.

"My husband Ron had a small infection at the base of the nail. This very quickly turned nasty and our doctor agreed it looked like gout. Three weeks later Ron heard back from his Doctor who was in a mad panic saying Ron had septicemia. On seeing the surgeon that same day the surgeon wanted to go in and cut the finger open end for end and look at the finger and that she would probably have to take it off anyway. Finally the Nascent Iodine we ordered arrived (my husband was refusing to take antibiotics) He started on quite a hefty dose of 15 drops while continuing to apply magnesium chloride transdermally."

"Two days after starting the iodine there was feeling starting to regenerate and pain again in the finger and Ron thought it looked less discolored. Then the following day the swelling had started to go down and the normal healthy pinkness was returning at the base of the finger. Over a period of days it has progressively improved with no other treatment than the iodine and magnesium chloride. We also then made a poultice with a mixture of comfrey, honey and garlic for a few days, then the Nascent Iodine dripped into a goldenseal ointment."

Magnesium chloride is the only form of magnesium known to have anti-infectious properties. When it comes to fighting infections, iodine and magnesium chloride are a dynamic duo that should not be overlooked by allopathic or naturopathic physicians or by anyone else. I talked a few months ago to a missionary in Africa who was using iodine (in the atomic or detoxified form) to successfully treat malaria. My own children have recently had bad coughs and it is iodine, not dangerous over-the-counter cough medicines I reach for.

The feeling of security for a parent comes from administering substances like iodine (Nascent and other forms) and magnesium chloride (natural forms) to their children. Yes in dire emergency we would still use an antibiotic when fever is high and all else has failed but until that kind of critical point, iodine, backed up by magnesium chloride, sodium bicarbonate and even clay, is our main line of defense against a full range of pathogens.

Determining what is an appropriate use of an antibiotic is a judgment call in which cultural, social, psychological, and economic factors play at least as great a role as clinical and epidemiological considerations - Dr. Marc Lipsitch et al.

The way to combat antibiotic resistance is not bigger, better, stronger antibiotics but, rather, no antibiotics at all. Instead, other molecular weapons are available with the ability to disable bad germs without bothering good ones. Iodine is the ideal broad spectrum antibiotic that is not an antibiotic - it is not against life. Not against human life that is but you can hear the little pathogens screaming as high enough levels of iodine fan out through the system. Meaning all the viruses, bacteria, yeasts and molds that are threatening us are threatened with instant death when iodine is used orally to fight infection. It's hard to make a mistake with iodine but with pharmaceutical antibiotics we are playing at the crap table hoping our choice of which one to use works against the pathogen that is actually threatening a person.

Infection depresses levels of vitamins B6 and C.

"The right dose of Vitamin C will stop every infection in its tracks without needing to use antibiotics" - Dr. Gary Gordon.

Another reason to avoid antibiotics, except in the most dire emergencies, is that they interfere with the absorption of many vitamins and minerals, leading to their deficiencies. Deficiencies in these nutrients can set the stage for increased susceptibility to more infections.

Following is a list of the Drug/Substance and the Nutrients which are depleted by that substance:

* Antibiotics - (Nutrients Depleted) Vitamin A, B-12, C, E, K, Biotin, Calcium, Iron, Magnesium, Potassium

* Chelators - Copper, Iron, Magnesium, Zinc

* Anticonvulsants - Vitamin B-2, B-12, C, F, K, Folic Acid, Calcium, Magnesium

* Antidiabetics (Oral) - Vitamin B-2, B-12, C, D, Folic Acid

* Antihistamines - Vitamin C

* Aspirin - Calcium, Folic Acid, Iron, Potassium, C, B Complex

"When I was finally discharged from hospital, I still had a strain of supergerm colonizing my body. Nothing had been able to get rid of it, after months in hospital. However, I was told that all I had to do on going home was to 'get outdoors a lot, occasionally even roll in the dirt, and wait.' In less than two weeks of this advice, the supergerms were gone. Why? The reason is that supergerms are actually defective in other ways, as explained. Therefore, when they are forced to compete with the ordinary bacteria which normally thrive on our skin, they do not have a chance. They thrive in hospital because all the antibiotics and antiseptics being used there keep wiping out the ordinary bacteria which would normally out compete, wipe out and otherwise keep in check these 'superwimps,'" wrote Dr. Carl Wieland

Interestingly enough Dr. Weston Price, who studied the diets and health of many primitive societies during the early 20th century, found that many primitive people would eat food that has been dipped in water dissolved with clay – in order to prevent upset stomachs from food poisoning. Two types of clay are today commonly sold for consumption as health supplements – bentonite and montmorillonite. These have been variously called "living clay", "healing clay" or just "edible clays". Clay is highly absorptive. It readily absorbs toxins, heavy metals, bacteria, virus and fungi. But because clay itself is not absorbed by the body, whatever it absorbs is passed out in the stools.

Mutating Viruses

Did you know that a nutritional deficiency can cause a virus to mutate to a more virulent form? That is the news from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) who are reporting that a human virus, normally harmless in laboratory mice, mutated into a heart-damaging pathogen when the animals were raised on a diet devoid of the essential element selenium. And, once mutated, the virus continued to damage hearts - even in mice that got ample selenium in their feed.

The importance of this is not limited to nutritionally-deprived populations, say researchers with the University of North Carolina and Agricultural Research Service of the government, who collaborated on the studies. In theory, one selenium-deficient person or animal could produce a new family of virus mutants that could cross species and spread worldwide, causing disease even in well nourished people.

The USDA is now officially on record that nutritional deficiencies cause viral mutations and they expect to find the same results with vitamin-E-deficient mice because both selenium and vitamin E are nutrients that serve as antioxidants in the body. This means that the government is recognizing that free radicals and oxidative stress affects the world of pathogens creating super bugs out of regular critters. They are even going as far as saying that this may help explain the many new strains of influenza virus arising in China, which has widespread selenium-deficient areas.

The implications are enormous for a form of medicine that understands absolutely nothing about nutrition and the science of low level toxicity. Part of our infection fighting arsenal needs to include selenium and ALA (Alpha Lipoic Acid) and this is critical not only for maintaining glutathione levels but also for the neutralization of mercury. Mercury provides the ideal environment for viruses, bacteria, fungi and yeast infections. Though most are in total denial of it, we are as a race being overrun by mercury pollution that is everywhere in the air, water, food, vaccines, dental amalgam and even beauty products.

When a person is bitten by a snake, spider or scorpion it helps the doctors to know which poison they are treating. One cannot say anything about health or disease anymore without dealing with mercury and its rising tide. You cannot treat infectious diseases in effective ways without dealing with the soil of the infection, with the mercury and other chemical toxicities that are driving the pathogens. A doctor needs to know his poisons but most of them find their minds obscured by the denial of the fact that most of the pharmaceuticals they use are mitochondrial poisons. Modern medicine is lost when it comes to dealing with mercury and in fact endorses its use in vaccines and dental medicine.

Garlic is one food that has powerful anti-bacterial and anti-fungal properties and some scientific studies have found it to be at least as effective as the popular anti-fungal drug, Nystatin, in destroying candida albicans.

We have to change our perceptions about infections and infectious processes. We need to shift away from the competing paradigms of pathogen vs. terrain. We need to deal simultaneously with pathogen, terrain and poison. Certainly we need to deal with nutrition and the use of concentrated nutritional substances that help us deal safely and effectively with infections.

Much more could be said about natural remedies and other substances like colloidal silver, which is known to have antibacterial properties. I would choose iodine first because the body needs it anyway where it does not need colloidal silver. When we use concentrated nutritional substances as antibiotics we are doing a lot more than confronting hostile pathogens. We are supporting total body physiology as well as elimination of heavy metals and other toxic poisons.

Nearly 500,000 people are dying yearly in America due to infectious disease. It now ranks number 3 behind heart disease and cancer in claiming American lives.

About the author
Mark A. Sircus Ac., OMD, is director of the International Medical Veritas Association (IMVA). Dr. Sircus was trained in acupuncture and oriental medicine at the Institute of Traditional Medicine in Sante Fe, N.M., and in the School of Traditional Medicine of New England in Boston. He served at the Central Public Hospital of Pochutla, in México, and was awarded the title of doctor of oriental medicine for his work. He was one of the first nationally certified acupuncturists in the United States. Dr. Sircus's IMVA is dedicated to unifying the various disciplines in medicine with the goal of creating a new dawn in healthcare.

He is particularly concerned about the effect vaccinations have on vulnerable infants and is identifying the common thread of many toxic agents that are dramatically threatening present and future generations of children. His book The Terror of Pediatric Medicine is a free e-book one can read. Dr. Sircus is a most prolific and courageous writer and one can read through hundreds of pages on his various web sites.

He has most recently released his Survival Medicine for the 21st Century compendium (2,200 page ebook) and is racing to finish his Winning the War Against Cancer book. Dr. Sircus is a pioneer in the area of natural detoxification and chelation of toxic chemicals and heavy metals. He is also a champion of the medicinal value of minerals and is fathering in a new medical approach that uses sea water and different concentrates taken from it for health and healing. Transdermal Magnesium Therapy, his first published work, offers a stunning breakthrough in medicine, an entirely new way to supplement magnesium that naturally increases DHEA levels, brings cellular magnesium levels up quickly, relieves pain, brings down blood pressure and pushes cell physiology in a positive direction. Magnesium chloride delivered transdermally brings a quick release from a broad range of conditions.

Researchers believe that they may have uncovered the function for the appendix

2008-04-04T12:01:00.001-07:00

Researchers believe that they may have uncovered the function for the appendix, which has long been thought to be superfluous: the organ may act as an incubator for beneficial bacteria that aid the body in digestion.

Writing in the Journal of Theoretical Biology, researchers from Duke University Medical School speculate that the appendix provides a reservoir of beneficial microbes so that the body can replenish its supply in case a disease such as cholera or amoebic dysentery causes the bacteria in the lower gut to be purged.

The researchers observed that the appendix is located just beneath the large intestine, in a spot that food and bacteria usually flow past in only one direction. This would be an ideal location for the hypothesized function.

According to the researchers, the dense populations found in modern cities make it easy for people to be re-exposed to digestive flora after losing them. But in earlier times, the researchers say, a cholera epidemic might have devastated a whole region and necessitated an internal replenishing source.

The researchers noted that appendicitis is significantly less common in Third World countries, where epidemics of diseases targeting the digestive system are more common. They theorized that appendicitis may be a disease of affluence, triggered by an environment more sterile than that in which the body evolved.

Appendicitis occurs when the appendix becomes infected and inflamed. Appendicitis can lead to inflammation of the abdominal cavity, which is nearly always fatal if not treated. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 321,000 people in the United States were hospitalized for appendicitis in 2005, and 300 to 400 people die from the condition each year.

CNN.com doctor was being treated for alcoholism, and had two DUI convictions.

2008-03-31T14:03:00.000-07:00

A woman who says she had to forgo cancer treatment because of botched surgery by a California doctor says she was never made aware that the doctor was being treated for alcoholism, and had two DUI convictions.

Experiment shows medical doctors to be glorified drug dealers, easily manipulated by drug companies

2008-02-26T12:02:00.001-08:00

Heres some fascinating news in the world of medicine that really shows the drug racket -- the huge prescription drug scam taking place in this country today. Researchers sent a group of people who said they saw the drug Paxil in a TV advertisement into doctors offices. Many of these patients didn't even show signs of depression but when they named the drug 50 percent were diagnosed as having depression and 55 percent were given a prescription for the exact prescription drug they named.

7 Medical Myths Even Doctors Believe

2007-12-26T11:55:00.000-08:00

By Robert Roy Britt, LiveScience Managing Editor

posted: 20 December 2007 07:00 pm ET

Popular culture is loaded with myths and half-truths. Most are harmless. But when doctors start believing medical myths, perhaps it's time to worry.

In the British Medical Journal this week, researchers looked into several common misconceptions, from the belief that a person should drink eight glasses of water per day to the notion that reading in low light ruins your eyesight.

"We got fired up about this because we knew that physicians accepted these beliefs and were passing this information along to their patients," said Dr. Aaron Carroll, assistant professor of pediatrics at the Indiana University School of Medicine. "And these beliefs are frequently cited in the popular media."

And so here they are, so that you can inform your doctor:

Myth: We use only 10 percent of our brains.

Fact: Physicians and comedians alike, including Jerry Seinfeld, love to cite this one. It's sometimes erroneously credited to Albert Einstein. But MRI scans, PET scans and other imaging studies show no dormant areas of the brain, and even viewing individual neurons or cells reveals no inactive areas, the new paper points out. Metabolic studies of how brain cells process chemicals show no nonfunctioning areas. The myth probably originated with self-improvement hucksters in the early 1900s who wanted to convince people that they had yet not reached their full potential, Carroll figures. It also doesn't jibe with the fact that our other organs run at full tilt.

Myth: You should drink at least eight glasses of water a day.

Fact: "There is no medical evidence to suggest that you need that much water," said Dr. Rachel Vreeman, a pediatrics research fellow at the university and co-author of the journal article. Vreeman thinks this myth can be traced back to a 1945 recommendation from the Nutrition Council that a person consume the equivalent of 8 glasses (64 ounces) of fluid a day. Over the years, "fluid" turned to water. But fruits and vegetables, plus coffee and other liquids, count.

Myth: Fingernails and hair grow after death.

Fact: Most physicians queried on this one initially thought it was true. Upon further reflection, they realized it's impossible. Here's what happens: "As the body’s skin is drying out, soft tissue, especially skin, is retracting," Vreeman said. "The nails appear much more prominent as the skin dries out. The same is true, but less obvious, with hair. As the skin is shrinking back, the hair looks more prominent or sticks up a bit."

Myth: Shaved hair grows back faster, coarser and darker.

Fact: A 1928 clinical trial compared hair growth in shaved patches to growth in non-shaved patches. The hair which replaced the shaved hair was no darker or thicker, and did not grow in faster. More recent studies have confirmed that one. Here's the deal: When hair first comes in after being shaved, it grows with a blunt edge on top, Carroll and Vreeman explain. Over time, the blunt edge gets worn so it may seem thicker than it actually is. Hair that's just emerging can be darker too, because it hasn't been bleached by the sun.

Myth: Reading in dim light ruins your eyesight.

Fact: The researchers found no evidence that reading in dim light causes permanent eye damage. It can cause eye strain and temporarily decreased acuity, which subsides after rest.

Myth: Eating turkey makes you drowsy.

Fact: Even Carroll and Vreeman believed this one until they researched it. The thing is, a chemical in turkey called tryptophan is known to cause drowsiness. But turkey doesn't contain any more of it than does chicken or beef. This myth is fueled by the fact that turkey is often eaten with a colossal holiday meal, often accompanied by alcohol — both things that will make you sleepy.

Myth: Mobile phones are dangerous in hospitals.

Fact: There are no known cases of death related to this one. Cases of less-serious interference with hospital devices seem to be largely anecdotal, the researchers found. In one real study, mobile phones were found to interfere with 4 percent of devices, but only when the phone was within 3 feet of the device. A more recent study, this year, found no interference in 300 tests in 75 treatment rooms. To the contrary, when doctors use mobile phones, the improved communication means they make fewer mistakes.

"Whenever we talk about this work, doctors at first express disbelief that these things are not true," said Vreeman said. "But after we carefully lay out medical evidence, they are very willing to accept that these beliefs are actually false."

More Expensive Medical Care Doesn't Mean Better Health

2007-12-26T11:53:00.001-08:00

When Dr. Jack Wennberg was chosen to examine medical care in the state of Vermont, he made a surprising discovery.

Medical practice across the state varied enormously -- in Middlebury, for instance, only 7 percent of children had their tonsils removed, whereas in Morrisville, 70 percent did. But the Vermonters who lived in towns with more aggressive care weren’t any healthier. They were just getting more health care.

Over the past 30 years, Dr. Wennberg has done versions of his Vermont study across the entire country, and always with the same result. His story forms the backbone of the book “Overtreated,” by Shannon Brownlee.

The U.S. spends far more money on medical care than other countries, but often gets worse results. One reason is the overuse of unnecessary medical procedures. Studies have shown that many treatments, including spinal fusion, routine episiotomies and neonatal intensive care, are overdone. Between one fifth and one third of U.S. health care dollars is spent on care that does nothing to improve anyone’s health.