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.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Lipo-Dissolve - an insane scam
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.
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.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Recent Survey
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.
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.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Doctors Are The Third Leading Cause of Death in the US, Killing 250,000 People Every Year
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
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.
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.
Monday, April 7, 2008
Antibiotics vs. Iodine
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.
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.
Friday, April 4, 2008
Researchers believe that they may have uncovered the function for the appendix
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.
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.
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