Bigger, Badder, Scarier!!!

Coming on the heels of revelations that the CDC cooked the books to make the H1N1 (formerly known as Swine) virus look far more dangerous than it was, comes the latest  scare tactic to get people to stick those needles in their arms: The H5N1 Virus! Omigod! It must be 5 times as deadly as the H1N1!!!!

Scientists have already detected the virus in poultry in Indonesia, Egypt, Thailand and Vietnam, and warn that it is only a few mutations away from posing a threat to human life!!!

Good grief. More and more these days, what passes for public health in this country resembles a poorly-plotted zombie movie.

What a weekend!

I have always maintained that more education is better, which is why I am one of only a handful of doctors statewide who is board-certified in both clinical nutrition and acupuncture. My recent appointment to the Board of Directors for the national nutrition specialty board is also a natural outgrowth of this emphasis on ongoing professional enhancement. This weekend, I received another certification which, while not a physician-level postgraduate degree, is a certification of which I am equally proud.

Today, I can happily state that I am a League Certified Cycling Instructor. I have been certified by the League of American Bicyclists   to teach courses in all phases of bicycle riding, road and traffic skills, and bicycle maintenance, to both adults and children.

Getting this diploma is a nontrivial task, beginning this summer, when I took the prerequisite class for my certification course. I then had to apply to take the certification course itself by completing a cycling resume which established my bona fides for having the necessary experience to even take the course, absorbing a stack of reading material, and then proving that I had done so by taking a test which took me -- no kidding -- 3 hours to complete.

All that was just to get in the door.

The class itself started at 5:30 Friday night, going until 10:00 that evening; resuming at 8 a.m. on Saturday, and wrapping up around 9:30 at night; and a final, "short" day on Sunday, again starting at 8 a.m. and wrapping up at 6 p.m., after which I got to go home and reintroduce myself to my kids. The dog, fortunately, remembered me.

It wasn't all sitting around, thankfully. During this time, I gave two short classes on various cycling education topics (Night Riding and Cadence, Gear Shifting and Power Output) went on one educational road ride, led and taught a portion of a second road ride, and extemporaneously taught and demonstrated a number of bicycle handling drills, all while receiving feedback from my instructors and fellow students. When I wasn't learning by doing, I was learning by watching my classmates and providing critiques of their performance.

It was, by anyone's standard, an exhausting weekend.

At the same time, it was one of the most rewarding experiences I have had. I learned a tremendous amount, not so much about cycling -- the admission process assured that my cycling knowledge was a given -- but about teaching, learning and community building. I gained far more than I expected to this weekend, and the spillover into other professional areas is obvious to me.

One question I have been asked, is why did I spend so much time and effort to achieve such a high level of competence in a field which is really outside of my professional realm?

It's a good question, but a question that is flawed by its premise. My overarching concern is with my patients' health, and I constantly preach the virtues of an active lifestyle.

But, honestly, most people are loathe to begin an "exercise program" or to continue one that they have started, unless they are faced with extraordinary circumstances (impending diabetes or heart disease, for example) . To my mind, it is more effective to find ways that allow people to incorporate exercise into their daily activities than it is  to set up a structured exercise program that will be abandoned in a month or two. (That said, I refuse to classify vacuuming a house as "exercise," as did one recent -- and exceedingly flawed --  study.)

Cycling fills that niche perfectly. It is an age-free activity (using the new, sporty trikes (check some out here), even older people or those with balance problems can safely hit the roads under their own power). It is a physical activity that most people have at least some passing pleasant experience with. Finally, cycling provides a tremendous return on investment in heart, lung and muscle performance -- which in turn, translates into decreased illness and disease, longer lifespan, decreased dependence on drugs...need I go on?

So by becoming certified to teach cycling to others, I am also improving my ability to help my patients in what I see as a very fundamental way.

The second reason I chose to take this course is that I am hoping, by providing cycling classes to adults and children in the area, to give back a little to the Litchfield community of which I am so fond and which, for the past decade or so, has given my children wonderful schools, mentors, and coaches under whose tutelage they have thrived.

I hope that, by teaching families successful cycling strategies, that I can help them enjoy this area's quiet and extraordinary beauty in an entirely new way -- while at the same time, giving them alternative activities that are healthier and more rewarding than time in front of the television or under the spell of a video game.

And, I have found increasingly over the past several years that a quote from India's famous sage and politician Mahatma Gandhi has become a governing principle in my life.

"We must be the change we wish to see in the world," Gandhi said. More and more, I am trying to live by that standard.

The (Swine) Flu Season Is Upon Us!! (yawn)

Unless you are living in a cave in the furthest reaches of the Andes, you are probably aware that FLU SEASON IS COMING! The media has certainly gone into chicken little overdrive to keep you utterly misinformed about the flu and the allegedly proper precautions to take to avoid it.

This is what is known as FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) marketing. It was employed by IBM during the 60s and early 70s to maintain it's near-monopoly (at the time) over computer systems, which back then were the size of small garages and were fairly pricey. The technique is to scare you into buying the product by capitalizing on the customer's fears.

In IBM's case it was the fear executives had of switching to upstarts like Digital Equipment Corp., even though DEC's computers were faster, smaller, cheaper and better. In the case of mainstream medicine, the fear they inculcate is that you will die unless you buy their products. Now that's what I call purchase motivation!

The problem is, of course, is that the fear that they are selling is not backed by the facts, and we expect a little better ethics out of the health care system than we do out of a bunch of computer salesmen from New York.

Nonetheless, pharmaceutical companies have FUD marketing down to an art form that IBM marketeers back in the day could only have dreamed of. Today's vaccine makers have public health officials from the federal level to village health departments hustling their goods for them. (I wish chiropractic had an army of salesmen like that, it would reduce national healthcare costs dramatically.)

The fact of the matter is, epidemiological studies have repeatedly shown that flu vaccines historically have a very low success rate, and in fact, make little difference in the course of the disease. In short, they are failures.

Although it's a bit of a comparison between rotten apples and tasty, fresh oranges, I would like to mention that a follow-up study done of the people who attended my flu clinic a couple of years ago found that 97% of them remained flu-free for the season.

The marketing hand of the flu FUD machine was also visible in the renaming of the virus. Anybody else notice how the “swine flu” was suddenly renamed the “H1N1 virus”? The main objective here was to remove any similarities in the popular mind between the similarly hapless swine flu “epidemic” of the 70s and it's attendant lethal vaccine, and the current public health travesty.

Here's why I think the H1N1 virus epidemic is similarly overrated: A virus, to be successful, can do one of two things. It can be fairly lethal, or it can be relatively benign and spread easily. A lethal virus is unlikely to spread easily because it kills its hosts before they can infect a large number of people. A benign virus can spread easily, because it doesn't make you sick enough to put you down for the count, so you walk around infecting everybody around you.

The only virus in recent history to escape the Viral Dichotomy is HIV. It managed, through its transmission method and long latency, to be both lethal and readily transmissable.

And to those who are arguing that the swine flu is the overdue pandemic, I would point them back to HIV/AIDS. That virus did create a pandemic, though it still has problems being recognized as such because prejudice rendered its initial victims invisible and, in many countries, too many people found open and honest discussion of its transmission methods to be distasteful.

The swine flu virus hasn't managed to achieve anything near the success of HIV in either lethality or transmissibility. The swine flu virus has taken the latter course, of being easily spread, over the former course. So, even if you do get it, the consequences are unlikely to be more than a couple of days of inconvenience – and, remember, the vaccine is unlikely to prevent that from occurring.

So, here's my take-home on the H1N1 (the virus formerly known as Swine) epidemic: Meh.

My recommendations for this flu season are no different than any other:

  1. Wash your hands frequently. This, according to the Centers for Disease Control is the number one way of reducing your risk of catching the flu.

  2. Exercise. Regular exercise has been shown to enhance immune system function.

  3. Eat well. The proper diet has been shown to enhance immune system function. (If anybody wants a list of immune-enhancing foods, just send me an email.)

  4. Have two chinese herbal remedies on hand: Bi Yan Pian and Yin Chiao. The first is used in traditional chinese medicine for colds, and the latter is is used for the flu.

And the fifth piece of advice I have goes beyond flu prevention: Ignore the FUD. If you do not buy the fear, uncertainty and doubt that they are selling you, you won't need the attendant, frequently dangerous, medicines.

A Video Is Worth How Many Words?

Apologies to my readers: The link to the video on this post got broken, and I have not been able to re-locate it. I will insert the new link as soon as I find it.

Alternative medicine is under attack as it hasn't been since the 1st District Court found the AMA guilty of antitrust violations in its ongoing war against chiropractic.

Pharmaceutical companies and "mainstream" medicine are feeling insecure as the sands of health care reform shift under their feet. And one thing they want to avoid at all costs is allowing chiropractic physicians an even playing field -- because they know that will unlock  the floodgates, allowing patients who are seeking alternatives to drugs and surgery to freely find the assistance they so desperately need. As a result, the distortions about alternative health care in general and chiropractic physicians in particular are piling up again.

This video sets the record straight. Although I am not its producer, many of the facts presented in this video are data that I have used frequently in my own writing and seminars. But, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Please watch it. And pass along the link to this page to anyone who you know who cares about the future of healthcare.

Ghosts In The Research

As a doctor, I rely on research to inform my decisions and help formulate treatment plans for my patients. Research tells me what works and what doesnt' work. In addition, when doing acupuncture, I stand on the shoulders of many generations of doctors who have come before me, and I can rely on their experimentation and observations to guide me.

And when it comes to research on Western nutrients and chiropractic advances, I am assured that the research is free from the influence of big money. Because, let's face it, nobody is becoming a millionaire by selling Vitamin B.

Pity the poor MD, then. There has been mounting evidence for years that the research that MDs use to decide which drugs to prescribe has been tainted. And, finally, the crows are coming home to roost.

The Journal of the American Medical Association has revealed that up to 10 percent of the articles in the most prestigious medical journals were written by unacknowledged, industry-funded ghostwriters. Some 7.8 percent of named authors of 630 articles admitted contributions from ghostwriters who weren't named, with the highest percentage found in the New England Journal of Medicine (10.9 percent) and the lowest in Nature Medicine (2 percent).

In another story just reported by the AP, GlaxoSmithKline commissioned sales reps to recruit doctor-authors for ghostwritten articles supporting Paxil use. And this story followed another revelation, that Wyeth used ghostwritten reviews to push its hormone replacement therapy.

You remember hormone replacement therapy, right? The anti-cancer, anti-heart disease miracle cure for women that turned out to cause breast cancer and stroke?

And just to top it all off, it appears that the pharma companies are turning to ghostwriters once again, in this case to have the FDA change its rules to allow pharma to use journal articles (you know, the ones they wrote) to push their drugs for off-label uses.

You know, I really wish I was making this stuff up. But I'm not. And the biggest problem is that nothing will ever come of these revelations. Like the big banks, Big Pharma is too big and too wealthy to fail.

All I can do is try to remind people that the companies that make drugs are far more interested in your wallet than your health.

But I'm a tiny voice in a very large, and largely craven, industry.

Friday Fun Facts

My mother started walking five miles a day when she was 60. She's 97 now and we have no idea where she is. A meta-analysis of 28 studies of cancer related fatigue found that exercise is more effective at combating fatigue than the usual care provided to patients.

"I believe, in the future, exercise in oncology can play a role, as much a role as exercise plays in cardiac rehab, but we need to do the types of large trials, appropriately powered to answer these questions," said Karen Mustian, an assistant professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology at the University of Rochester School of Medicine, who was not involved with the review.

“This gout has got my ankle swollen bigger than Madonna's ego.”

Higher intakes of vitamin C may reduce a man's risk of gout, the most prevalent inflammatory arthritis in adult males, by up to 45 per cent, says a new study. According to the research findings, for every 500 milligrams increase in vitamin C intake, a man's risk of gout was cut by 17 per cent. And for men with vitamin C intakes of at least 1,500 milligrams per day, the risk of gout was cut by 45 per cent.

Green tea chewing gum?

Consuming green tea may offer protection against gum disease, a condition that may affect over 30 per cent of the population, suggests a new study. The researchers propose that catechins, the polyphenols found in green tea, may interfere with the body's inflammatory response to periodontal bacteria, thereby promoting periodontal health, and warding off further disease.

Nutrition for Asthma Does Work

A trio of nutrients were associated with improvements in asthma measures, lung function, and markers of inflammation in the lungs, according to findings of a randomised, double blind, placebo-self-controlled crossover trial.

"Children with moderately persistent bronchial asthma may get benefit from their diet supplementation with omega-3 fatty acids, Zinc and vitamin C," wrote the researchers.

The Power of the Spoken Word

Interested in how (poorly) a doctor can manage his own health problems? Check out the new Alternative Healthpod podcast, "Physician, Heal Thyself!" You can do it one of two ways: 1. Go to the podcasts section at iTunes and search for "healthpod," or 2. download it directly from the feed.

If  you do go to iTunes, please rate the podcast. 5 stars would be great, but I'll take what I can get.

What’s Wrong With This Picture?

Dr. Regina BenjaminThe picture on the right is of the woman nominated by President Barack Obama to be our next Surgeon General, Regina Benjamin, MD. The U.S. Surgeon General is the leading spokesperson for public health matters in the United States.

The Surgeon General shapes the direction of public health policy, and can have a tremendous effect on the health habits of Americans, as demonstrated by the dramatic drop in cigarette smoking in the years since the Surgeon General's office condemned it.

Today, the focus is turning toward preventable lifestyle diseases, such as heart disease, obesity and diabetes.  It is a sure bet that the up-and-coming Surgeon General will be out in front in confronting the lifestyle choices that cause these diseases.

And let's not mince words here. Genetics and environment play only very small roles in obesity, heart disease and diabetes. The major causes of these diseases are the Standard American Diet (SAD) and sloth.

For the most part, Dr. Benjamin is an excellent choice for Surgeon General. She is a MacArthur Foundation genius grant recipient, founder and CEO of a rural health clinic, a medical college dean, and recipient of too many awards and certificates to count.

So what's wrong with this picture? The problem is that while Dr. Benjamin may very well promote the tenets of healthy living, one has to wonder, does she actually live by those principles?

If she does not, she can use all of the oxygen in the world to recommend healthy eating and active living, but the message will not be heard.

I know through my own experience that a doctor has to walk the talk of healthful living. I can gladly cajole my patients to exercise routinely, because I train 5-6 days a week. I can lead patients into healthier diets because I eat healthy myself.

I also fall out of training and have been known to suck down a bag of Doritos like a Hoover, so I can help my patients with those pitfalls as well.

Most chiropractic physicians know that we have to walk the talk, because our relationships with our patients tend to be more of a partnership and less of a dictatorship than the MD-patient relationship.

On the face of it, what I'm about to suggest sounds like a far-fetched idea.

But if you look at the nuts and bolts of what today's Surgeon General has to do, might it not make sense to choose a doctor who lives by the dictates which he/she recommends to the populace? Who leads by example rather than dictum? Who knows how to inspire people to better health?

Why shouldn't our next Surgeon General be a Doctor of Chiropractic?

, ,

Friday Fun Facts

, ,

Fact #1 Remember, it's not all about calcium. A new study suggests that neutralizing an acid-producing diet may be an important key to reducing bone breakdown while aging. Fruits and vegetables are metabolized to bicarbonate and thus are alkali-producing. But the typical American diet is rich in protein and cereal grains that are metabolized to acid, and thus are acid-producing. With aging, such diets lead to a mild but slowly increasing metabolic acidosis which can then lead to bone loss.

Increasing fruit and vegetable intake can help reduce metabolic acidosis and thus decrease the rate of related bone breakdown.

Fact #2

“Honey, let me call you back on a land line. That annoying oxidative stress in my brain is acting up again.” Ginkgo Biloba has been shown to prevent oxidative stress in brain tissue caused by mobile phone use. Also, Ginkgo biloba prevented mobile phone induced cellular injury in brain tissue histopathologically.

Fact #3

If I was stuck on a deserted island and had to take only one vitamin with me, this would be the one. Women who have insufficient levels of vitamin D during their pregnancy may negatively impact a genetic variant in their offspring that increases the risk of multiple sclerosis.

Researchers found that proteins in the body activated by vitamin D bind to a DNA sequence next to the DRB1*1501 variant on chromosome 6. DRB1*1501 is a variant which increases the risk of MS to 1 in 300 in those who carry a single copy and 1 in 100 in those carrying 2 copies, in contrast to a risk of 1 in 1000 in the rest of the population. The team believes that a mother's vitamin D deficiency could alter the expression of DRB1*1501 in their children.

Fact #4

A guy walks past a mental hospital and hears a moaning voice " ... 13 ... 13 ... 13 ... ".

The man looks over to the hospital and sees a hole in the wall. He looks through the hole and gets poked in the eye. The moaning voice then groaned " ... 14 ... 14 ... 14 ... ". Researchers have discovered that a form of vitamin B1 could become a new and effective treatment for one of the world's leading causes of blindness.

Scientists believe that uveitis, an inflammation of the tissue located just below the outer surface of the eyeball, produces 10 to 15 percent of all cases of blindness in the United States, and causes even higher rates of blindness globally. The inflammation is normally treated with antibiotics or steroid eye drops.

"Benfotiamene strongly suppresses this eye-damaging condition and the biochemical markers we associate with it," said UTMB associate professor Kota V. Ramana, senior author of the study. "We're optimistic that this simple supplementation with vitamin B1 has great potential as a new therapy for this widespread eye disease."

Fact #5

What do you do when a pig has a heart attack? You call a hambulance!

People who have had heart attacks are likely to have been in traffic right before their symptoms started, according to new research.

“Driving or riding in heavy traffic poses an additional risk of eliciting a heart attack in persons already at elevated risk,” said Annette Peters, Ph.D., lead author of the study and head of the research unit at the Institute of Epidemiology, Helmholtz Zentrum Muchen, Germany. “In this study, underlying vulnerable coronary artery disease increased the risk of having a heart attack after driving in traffic.”

If you ask me, that's just another reason to cycle instead of drive.

The Portion is the Person

When I took my all-to-brief holiday in Scotland last year, I was impressed by the lack of overweight people in that country -- and likewise taken aback upon my return to the the Super-Sized U.S. Now there is some data that helps to explain why, as a nation, we have become so...ample. It seems that we've been happily goosing up the calories in what constitutes a serving.

For example...

Two slices of pizza in 1989 was worth about 500 calories. In 2009, those same two slices are worth 850 calories.

And I'm old enough to remember the original 8-ounce bottle of soda, which contained only 97 calories. Today's standard 20-ounce size bubbles up to a full 242 calories.

Just for good measure (so to speak), let's tack on a nice "personal" size bag of chips for another 300 calories...

junk food lunch

...and there's your lunch, at 1,400 calories. Just a little less than 1/2 of (what should be) your entire daily intake.

In my next post, I'll talk about how you can escape the super-size trap.

,

Friday Fun Facts

,

Holy cow! Is it that time already? Fact #1

Mastic is fantastic for H. pylori! A recent study evaluated the antibacterial activity of mastic gum, a resin obtained from the Pistacia lentiscus tree, against clinical isolates of Helicobacter pylori. The minimal bactericidal concentrations (MBCs) were obtained by a microdilution assay. Mastic gum killed 50% of the strains tested at a concentration of 125 microg/ml and 90% at a concentration of 500 microg/ml. The influence of sub-MBCs of mastic gum on the morphologies of H. pylori was evaluated by transmission electron microscopy. The lentiscus resin induced blebbing, morphological abnormalities and cellular fragmentation in H. pylori cells.

Fact #2

An ajoene -ajoene situation...a myriad of potential health benefits from garlic's most active compound. Garlic has been viewed for its health benefits for thousands of years, and recently science has begun to show why.

According to Dr. Eric Block, leading expert in garlic sulfur compounds, ajoene (pronounced ah-hoe-ene) and dithiins are the most active compounds formed from fresh garlic. Broad research speaks to the potential medical benefits of ajoenes. Since the discovery and identification of ajoene in 1984, there have been many studies that have demonstrated its activity on bacteria, lipids, fungus, cholesterol,viruses, inflammation, parasites, tumors, and blood clots and platelets.

Fact #3

Vitamins K1 and K2 are neck and neck. Japanese scientists, led by Jun Iwamoto from Keio University School of Medicine in Tokyo, reviewed seven randomized clinical trials for vitamin K1 and K2 in relation to bone health in post-menopausal women.

“Despite the lack of a significant change or the occurrence of only a modest increase in bone mineral density, high-dose vitamin K1 and vitamin K2 supplementation improved indices of bone strength in the femoral neck and reduced the incidence of clinical fractures,” wrote the researchers in Nutrition Research.

Fact #4

For immunity boosting...think zinc!

Zinc plays an important role in immune function. Researchers at Tufts University set out to determine whether serum zinc concentrations in nursing home elderly are associated with the incidence and duration of pneumonia, total and duration of antibiotic use, and both pneumonia-associated and all-cause mortality.Outcome measures included the incidence and number of days with pneumonia, number of new antibiotic prescriptions, days of antibiotic use, death due to pneumonia, and all-cause mortality.

Compared with subjects with low zinc concentrations, subjects with normal final serum zinc concentrations had a lower incidence of pneumonia, fewer (by almost 50%) new antibiotic prescriptions, a shorter duration of pneumonia, and fewer days of antibiotic use. Zinc supplementation to maintain normal serum zinc concentrations in the elderly may help reduce the incidence of pneumonia and associated morbidity.

Fact #5

Test, test, test --- calling you.

Insufficient and deficient levels of vitamin D may increase the risk of metabolic syndrome by 52 percent, according to a joint Anglo-Chinese study.

According to findings published in Diabetes Care, a study with 3,262 Chinese people aged between 50 and 70 showed that 94 percent were vitamin D deficient or insufficient, and 42 percent of these people also had metabolic syndrome. Vitamin D deficiency is becoming a major concern among the elderly.

For information about how to check your Vitamin D levels, click here.

,

Friday Fun Facts

,

Welcome to a Brand Spankin' New Feature of DocAltMed. Every Friday, I will be publishing the Friday Fun Facts, which summarizes research in the field of alternative medicine.

I'm doing this to remind you that you *don't* need drugs to be healthy. All you need is the desire to be healthy and a doctor who knows how to help you.

I know this isn't nearly as much fun as David Letterman's top 10, but he's pretty much jumped the shark anyway. Without further ado...

Fact #1

This root may get to the root of the problem.

Curcumin, the major polyphenol found in turmeric, appears to reduce weight gain and suppress the growth of fat tissue in mice and cell models.

"Weight gain is the result of the growth and expansion of fat tissue, which cannot happen unless new blood vessels form, a process known as angiogenesis." said senior author Mohsen Meydani, DVM, PhD, director of the Vascular Biology Laboratory at the USDA HNRCA. "Based on our data, curcumin appears to suppress angiogenic activity in the fat tissue of mice fed high fat diets."

Fact #2

Magnesium is magnificent for high blood pressure.

Supplemental magnesium may reduce blood pressure in people with high blood pressure, but with seemingly normal magnesium levels, says a new study. On the other hand, the supplements had no effect on the blood pressure measurements of normo-tensive individuals, according to findings. “These findings suggest that magnesium supplementation may help prevent the progression of hypertension in normo-magnesemic non-diabetic overweight people with higher BP, although mechanisms of counter-regulation preventing further BP increase remain to be elucidated,” wrote the researchers.

Fact #3

This may make pork chops out of the swine flu.

There is compelling epidemiological evidence that indicates that because of vitamin D's seasonal and population effects on innate immunity, vitamin D deficiency may explain influenza's seasonality.

In 1992, Hope-Simpson predicted that, "understanding the mechanism (of the seasonal stimulus) may be of critical value in designing prophylaxis against the disease." Twenty-five years later, Aloia and Li-Ng found 2,000 IU of vitamin D per day abolished the seasonality of influenza and dramatically reduced its self-reported incidence.

Fact #4

Again, exercise to the rescue.

A home-based diet and exercise program reduced the rate of functional decline among older, overweight long-term survivors of colorectal, breast and prostate cancer, according to a new study.

"In conclusion, this study provides data on a long overlooked, yet important faction in older long-term cancer survivors. Long-term survivors of colorectal, breast, and prostate cancer participating in a diet and exercise intervention reduced the rate of self-reported physical function decline in comparison with a group receiving no intervention," the researchers write.

Hydroxycut & the FDA

After 23 people reported side-effects, the FDA has forced a recall, and is recommending that people stop taking, some Hydroxycut products because of reported liver damage. Far be it from me to question the wisdom of the FDA (ahem)...but has anyone considered the fact that most people who use Hydroxycut are body builders, and that a great number of bodybuilders also take illegal steroids, and steroids also cause liver damage?

I think it is far more likely that Hydroxycut is being blamed for liver damage being caused by simultaneous illicit steroid use that nobody wants to fess up to.

Intelligent analysis suggests that we regard this as just more nutritional fear-mongering being served up by a government agency far more invested in the health of the pharmaceutical companies than it is in yours or mine.

A Father’s Pride

While the following information doesn't fall into the overall theme of this blog, I hope that my faithful readers (all four of you) will forgive me for the following post:  

LITCHFIELD, CT – Youth archer Shayna Jenkins opened up the indoor archery season with a decisive win in her division at the Connecticut Fall Classic archery tournament, held at the UConn campus in Stoors, CT this weekend.

Jenkins scored 507 points out of a possible 600 in the 60-arrow tournament, besting her closest rival by 17 points.

Her score was also the highest for any female competitor using standard Olympic bows, regardless of age or division. In addition to individual entrants from throughout the region, the tournament included teams from UConn, Wellesley, and Brandeis universities.

This win brings Jenkins' winning streak into the indoor season. This summer, Jenkins scored a hat trick, capturing the state championships in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Jersey.

Osteoporosis Drug Increases Heart Attacks

MONDAY, Oct. 27 (HealthDay News) -- The popular bone-building medications known as bisphosphonates may have a rare, but serious, cardiac side effect. A review of available research concludes that these medications may increase the risk of atrial fibrillation -- an erratic heart rhythm that can lead to blood clots that may cause heart attacks or strokes.

"In addition to possible gastrointestinal side effects, bisphosphonates can have possible cardiac side effects. For serious cases of atrial fibrillation, there was a significant increase in risk -- about 68 percent," said review lead author Dr. Jennifer Miranda, an internal medicine resident at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami.

----------------------------------- I've been saying this for several years now, but Fosamax and its ilk are not the answer to osteoporosis. This is just one of several health problems caused by bisphosphates (not the least of which is that this drug causes bone erosion while it supposedly helps your body "create healthy bone."

If you have been diagnosed with osteoporosis or osteopenia, do yourself a favor and call me to find out how you can preserve bone health without giving yourself a heart attack.

And don't forget to stop by for my lecture on Wednesday night. No free food, but I promise to have loads of great information and some new jokes. Honest. I've been practicing in front of the mirror, I'm really funny.

Sneak Preview

While doing some research for my upcoming seminar, "Your Prescription May Be Your Problem," I came across this interesting tidbit... "During the period from 1989 to 1997 the vaccination rate for elderly persons ≥65 years of age in the US increased from 30 to 67%. Despite this increase in coverage, mortality and hospitalization rates continued to increase rather than decline as would be expected if the vaccine were optimally efficacious."-- from the International Journal of Epidemiology

In other words, an analysis of nearly 10 years' of data reveals that what the public health experts have been telling us is simply not true. The fact of the matter is that the influenza virus does little to prevent the flu.

You'll get more about this -- and some other revealing research -- by attending my seminar.

Your Prescription May Be Your Problem

This is an open invitation to attend my fall seminar.

 

Wednesday, Oct. 29, 7-8:30 p.m. Litchfield Community Center Reservations and directions: call (860) 567-5727

 

Drugs for this problem, drugs for that problem...if you would believe the advertising, there really is "a pill for every ill."

Unfortunately, drug advertising, like all other advertising, is a fantasy. In fact, there is a gathering body of research evidence which shows that prescription drugs cause as many problems as they solve. Certainly, for some disorders, especially acute problems, drugs are necessary. But chronic disorders are another matter entirely. From painkillers to hormone replacements to the drugs that were supposed to "cure" osteoporosis, and which have now been shown to cause bone erosion (!), the drug-based approach to chronic health problems has been proven to be both dangerous and largely ineffective.

There is a different way. A different approach to chronic disease which replaces drug dependence with self-reliance and instead of side effects offers positive effects.

At this upcoming seminar, I will show you the research that tells us:

  • What are the most dangerous common prescription drugs.
  • Which class of over-the-counter drugs is the leading cause of emergency room admissions.
  • How you can evaluate your drug-related risk.
  • What are the most common disorders, including leading causes of mortality, that can be better managed without drugs.

 But most importantly, I will show you that there are cost-effective, safe alternatives to a drug-based approach to health. These alternatives are science-based, proven by research, and have been clinically validated.

This seminar is absolutely free! Please set aside the time to attend. Space is limited, so make sure to call (860)567-5727 and tell Teresa that you are coming.  Or send me an email and let me know how many seats you need to reserve. And don't hesitate to recommend this lecture to your friends. It will be a fun, interesting, educational time.

I am looking forward to seeing you!