Innholdsfortegnelse for October/November 2019 i What Doctors Don't Tell You Australia/NZ

I have a decidedly love-hate relationship with antibiotics. On the one hand, I have to admit that I owe my life to them. In 1942, when my mother was 24, her dentist unwisely extracted a tooth while she had the flu. Within days, her neck ballooned with a streptococcus infection, and she was rushed to the hospital. My father, then her fiancé, wept helplessly at her bedside while priests filed past him after administering the last rites. But then the wonder drug arrived. As a last resort, my mother was given penicillin, still in experimental use then. Within a day or two, the swelling that had almost obscured her face simply melted away. My ordinarily doubting father rushed off to church and humbly knelt before the altar, convinced that he…

Wash your hands, doc! Patients getting fatal infections Around 100,000 Americans die each year from an infection passed on by doctors who didn’t wash their hands between seeing patients. Most of the deaths happen in hospitals; around 75,000 patients die in US hospitals every year from an infection spread by a doctor or nursing staff. Overall, 722,000 hospital patients pick up an infection from medical staff in the US every year—that’s around one in every 25 patients—including 30 percent of all patients in intensive care units (ICUs). And it’s all so avoidable, say researchers from the Roy J and Lucille A Carver College of Medicine in Iowa. Hospital staff just have to wash their hands, especially if they’re moving from a ‘dirtier’or more contaminated environment to a cleaner one. But…

Compactin was one of the earliest statins, developed in Japanese laboratories in the 1970s. One early guinea pig of the new compound was an 18-year-old Japanese woman with severe familial hypercholesterolemia, the genetic disorder that raises levels of ‘bad’ LDL cholesterol. She was taken off the drug after just two weeks because she developed muscle dystrophy, or muscle weakness. Her muscle strength came back almost immediately after the therapy was halted. As the lead researcher Akira Endo observed: “Cholesterol is essential for the functioning of all human organs.”1 It’s therefore not surprising that drugs designed to reduce cholesterol levels are probably some of the least tolerated, with side-effects so severe that people have to stop taking them. Around 75 percent of elderly people who took a statin to prevent CHD stopped…

When your doctor prescribes you an antibiotic, you may assume it has been rigorously tested and that you will be told of any dangerous side-effects to watch out for. Not true. Most antibiotic side-effects turn up during “post-marketing surveillance,” years after they are approved, as this chronology of the commonly prescribed class of antibiotics called fluoroquinolones reveals. LATE 1980s TO 1990s: Fluoroquinolone antibiotics (levofloxacin, ciprofloxacin and trovafloxacin) are released on the market, and by 1993 ciprofloxacin (Cipro) becomes the most frequently used antibiotic in the world.1 1992: Temafloxacin is recalled from the market within months of its release due to numerous reports of serious adverse events including three deaths.2 JULY 1999: Trovafloxacin (Trovan) use is severely restricted by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) after it’s shown to induce…

If you have serious health issues from pollution, investigate: Taking phospholipids, intravenously, orally or rectally via a small enema. The most important signaling molecules in the body, these fats are highly effective at eliminating toxins stored from the environment. See WDDTY November 2016 for more details. The controversial Hubbard protocol, developed by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. It’s been demonstrated to successfully detox chemical poisoning, including the highly toxic levels of PCBs and other chemicals found in rescue workers after the World Trade Center 9/11 disaster.1 The protocol involves exercise, extensive saunas (for an hour) and general supplements, particularly high doses (at least 100 mg) of niacin several times a week, which should only be attempted under the supervision of a qualified, experienced practitioner. Taking a chemical binder like activated…

1 Developing a Mid-Foot Strike 1 Runners fall into three categories when it comes to foot strike: heel, mid foot and toe. Each of these have a pre-determined effect on the body. The landing position I advocate for pain free running is midfoot. Midfoot strike patterns significantly reduce stress on the knee due to the larger gluteal muscles being activated on impact. This foot placement should be considered for all runners suffering with recurring knee pain, especially fast runners with wide feet and flexible Achilles Tendons. Toes strikers engage the Calf and Soleus muscles upon impact more than the Gluteal muscles. Runners will be vulnerable to overload injuries due to the Calf muscle being much smaller than the powerful Gluteal muscles. Tight calf muscles can also lead to shin splints…

In 1996, Karen Charman and her fiancé moved into an apartment in Inwood, the northernmost part of Manhattan. It was an old building that had been completely renovated, with all the wood floors redone. Karen had had allergies as a child, and in her twenties, back in the 1980s, she discovered she was allergic to gluten and dairy. For the most part, if she avoided those two things, the eczema outbreaks that signaled an allergic reaction remained dormant. But after the couple moved into their new apartment, all that changed. “It was like everything was setting me off,” says Karen. “I was having the eczema, I was having difficulty breathing, my digestive system was way out of whack. If I ate certain things, my stomach would bloat out, and I…

“The first thing you do is check the blood, because everything can change once you treat the blood,” says chiropractor Debra Singer. “Then you check for fasting enzymes, and then a half-hour test for digestion enzymes. Then you check for overall toxicity and the ability to heal, which means how much energy there is in the body to actually recover.” Basically, the BioSET practitioner finds out what you’re reacting to, then finds out if it’s only that, or if it’s that when it’s in the presence of something else. For example, are you allergic to your cat or only allergic to your cat when you’re around VOCs (volatile organic compounds) found in paints and other building materials? Then you find out what part of the body is sensitive and how…

1 For optimal blood sugar balance, compose your plate with two-thirds vegetables and one-third healthy protein, with liberal amounts of good fats. 2 Read labels and stick with short, recognizable ingredient lists with little to no added sugar. 3 Select a rainbow of colorful produce, in season and locally grown. 4 Budget for organic food—a big investment in your health. Shop at local farmers’ markets and consider joining a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program for weekly deliveries of vegetables, meats and raw dairy. 5 Cook at home and enlist the rest of the family to help. 6 Eat slowly and chew your food thoroughly. 7 Replace white table salt with pink Himalayan or gray Celtic sea salt, which has higher mineral content. 8 Use glass and stainless steel for food…

Regular readers may have inferred from articles that have appeared in these pages that medicine is in a death-grip embrace with the drug industry that has been killing millions of innocent people in the name of profit. We have subsequently learned that we have been mistaken in this belief, and that no such relationship exists. We apologize unreservedly to doctors, pharmacists and pharmaceutical conglomerates such as Smirk & Co. for these false imputations. Come to think of it, that apology was a little too groveling, and way too premature, but there is a new light on the horizon, and it has the inspired name of ‘deprescribing.’ OK, it’s not poetry, but we’re talking doctors and pharmacists here. Yes, deprescribing is a movement that is gaining momentum in Canada, where it…

Dr. Jean Monro, medical director of the Breakspear Hospital, is an internationally recognized specialist in environmental medicine, including such conditions as chronic fatigue syndrome, Lyme disease and multiple chemical sensitivity. She is Fellow of the American Academy of Environmental Medicine and a Board Certified US examiner. Dr. Damien Downing, whose practice specializes in allergy, environment and nutrition, is current president of the British Society for Ecological Medicine and on the editorial board of Orthomolecular Medicine News Service. Chief Medical Advisor of cancer charity Yes to Life (www.yestolife.org.uk), he is also the author of numerous books, including The Vitamin Cure for Allergies. Dr. Harald Gaier, arguably the UK’s most knowledgeable practitioner of the major alternative medical disciplines, is registered in the UK as an osteopath, homeopath, acupuncturist, naturopath and medical herbalist.…

Ever wondered why nothing really changes in the way medicine performs? A clue: it makes the world go around, and it also helps focus the minds of politicians. It’s money, of course, or as it’s known in political circles, lobbying. Industry groups pay professional lobbyists to protect their interests in the political arena, and they also make direct contributions to politicians to ensure decisions aren’t made that might interfere with their profits. No prizes for guessing that Big Pharma is one of the world’s biggest lobby groups. In the US, the industry spent US$4.22 billion on lobbying between 1998 and 2010, second only to the collective muscle of the finance, insurance and real estate industries, which spent a mere $50 million more. In 2018, the drug industry spent US$281.87 million…

Eat organic.1 Take the skin off of oily fish. Avoid sources of domestic pesticides (e.g. flea powders for pets, anti-mold sprays, insecticides, products similarly destined for garden use, etc.) and never use them near children. Avoid plastic food storage or water bottles. Clean your tap water of disinfection byproducts like chlorine with a good water filter. Jug filters such as the ZeroWater filter remove virtually all heavy metals. Clean the jug weekly and consider keeping the water in the refrigerator, which can slow bacterial growth. Or, consider a reverse-osmosis filter with an additional carbon filter, which contains a semipermeable membrane that will filter out bacterial hydrocarbons, viruses, pesticides, parasites, chloride, hormones and hydrocarbons. The extra filter will also remove chloroform and phenols. With new furniture, ventilate your home…

1 Habit: You are used to presenting your face to the world in a certain way due to social norms and the persona you want to create. Fix: Move all the muscles in your face, opening the mouth wide, sticking out the tongue and making faces. 2 Habit: You clench your jaw whenever you are stressed. Fix: Slacken the lower jaw and move it from side to side. 3 Habit: Using your phone, computer, tablet or other forms of technology has created tension in your hands. Fix: Exercise your hands by moving your fingers and wrists. Try interlinking the fingers and making figure-eight motions with the wrists. 4 Habit: Sitting for long periods of time. Fix: Stand up, walk up and down stairs or a hill, lunge and balance on…

The pelvis is the bony bowl-shaped structure at the bottom of the spine where our legs attach, which serves as the cradle for the lower spine bone (the sacrum) to set into. It can be tilted away from its healthiest alignment in many ways, including forward, back or, as shown below, to the side. This is known as pelvic obliquity, where one side of the pelvis is higher than the other. This type of asymmetry can encourage scoliosis (curvature of the spine), or vice versa. The side that drops tends to cause the same leg and foot to rotate outward, and the head tends to tip in that direction too, to compensate for the tilt away from the body’s natural organization around the midline.…

Palmer Kippola was a happy, healthy, well-adjusted 19-year-old girl living in Santa Monica, California. She had just returned home from college and was working a summer job as a hostess at a local restaurant. One morning she woke up, and the soles of her feet were tingling, similar to the feeling you get when you sleep wrong on an arm or leg and the blood flow gets reduced. She didn’t think anything of it and figured it would go away. But the tingling sensation crept up her legs, and by lunchtime it had reached her knees. That’s when she knew something was wrong and called her parents. The family doctor recommended a neurologist at UCLA, and by the time Palmer got to the office the tingling had crept up to…

A knee saved with exercise Dear WDDTY It was interested to read about how to avoid a hip replacement with exercise (WDDTY Aug/Sep 2019). By pure chance, a personal experience has given it extra credibility for me. I use my local gym two or three times a week, and from time to time I get Chris, one of the personal trainers working there, to put me through my paces. This week he decided that I needed to improve the strength in my legs, and in the course of suggested exercises for my knees he remarked that he had saved a client from knee replacement surgery through correct exercises. Apparently, his client told him that he was due for a replacement in a few months’ time, and Chris suggested that there…

Worldwide sales of cholesterol-lowering statin drugs are set to hit $1 trillion next year—but two new studies question whether they are fit for purpose. In other words, can some of the world’s best-selling drugs actually do what they’re designed to do, and reduce levels of the ‘bad’ LDL (low-density lipoprotein) cholesterol that is supposed to clog arteries and cause coronary heart disease (CHD)? Statins fail to lower LDL cholesterol by any meaningful level in more than half of the patients taking the drug, the first study has discovered. After two years, 51.2 percent of patients hadn’t seen their levels fall by the 40 percent target set by medical guidelines.1 Researchers from Nottingham University analyzed data from 165,400 patients who didn’t have CHD but were considered at risk. The drugs were…

We live in an increasingly ‘connected’ world, with real social connections substituted for virtual ones. Sitting around a campfire has been traded for Facebook. Microcircuits have made their way into our homes. The future is being prepared for driverless cars—whether or not we actually want them. Selling us more and quicker connectivity isn’t difficult. Most of us like the idea of bigger bandwidth and quicker download and upload speeds—we wouldn’t want to miss that latest Hollywood blockbuster or cat video. But ignoring the possible hazards to humans and wildlife might leave us in grave danger. And that’s exactly what’s happening with the impending rollout of 5G networks. The only people I know who really want it either don’t know about the risks or don’t seem to care. They want technological…

When Catherine Slater started taking the antibiotics that her doctor prescribed for a small infected cyst on her shoulder, she felt the worst heartburn and indigestion she’d ever had in her life. The retired schoolteacher from Aberdeenshire, Scotland, was not about to let a little “discomfort” dissuade her from following her doctor’s orders, however. “I just drank lots of water, gritted my teeth and carried on. After all, it was only for a week.” Two weeks later, however, the gray and orange pills were gone, but Catherine’s vague gut symptoms continued off and on. She ignored the nausea and stomach pain one morning and set out with her husband to have lunch with friends, but as the day went on, she felt worse. She couldn’t finish her meal, and later…

Ashwagandha (Withania somnifera), a nightshade also known in English as Winter Cherry that has been used in Ayurvedic medicine for thousands of years, boosts levels of glutathione in the body, one of the body’s most powerful antioxidants. A study on male fertility also found that the herb inhibits the formation of free radicals, which cause oxidative stress.1 Indian Gooseberry (Phyllanthus emblica officinalis, or amla). Studies show that this herb is a potent free radical scavenger, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory, which has even been shown to treat or prevent cancer.2 Neem (Azadirachta indica, also known as Indian lilac) also has been shown to have huge antioxidant effects against oxidative damage to DNA and red blood cells.3 Guduchi (Tinospora cordifolia, also known as heart-leaved moonseed), like the aforementioned herbs, seems to have a…

In the lower back, most spine extension (lengthening) takes place between the lowest lumbar vertebra (L5) and the top sacral bone (S1), and this is also where the brunt of any shifts are felt (see upper illustration). A shift of the pelvis in any direction can pinch nerves and encourage disc herniation in this area. Further down, the sacrum fits into the pelvis at the sacroiliac (SI) joint, the site of much lower back pain. If the pelvis is tilted, it can be too lax on one side and too tight on the other. In cases of cemented pelvic asymmetry (see main text), this may relate back to early life, as the sacrum’s five separate vertebrae (S1–S5) begin fusing into one bone at around 16 to 18 years of age…

I’m a 64-year-old woman and have recently discovered I have gallstones after a test for something else. I don’t have any symptoms so haven’t been prescribed any treatment. But my doctor said I may need surgery in the future. Can you recommend any holistic options to prevent this? S.S., via email A Gallstones are stone-like lumps of bile that form in the gallbladder of roughly 10 to 20 percent of adults in developed countries—and around a quarter of women over 60.1 They can be as small as a grain of sand or as large as a golf ball, and they’re thought to develop due to an imbalance in the chemical makeup of bile—the fat-digesting juice made by the liver and stored in the gallbladder. In most cases, like yours, gallstones…

Detox takes place in two main stages, usually referred to as phase 1 and phase 2. Successful detox depends on the correct synchronization of these two phases. If either of these complex phases isn’t working properly, the body’s waste continues to accumulate, taking up more and more space, and becoming more and more rancid. Phase 1: Enzymes known as cytochrome P450 oxidize toxins (adding an oxygen atom to the chemical structure). Phase 2: Toxins are transformed into water-soluble compounds and then are easily excreted through urine or bile.…

Think you have an allergy? It might not be an allergy at all. The problem might lie in your digestion (or lack of it). “What I’ve seen is that some people will come in and say they have allergy symptoms, runny nose or a rash or something that may appear as an allergy, and in some cases they may simply be not digesting their food,” says Dr Melisa Kuehn, a naturopath and BioSET practitioner. “They have an inflammatory situation going on and something is setting it off. When they take systemic enzymes, that tends to help bring down the inflammation.” The result? The “allergy” goes away. Enzyme therapy is a large part of the BioSET protocol, and some very specific blends are available from BioSET practitioners, such as a a…

According to the CDC, genetics accounts for about 10 percent of diseases, and the rest appear to be from environmental causes.1 Palmer recommends addressing MS and all other autoimmune diseases via diet, dealing with bacterial and viral infections such as Lyme, healing leaky gut and increasing the health and strength of the gut microbiome, balancing hormones and strengthening adrenal and thyroid function, mitigating the toxin onslaught from the environment (including mold toxins), and managing stress through meditation, yoga and exercise. FOOD: Studies show people with mild to moderate MS experience better mobility, overall function and quality of life with increased fat intake, decreased carbohydrate intake and increased intake of the micronutrients cholesterol, folate, iron, and magnesium.2 Research also reveals that changes in gut junction permeability associated with food additives—leading to…

1 Gluten A difficult-to-digest protein found in wheat, rye, barley and spelt. 2 Sugars and sweeteners Avoid white sugar and anything with high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), agave and artificial sweeteners. 3 Sweetened and grain-based beverages Avoid fruit juice, beer (contains gluten), and regular and diet sodas. Diet soda contains aspartame, a known neurotoxin. 4 Processed foods Most packaged and fast foods spike blood sugar, promoting insulin resistance, obesity, cancer and autoimmunity. Avoid even ‘gluten-free’ packaged goods and processed flours. 5 Processed fats Eliminate all processed vegetable oils except olive oil. Eliminate margarine, shortening, canola, corn, sunflower, safflower and soybean oils and hydrogenated fats (AKA trans fats). 6 GMOs (genetically modified organisms) Avoid GMO foods and products from animals that are fed GMO grains and corn. 7 Commercially raised animal…