Innholdsfortegnelse for December/January 2020 i What Doctors Don't Tell You Australia/NZ

Some 20 million Americans—or one in every 16—and one in 20 British people suffer from some form of thyroid disease. That’s a medical tragedy, no doubt, but the bigger tragedy is that almost two-thirds have no idea they are affected—and in the majority of instances, neither do their doctors. Exactly this situation happened to Georgia Lennard (page 70), a nutritional therapist, for many years. Even after she suffered a thyroid‘storm,’ her doctor assured her there was nothing wrong with her thyroid because the tests showed otherwise. Doctors often miss an underactive thyroid because they are using the wrong tests to help them diagnose it. “High-tech lab results are no substitute for the lost art of traditional medicine” They still rely on a series of blood tests that don’t tell them…

Forest bathing–it really can make you feel better Forest bathing—where you spend time in nature—really does work. Two hours a week in a forest, glade or park will improve your sense of wellbeing, a new study has discovered. Those two hours don’t have to be from one visit; the time can be spread over the week, and you’ll still get similar health benefits, say researchers from the University of Exeter who looked at the health and lifestyles of around 20,000 people. Time in woodlands, town parks, beaches and other natural areas will all reap rewards, provided that you spend 120 minutes or more in them each week. That seems to be the threshold, and people who reported spending less time than that in nature each week also reported lower levels…

William Coley was a young surgeon freshly graduated from Harvard when, after failing to save the life of a 17-year-old girl from cancer, he became obsessed with the disease and especially spontaneous remissions, those rare cases when cancer just mysteriously disappears. But as he researched the medical literature, he realized they weren’t so mysterious; they followed a pattern. The cancer patient had contracted a bacterial infection that induced a high fever, and subsequently, the cancer went away. There was even a case on his own doorstep in New York. One day in the late 1890s, Coley paid a visit to Fred Stein, whose end-stage sarcoma disappeared after he suffered a bout of erysipelas, a severe bacterial skin infection. Stein had had the tumor removed several times, but it kept recurring,…

The US is the only country that sets official safe levels of ultrasound intensity—even though the FDA, which sets the guidelines, made it less safe when it increased the threshold 15-fold in 1992. But whatever the threshold may be, a survey of doctors, midwives and sonographers—who carry out the ultrasound tests—discovered that only one-third even knew what those safe levels were. Even less than a third knew where to find the indices on the ultrasound equipment’s screens, while just one in five, or 22 percent, knew how to adjust the energy output on the machine they were using every day.1…

Walk the dog: If you don’t already, then start. If you don’t have a dog, volunteer to walk your neighbor’s. Walk to music: If you find walking boring, then strap on some headphones and listen to your favorite music as you pound the sidewalk. Include the family: If you don’t want to walk alone, involve the family and go for a weekend walk or hike. Ditch the e-mail: If you normally e-mail colleagues at work, get up and walk over to them instead. Walk when waiting: If you’re hanging around for an appointment or to catch a plane, go for a short walk instead of sitting. Workday walks: Build a walk into your lunchtime break. Park and walk: Instead of parking as close to your destination as possible, park a…

Corticosteroid injections have been associated with post-injection flare-ups in up to a quarter of recipients, and side-effects limit their repeated use to a few injections. While some studies have found they help pain in the short term, a recent study found they may worsen joint degradation over time. A double-blind study of 140 men and women who suffered from painful knee arthritis and were randomly assigned to receive injections of either a corticosteroid or a saline placebo every three months for two years found no measurable difference between the two groups in terms of joint pain, stiffness and ability to stand from a seated position at the end of the study. However, there was “significantly greater cartilage volume loss” visible on MRI scans in the steroid group.1 REFERENCES 1 JAMA,…

While in medical school, Jacob Teitelbaum, MD, was at the center of a family drama that created the kind of stress that led his immune system to falter. Jacob developed what he calls “the drop-dead flu,”which he thinks may have been infectious mononucleosis, caused by the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV). The flu or EBV in turn triggered a host of debilitating and long-lasting inflammatory disorders including fibromyalgia, myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). Toréa Rodriguez’s Hashimoto’s thyroiditis may have been triggered by a succession of stressful events, including the unexpected death of her mother and a serious bicycle accident. Toréa didn’t completely heal until she cleared a host of gut infections, including Helicobacter pylori, clostridium and giardia. “CHRONIC INFECTIONS FROM BACTERIA, VIRUSES, PARASITES AND FUNGI MAY BE THE PRIMARY…

Infections are a complicated arena, especially if you’re dealing with overlapping issues like heavy metals, Lyme disease and mold illness. While you can order many tests on your own, I urge you to find and work with an experienced holistic practitioner who can help you determine the right tests, design and prioritize a comprehensive treatment plan and support you through the process. For gut infections, consider getting a comprehensive stool test like GI-Map™ from Diagnostic Solutions (www.diagnosticsolutionslab.com) or GI Effects® from Genova Diagnostics (www.gdx.net) For viral infections, most standard labs like Labcorp (www.labcorp.com)and Quest (www.questdiagnostics.com) offer comprehensive viral panels. If you suspect Lyme and related co-infections, find a Lyme-literate physician at LymeDisease.org (www.lymedisease.org) or the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society (www.ilads.org). To make sure you get the most accurate…

There is no debating the health benefits of physical fitness. Getting regular exercise helps reduce the risk of heart attack, manages your weight, lowers blood cholesterol levels, and reduces the risk of type 2 diabetes. It also aids in maintaining stronger bones, muscles and joints and lowers the risk of developing osteoporosis. In order for adults to reap the above health benefits, the Australian Department of Health recommends at least 150 minutes of moderate to high intensity exercise per week. That time commitment may seem challenging to complete regularly in your busy life. But the good news is, you don’t have to complete your 150 minutes with structured gym session appointments. Outdoor exercises are just as physically effective as indoor ones, plus they provide a raft of mental, social, financial…

The thyroid gland is a butterfly-shaped endocrine gland located below the Adam’s apple on either side of the lower neck. Its main role is to produce the hormone thyroxine (T4), which the body converts into triiodothyronine (T3), the functional version of the hormone that passes into the bloodstream and circulates throughout the body. These two hormones help regulate metabolism (determining the way the body uses fats and carbohydrates), protein production, heart rate and body temperature. The thyroid gland also produces a hormone called calcitonin that helps control the amount of calcium in the bloodstream. Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, also known as chronic lymphocytic thyroiditis, is an autoimmune disorder where the body’s immune system produces antibodies that attack the thyroid gland and other tissues in the body. This inflammatory process damages the thyroid,…

Angela Johnson’s story started when she was in high school, a highly active student who kept up on her academic work and played sports as well as working at several jobs after school for pocket money. But by her senior year, she was stuggling with feelings of complete, overwhelming fatigue that she just couldn’t shake. “It was like my body just decided to give up,” she says. “I felt like I was in a very vulnerable position. It got to the point where I didn’t really recognize myself anymore. I was only 17, there were all these things I wanted to do socially, and I just couldn’t keep up.” The fact that she was mindful about her health—eating well, not following the usual sugary, highly processed, packaged, fast-food teenage diet,…

There have been hundreds of clinical studies conducted using Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) for a wide variety of health conditions. EFT has proven effective in reducing intense fears relating to numerous causes,1 and is a particularly powerful treatment for anxiety.2 It’s also highly effective for treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) within as little as four sessions or as a self-help practice.3 EFT has been clinically proven to aid in weight loss via improved body mass index, lowered food cravings, increased craving restraint and psychological coping.4 It’s been shown to relieve depression in a lasting manner,5 and in injured veterans, it was found to improve mental health and quality of life while reducing anxiety and insomnia and strengthening the immune system.6 EFT has also proven to be effective in reducing the…

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.…

With the overuse of antibiotics causing the rise of the superbug, phage therapy—which uses specific bacterial viruses to treat infections—has become a possible alternative. It’s been widely practiced in Russia, Georgia and Poland for 80 years or more, and was used to treat soldiers’ wounds during World War II, but research in the West came to an abrupt stop with the discovery of penicillin. Researchers have taken a fresh interest and have been testing it on infections such as MRSA, while clinical trials have been examining its effectiveness for otitis, the ear infection. Others have looked at its ability to treat the stomach bug, E. coli. This year, the US Food and Drug Administration approved the nation’s first clinical trial of phage therapy delivered intravenously.…

Ultrasound was developed in the 1920s and 1930s as a therapy to treat a range of conditions from Parkinson’s to cancer. William Fry at the University of Illinois was an early pioneer and used it to destroy part of the brain to alleviate Parkinson’s disease, or so he thought. By the 1950s, it was being used to treat people with rheumatoid arthritis and Ménière’s disease, which can cause hearing loss, dizziness and vertigo. But some believed it was a cure-all for a wide range of problems, from gastric ulcers to eczema, asthma, urinary incontinence and hemorrhoids, although there was more wishful thinking than science to support the approach. It was in the 1940s that ultrasound was first mooted as a diagnostic tool, and by 1958, researchers in Lund, Sweden, were…

We’re always told we should be walking 10,000 steps a day. It’s even the default setting on most smartphones and pedometers—but where did the figure come from, and is there any science to support it? Surprisingly, there’s very little. It seems to have derived from walking clubs in Japan in the 1960s, which were using pedometers with branding that translates to“10,000 steps.” Still, although it has more to do with branding than science, it seems to be a reasonable tally for any healthy individual to achieve in a day, say researchers at Arizona State University.1 Possibly so, but much depends on your age and health. The average American walks between 3,000 and 4,000 steps a day, which is roughly 1.5 to 2 miles, and most agree that isn’t enough. But…

The usual claim against studies of injection therapies is that a portion of people will experience a powerful placebo effect—no matter what is injected, their brain tells them they are getting better and their body responds in kind. Critics of PRP have claimed that it is merely a placebo, but when injection therapies are compared, as in a review of six studies including a total of 577 patients, with 264 patients (45.8 percent) given PRP and 313 patients (54.2 percent) receiving hyaluronic acid (HA) or normal saline solution, those receiving PRP experienced significantly greater improvements.1 “This is clearly not just a placebo effect,” says Toronto orthopedic surgeon Robert Gordon of the PRP Arthritis Clinic in Toronto, Canada. In another FDA-approved, double-blind randomized clinical trial, PRP provided “significant benefits for pain…

The infectious families most commonly associated with autoimmune disorders include: • Any of more than eight types of herpesvirus including Epstein-Barr virus • Mycoplasma bacteria • Chlamydophila pneumoniae (also known as chlamydia, a bacterial infection) • Lyme disease spirochetes and co-infections (bacterial infections) • Gastrointestinal infections including Helicobacter pylori (bacterial), Candida albicans (yeast) and small intestinal bacterial overgrowth • Oral infections like gingivitis (bacterial gum inflammation), periodontitis (bacterial gum disease) and cavitations (bacterial infections in the jawbone following tooth extraction or root canals)…

If you have already dialed in your diet, healed your gut and addressed infections with the help of an experienced practitioner, and you are still not making progress, you may want to consider these adjunctive therapies: Address oral infections. Many holistic doctors assert that people don’t heal unless they clear oral infections, even if the infections are asymptomatic. Find a biological (also called holistic) dentist near you at The International Academy of Biological Dentistry and Medicine (IABDM) website (www.iabdm.org), and inquire about getting a cone beam CT 3D scan of your mouth to identify potential areas of infection. Consider hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) for chronic Lyme disease. HBOT is a medical treatment that uses 100 percent oxygen at controlled pressure, as in 60 feet below sea level, for 60 to…

It’s easy to become fixated on the size of your belly and width of your waist. Diet, stress, sedentary behaviors and postural issues Acknowledging the need to focus on breathing, releasing tension, spinal motion and movement in all directions—and learning how to do this with the right exercises—can help you foster a happy relationship with your middle. And don’t forget the importance of good sleep hygiene and stress management. Both can help to keep the weight off and your tummy trim. Supporting good sleep Doing low-intensity exercise in the early evening can help promote good sleep quality, particularly if you also stay away from screens, which can interfere with production of the sleep hormone melatonin. Overnight, melatonin affects the storage of fat by increasing brown adipose (fat) tissue, the ‘good…

As a practicing ear, nose and throat physician specializing in voice and swallowing disorders, I have heard laments from frustrated patients for many years about heartburn or throat symptoms, like hoarseness, coughing, frequent throat clearing and postnasal drip. These symptoms are too often the result of acid reflux disease, a condition that affects over 75 million Americans and over a billion people worldwide. Unfortunately, the solutions offered (a combination of medication and lifestyle changes) were unsatisfactory for my patients. It became apparent that the prolonged use of medications to reduce acid production by the stomach could lead to unacceptable side-effects. I believed that the best and safest way to treat this disease was to come up with a food-based solution, which led to the creation of the Acid Watcher Diet.…

Poor gut health and imbalances in the microbiota of the intestinal tract have been linked to the development of many autoimmune diseases including inflammatory bowel disease (IBS), rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, multiple sclerosis and even type 1 diabetes.1 So far, few studies have looked at gut health and Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, which is also an autoimmune disorder, but the evidence to date shows a connection between the two.2 Compared to healthy controls, patients with Hashimoto’s had different relative amounts of various species of gut bacteria, and the extent of those differences correlated with the severity of their symptoms.3 The Western diet, characterized by the consumption of high-fat, high-cholesterol, high-protein, high-sugar, high-sodium, processed and fast foods, can play a large role in inflammatory autoimmune conditions.4 Leaky gut—a condition where poor diet and nutrition…

EFT uses a specific set of acupuncture meridian points from traditional Chinese medicine, tapping on those points with the fingertips while verbally addressing an emotional issue. This is done in order to “talk” to the emotional center of the brain, or limbic system—including the amygdala located in the temporal lobe—responsible for regulating emotions, survival instincts and memory. Although it does have earlier roots, EFT essentially was birthed in the 1990s, when psychologist Roger Callahan discovered a relationship between several acupuncture points on the head and the limbic system after a patient who had a severe water phobia told him she felt the fear in her stomach. In sudden inspiration, he instructed her to tap on the acupuncture point for the stomach, located below the eye on the cheekbones. Much to…

The more psychological the issue, the better the results with EFT will be. To start: Think about a problem you want to work on. It can be an anger issue with your partner, a sense of insecurity at work, general anxiety about money—you name it. Contemplate the level of emotion involved, as you think about your issue/problem. Say you’re working on a fear of spiders. Rate how great the fear is on a scale of zero to 10. Create your set-up statement. The EFT set-up statement is a combination of a) identifying the issue you want to work on and b) reassuring yourself it’s okay to have this issue. The two-part set-up statement goes like this: “Even though I have a fear of spiders, I deeply and completely accept myself.”…

Hygiene in hospitals I was very interested to read your article concerning “blunder deaths” in UK hospitals, the reason being that I am extremely concerned about the approach to the washing of staff clothing. An acquaintance whose daughter is a nurse at our local Royal United Hospital in Bath told me that her daughter is now being requested to wash her own uniforms, along with other staff members. In my long and checkered career, I was head of department in a commercial laundry in Germany, where I was responsible for washing and ironing. I was also the hygiene and safety officer for the company (employing over 180 persons). I was responsible for ensuring the hygienic processing of washing for five local hospitals and 15 retirement homes, amounting to 17–20 tons…

Are we finally in the end-days of chemotherapy? If we are, the toxic kill-or-cure agent will have been toppled by the common cold—and it could all happen within the next few years. By then, the cold virus may well have become the standard treatment to beat a range of cancers, many of which are currently considered untreatable. Virotherapy—which uses adapted viruses and bacteria to treat cancer and diseases of the central nervous system—has been on the medical radar for more than a century, but it’s suddenly taken center stage. Just in the past few months, researchers from the UK’s University of Surrey have reported using the common cold virus, coxsackievirus, to treat 15 cases of bladder cancer, and found it can eradicate the tumors in just one week. The patients…

It’s something every obstetrician needs to see and every mother-to-be wants to have: an image of the unborn child that shows in clear detail the baby’s tiny hands, fingers and toes. For the doctor, it’s much more than a happy photo opportunity; it is a chance to ensure the overall health of the fetus, including the proper functioning of internal organs and tissues. Ultrasound uses sound waves, at a frequency thousands of times above levels considered harmful to our hearing, to develop an image of organs and blood vessels. Since the growing fetus doesn’t develop ears until the 24th week or so, parents-to-be are assured that ultrasound waves are safe, and certainly far safer than x-rays, which use electromagnetic radiation. That much may be so, but it doesn’t make prenatal…

I t’s confusing for a lot of people knowing that your doctors have signed up to a medical code of conduct—proposed 2,500 years ago by the Greek doctor and philosopher Hippocrates—that undertakes they must “First, do no harm.” Yet we also know that prescription medicine, the most common intervention offered by your doctor, is recognised as the third biggest cause of death in modern society. What’s going on? Unraveling this paradox is not as easy as it might sound. There are a bundle of factors that contribute to it, many of them pulling in different directions. They include, for example, the fact that many people who die from prescription medicines are already very sick. The medicine then catalyzes their death. Then there’s the doctors’ medical training: if you’ve been trained…

Preliminary lab evidence suggests that the most powerful treatment of all for regenerating cartilage could be PRP and HA combined. Researchers from Taipei Medical University harvested the articular cells (the cartilage cells that cover bone) from five people with osteoarthritis, and examined the effect of PRP and HA together in a 3D model. The researchers showed that the combo could “efficiently suppress” certain inflammatory elements in the body related to osteoarthritis and halt cartilage breakdown. Although the study was small and didn’t examine the final effect in anyone’s body, the study authors were optimistic, concluding: “The combination of HA+PRP can synergistically promote cartilage regeneration and inhibit OA inflammation.”1 REFERENCES 1 Biomaterials, 2014; 35: 9599–607…

Below are some of the typical infections associated with the most common autoimmune disorders. If your autoimmune condition is not listed, do your own research by searching online for “[your autoimmune condition] and infections” to learn which specific infections may be linked to your condition. You may need to share this information with your doctor, or it may be a good opportunity to find and work with a holistic practitioner who is skilled in this arena. Alzheimer’s disease: Lyme-causing Borrelia burgdorferi, Helicobacter pylori, chlamydia, cytomegalovirus (CMV), human herpesvirus (HHV)-1, Porphyromonas gingivalis and other oral infections Celiac disease: Adenovirus, enterovirus, hepatitis C virus, rotavirus and reovirus Crohn’s disease: Yersinia enterocolitica, Campylobacter jejuni, Escherichia coli Inflammatory bowel disease: Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), Klebsiella pneumoniae, Candida albicans and small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO) Grave’s…

alance is the ability to maintain B your body’s center of mass over its base of support. When this is all working as designed and fully functioning, your balance system allows you to maintain a clear vision to orient yourself in space, continually gauging where you are, and to determine your direction and speed of movement. All of this happens in the blink of an eye, while making the automatic body adjustments you need to maintain posture and stability in changing activities and conditions. The challenge that balancing brings constitutes a ‘good stress’ (eustress) for both mind and body. This is the kind of stress that prompts you to adapt and focus, so you are faced with no choice but to stay with the task. It doesn’t push you into…

How I beat my nightmare thyroid Always more easily fatigued than other children her age as a child, Georgia can’t remember a time when she didn’t have to push herself to keep up with the others. She didn’t think anything of it until she was almost out of her college years, finishing her studies to become a nutritional therapist in London after moving there from Cape Town, South Africa. “When I got to London I pushed myself a lot,” she says. “Everything was new, I didn’t know anyone, and I was only 22 years old. I didn’t know how to manage stress, and I think that made me even more tired and anxious. I already suffered from anxiety and low energy and things like that. And I became really stressed…

Step 1: Get the right test Georgia Lennard, nutritionist and advanced physical rehabilitation trainer at Beyond Balance in London, recommends you seek out a functional medicine clinic and get certain lab tests done, including: Antithyroid antibodies test. The antithyroid antibodies (ATA) test, also known as the TPO test, is the best test for determining whether or not you have Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. Over 90 percent of people with Hashimoto’s have high levels of antibodies because Hashimoto’s thyroiditis is an autoimmune disorder, which means immune cells are producing the antibodies to attack your thyroid gland. ATA tests detect the presence of these antibodies and measure their levels. Thyroid-stimulating hormone test. Thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) is produced by the pituitary gland when the brain registers low levels of thyroid hormone production. This is the…

Studies show that EFT works by regulating the expression of genes that contribute to overall health in the body, shutting down stress genes and upregulating stress-reduction genes.1 In one recent study, EFT significantly reduced symptoms of pain (by 57 percent), anxiety (by 40 percent), depression (by 35 percent) and posttraumatic stress disorder (by 32 percent), all while increasing happiness (by 31 percent) and lowering resting heart rate, blood pressure and cortisol levels.2 And how does it achieve these effects? “In terms of MRI and EEG studies, those show that EFT reduces beta brain waves, which are the brain waves of stress, while augmenting alpha, theta and delta waves,” says Dawson Church, PhD, EFT trainer of trainers and successor to the work of EFT founder Gary Craig. “Theta is the primary…

We can’t see the world as it really is, only as we perceive it to be. Wise words from the great German philosopher Immanuel Kant—so what about the world we see, or think we see, when we go online? The gateway to the web starts for most of us with Google. It’s the world’s dominant search engine and conveys search results impartially, showing the most popular sites first, according to visits and links to it from authoritative sites—at least, it used to. The world as we perceive it, or are allowed to perceive it, started to shift a year ago when Google made a fundamental change to its algorithm. Quite literally overnight, information about alternative and complementary therapies disappeared from its searches, or perhaps was demoted to page 48 of…