Innholdsfortegnelse for June/July 2022 i What Doctors Don't Tell You Australia/NZ

Renowned orthopedic surgeon David Hanscom came to the conclusion reached by many of his colleagues in their quiet moments: spinal surgery wasn’t helping his patients, but mostly making them worse. He then embarked on a radical way of treating his patients that eschewed surgery and focused on where pain—and healing—starts and ends: in the mind itself (see page 56). Paradigm-shifting new scientific research has now verified what we’ve long seen in our work: that most of the benefit you get from a drug or a placebo has to do with just the thought about getting medicine, and not the drug itself. This was the conclusion of the largest meta-analysis review of brain placebo research from an international consortium of university researchers, led by Tor Wager, a distinguished professor and the…

Most of us brush it on our teeth every day. It’s also in our tea—and there’s the chance we’ll consume even more of it if we drink a glass of tap water. Yes, fluoride is good for us, and it prevents our teeth from decaying and, as we get older, reduces our chances of osteoporosis, or so its advocates tell us. Because fluoride can apparently do so much for our health, it is a medicine, a view that’s supported in law and by medical authorities around the world. The US Department of Health & Human Services stated in 2000: “Fluoride, when used in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment or prevention of disease in man or animal is a drug that is subject to Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulation.”And, if…

The HSP scale1 is a 27-question self-report measure developed by Dr Elaine Aron that has been widely used and validated by other researchers.2 According to the scale, highly sensitive people: • Can frequently feel anxious when there’s a lot going on in their environment • Are often compelled to withdraw to somewhere private and quiet • Do not cope well when asked to multitask • Can be strongly affected by other people’s moods • Spend a lot of time “sorting out their inner workings.” Alane Freund admits the scale is biased toward introverts, but a new scale is now being researched that will be more accurate for men, extroverts and another subtype of HSPs called “high-sensation seekers.”3 Freund recommends that anyone who is still unsure if they have the trait…

In the UK, uptake of the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) triple vaccine is now at a 10-year low, with just 85.5 percent of 5-year-olds receiving their two jabs, according to data recently released by the UK Health Security Agency. Newspapers like The Guardian claim that one in 10 children will now be unprotected from measles. “THESE RESULTS BELIE THE BOOTS-ON-THE-GROUND EXPERIENCE OF MANY PARENTS WHO HAVE WITNESSED A SUDDEN AND CATASTROPHIC DECLINE IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THEIR CHILD IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING AN MMR VACCINATION” And even before Covid lit up the dashboard, measles outbreaks in the US were frequently in the news, along with much handwringing from health officials about “vaccine hesitancy”and the growing aversion for childhood vaccines at the root of the problem. But the one issue at the heart of parents’…

Wakefield’s study, which was retracted by The Lancet, was later replicated by two different research teams who found persistent measles antibodies in the guts of autistic children. The first, carried out by scientists at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina, compared the gut mucosa of 275 children with autism to those of patients with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. Among the children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), the team discovered what Andrew Wakefield had: “a gastrointestinal mucosal molecular profile that overlaps significantly with known inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), yet has distinctive features that further supports the presence of an ASD-associated IBD variant.”1 Furthermore, in 82 children evaluated by the team, 70 tested positive for the measles virus. “Of the handful of results we have in so far,…

A couple of years ago, a friend asked me for an opinion about his back. He had pain and numbness down the side of his leg. His MRI scan revealed a bone spur between the fifth lumbar and first sacral vertebra as it exited his spine, surrounding his fifth lumbar nerve root. I felt surgery might help, but I also thought he might be able to avoid surgery with exercises that flexed his spine and relaxed him. I wasn’t convinced that his pain was severe enough to warrant the risks of surgery. He elected for surgery in Spain, his home country. It helped for a couple of months before the same pain returned. He underwent a second operation about six months later that worsened his pain. It was then that…

Depending upon the symptom or symptoms to be treated, the therapist will instruct you to stand, sit or even possibly lie on the vibrating platform in one of a variety of positions. For example you could be standing upright (there is handlebar support) or in a partial squat position with knees slightly or more deeply bent. Some machines use an up-and-down motion considered to be a “linear” motion while others vibrate in a pivoting motion called an oscillating movement. Linear machines mimic a jumping motion in the body (at a minuscule level), stimulating muscles on both sides of the body to contract at the same time. Oscillating movement devices have less vertical impact on the body and trigger muscles to contract alternately (like a regular walking motion). Again, depending upon…

Dr Bagash reports the case of a young, extremely fit basketball player who came to him after he had had the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) repaired in one knee. The ACL is one of four major ligaments in the knee that help stabilize the knee joint. Without a healthy ACL, the knee joint may become unstable during any sort of strenuous activity. It had been six months since his surgery, and he still didn’t feel stable enough to play. He was frightened that his knee would give out on any sudden turn. “The receptors around the ACL weren’t firing the way they needed—they weren’t really awake,” says Bogash. “We did a short course of vibrational therapy. He was in really great shape, and he was able to be pretty aggressive…

When British researchers Peter Woodruff and Tom Farrow attempted to map the neurology of forgiveness, they found that when people either empathized or forgave, similar areas of the limbic centers of the brain were activated. When asked to think about the fairness of transgressions, however, the subjects found it harder to forgive, and those emotional centers were less active.1 These results suggest a distinction between reasoned judgments, usually associated with the cortex, and the areas of the brain associated with empathy and social cohesion when someone chooses to forgive. In The Forgiveness Project: Stories for a Vengeful Age (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2016), author Marina Cantacuzino cites the case of Susan Lawler, whose father killed her mother in 1999, to show that even a small amount of empathy is necessary for…

Though forgiveness therapy is a formal clinical process, its description of moving from uncovering the negative emotional impact of the injury to ultimately seeing the offender as a whole person is a proven road map to emotional healing. Forgiveness therapy is broken into four phases, but it is not a rigid formula: people proceed at their own pace and may find themselves revisiting steps they’ve already worked through. A firm commitment to forgive isn’t even necessary at the start, only a willingness to explore the possibility. In the first phase, the justified anger and even hate are brought into the open to be processed. These feelings are not judged but understood as painful reactions to the injury. The therapist helps the person modulate the pace and intensity of this experience…

I know, I know, the magazine’s called What Doctors Don’t Tell You, but throughout the recent Covid-19 pandemic we could have changed it to What Doctors Can’t TellYou. A few brave doctors and nurses have put their heads above the YouTube and Facebook parapets to pronounce, from the frontline, either that Covid is not as bad as everyone is telling us, or that there are effective treatments they’re not being allowed to use, or that the vaccines aren’t as safe as you’re being told, and so on. These videos and posts have usually lasted a day or so before the“fact-checkers”—an algorithm that pounces on anything that even whispers words such as Covid or vaccines—have them removed. We’ve heard plenty of rumors that these medics have been threatened, and worse, for…

Dr Damien Downing, a specialist in allergy, environment and nutrition, is current president of the British Society for Ecological Medicine, on the editorial board of Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, Chief Medical Advisor of cancer charity Yes to Life (www.yestolife.org.uk), and author of numerous books including The Vitamin Cure for Allergies. Dr Michel Odent, a French-trained surgeon and obstetrician, is a pioneer of the natural birth movement, emphasizing home and water birth. Founder of the Primal Health Research Centre in the UK, he has written some 50 scientific papers and 11 books. Dr Sarah Myhill has worked in the UK National Health Service and private practice since 1981. Honorary Secretary of the British Society for Ecological Medicine for 17 years, she is a frequent lecturer and author of Sustainable Medicine and…

mRNA Covid vaccines increase rate of myocarditis 133 times, CDC admits The mRNA Covid vaccines can increase the chances of myocarditis (heart inflammation) by as much as 133 times in boys up to the age of 15, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has admitted. Older males also face a dramatically increased risk after having either a Pfizer or Moderna jab. Researchers from the CDC admit the real risk could be far higher still because of under-reporting of adverse reactions. Most cases happened after the second dose. The greatest risk was among adolescent boys between 12 and 15 years old, with reported myocarditis cases 133 times higher than would be expected. Cases were 79 times higher among teenage boys between 16 and 17, and there was a…

The polarisation of societies across the world has been painful for many of us. It’s sometimes split families, other times whole nations. Among the opposing views have been a gamut of different perspectives on how much or how little control we should have as individuals versus the state. Meanwhile, the state, perhaps democratically elected but often not democratically functional, provides greater or lesser amounts of infrastructure and services that supposedly facilitate the civilized operation of society. Among the views circulated by those who support the mainstream narrative has been this notion that the individual must give up liberty for the benefit of the state. This is a collectivist construct that could be viewed as somewhat analogous to the role of a worker ant within an ant colony. All the activities…

Dr Elaine Aron created the acronym DOES to map the different dimensions of the trait of high sensitivity: Depth of processing HSPs are sometimes perceived as inhibited due to their need to pause and run novel situations through their memory before acting. “It is very important that other people don’t mistake that for timidity or a lack of confidence,” Dr Jadzia Jagiellowicz says. However, HSPs react to danger or opportunity faster when they see that a situation is like a past one, because they have already reflected deeply on the previous experience. HSPs are also known for their rich inner life, intuition and creativity. Overstimulated HSPs can easily become over-aroused by stimuli and are more sensitive to the environment. “It’s actually as a result of having more information to process,”…

There has been a lot of controversy around the treatment of chronic pain, and patients and physicians alike are frustrated by the inability to solve it. Chronic pain is a complicated phenomenon shaped by many influences, and modern medicine’s approach is to offer simplistic, random solutions while ignoring current neuroscience that points the way to a new paradigm. The current definition of chronic pain is“. . . an embedded memory that becomes associated with more and more life experiences, and the memory cannot be erased.”1 Understanding how this process evolves and the neurochemical nature of chronic pain is the first step to resolving it. “IN MOST CASES THE PAIN WORSENS SIMPLY BECAUSE OF THE WAY THE BRAIN PROCESSES REPETITIVE STIMULI” The evolution of chronic pain The brain is a dynamic…

Tight muscles and joint contractures are painful. As the injured area approaches full range of motion, your body warns you with pain signals. Becoming more protective of these tissues, your pain grows with less motion. As you decrease your level of activity, your weakened body finds it harder to support your spinal column. It is imperative to work toward full range of motion of all of your painful joints, as well as spending three to five hours a week doing active resistance exercises, such as weight training. Begin with light weights and many repetitions. Some people even find the repetitions a calming influence.…

For much of the Covid-19 pandemic, I felt as though I was a spectator to unlikely scenes from the strange world of Alice in Wonderland, and through a frosted glass for good measure. Sometimes it seemed to make sense, but when I looked for the science, it wasn’t there, and the images started to evaporate as so much smoke. Nothing quite added up;“Odder and odder,”I would mutter, à la Alice. Strangely, nobody seemed to mind and just carried on, continuing to believe the official narrative. First, we were told that the virus came from a wet market in Wuhan when humans ate pangolins that had eaten bats. In fact, the more likely explanation is that the virus escaped from the research lab in the city while scientists were working on…

Covid and comorbidities In your Apr/May 2022 issue, you mention that almost all the Italians who died of Covid-19 had comorbidities, like arterial hypertension, irregular heartbeat or heart failure. I suggest that these people were often ill in the first place because of nutritional deficiencies, and, in most cases, their treatment made them more deficient.   For example, vitamin D is highly effective against respiratory viruses, and vitamin D deficiency can be caused by anticonvulsants, bile acid sequestrants, cholestyramine, cimetidine, colestipol, corticosteroids, glutethimide, heparin, isoniazid, mineral oil, neomycin, phenobarbital, phenolphthalein and phenytoin and primidone (see Moss M. Drugs as anti-nutrients. J Nutr Env Med, 2007; 16(2): 149–66).   Is it true that the older you are, the more likely you are to die of Covid, or is the reality that the…

Slowing down and taking things easier as we get older could be a big mistake. Instead, we should stay active for as long as we can. Inactivity, especially during retirement, could be one of the big drivers of the epidemic of chronic diseases, new research suggests. Staying active as we get older promotes processes in the body that support healthy aging, such as the release of antioxidants and anti-inflammatories, and improves blood flow, say researchers from Harvard University. As a result, we reduce our risk of chronic illnesses such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and some cancers. It doesn’t only make good sense—it could be in our evolutionary make-up. The scientists discovered from 40,000-year-old fossils that hunter-gatherers were active for around 135 minutes every day—roughly six to 10 times…

You can measure wins in many ways. One is by business success. But if that business lacks integrity, is deceptive or is criminal, any such wins are, at best, hollow. Let’s look at how finances have been allocated since the inception of Covid-19. The UK government, for instance, is estimated to have sunk some £315 to £410 billion (US$424 to 552 billion) into its pandemic response. Or consider the figures collated by Doctors Without Borders showing that taxpayers have subsidized the six leading Covid-19 vaccines to the tune of $12 billion. That investment looks peachy for the beneficiaries, the vaccine manufacturers, but much less so for us taxpayers who’ve contributed. Compare that with the approximately £112 million the UK government plows into cancer research each year, to which the pharma…

“Highly sensitive people tend to take more time observing before acting, but with good reason: they simply have more sensory data to process” It wasn’t until 1986 that British miners stopped taking caged canaries into the mines with them as an early warning system against carbon monoxide poisoning. Canaries are sensitive to toxic gases undetectable by humans, and if the birds kept singing, the miners were safe. A silent or dead canary meant immediate evacuation. For many highly sensitive people (HSPs), the role of the fragile songbird is a potent symbol of their ability to perceive subtleties in the environment that others miss. It is also a symbol of the double-edged nature of high sensitivity as both blessing and burden. “We live in a very overstimulated world in Western culture,…

According to cognitive behavioral psychotherapist and author Tom Falkenstein, men especially experience their high sensitivity as shameful because they do not fit the model of masculinity championed by their fathers and mainstream culture. “Again and again, I saw the huge amount of psychological suffering caused by the discrepancy between how these men were and how they thought a man should be,” he writes in The Highly Sensitive Man (Citadel Press, 2019) of his postgraduate training practice. The language used to describe high sensitivity matters. Alane Freund suggests other terms such as “finely tuned nervous system” and a “highly reactive brain” for men struggling with any stigma, and Falkenstein places high sensitivity in the broader context of individual men’s complex personal makeup. “[I]t’s problematic to reduce yourself to that one quality…

I have developed a systematic, self-directed process to solving chronic pain called Direct your Own Care (DOC), consisting of tools to calm and reprogram your nervous system. These include: Somatic work: connecting thoughts with physical sensations (expressive writing) Relaxation tools: active meditation, mindfulness meditation, visualization Forgiveness: you can’t simultaneously move forward and hang on to the past Refraining from discussing your pain or medical care with anyone but your health care providers—redirect your attention away from the pain Identifying triggers that affect symptoms—and dealing with them Returning to familiar, fun activities such as art, hobbies, music, dance, sports, etc. Re-learning how to play—the antithesis of anger Giving back: a reward in itself Reconnecting with playfulness is particularly powerful. Results are swift, and repetition can strengthen pleasurable circuits until they become…

Few people walking into a modern gym today or working with a physical therapist at a clinic know that the sleek modern equipment they’re using actually got its start over 150 years ago when Dr Jonas Gustav Zander, a Swedish doctor and orthopedist, was concerned with developing ways to rehabilitate patients debilitated by disease. He started designing mechanical therapy machines very similar in purpose (if not in design) to many exercise and therapeutic machines used today—stationary systems that were a hodgepodge of weights, counterweights, cogs, wheels, pulleys and levers designed to create mechanical resistance that would aid in building muscle mass, strength and endurance in the men and women who used them. Zander even designed a vibrating machine that employed a harness attached to different portions of the body, using…