Category Archives: Health

Still no Movement by the FDA on Banning Mercury Amalgams

The U.S. Court of Appeals rightfully, though regrettably, ruled that they have no jurisdiction over the inactivity by the FDA in forcing a ban on the use of mercury in dental amalgams. The FDA refuses to do what is right in this situation. The only reason is probably due to their pandering to the American Dental Association who is scared to death of the lawsuits that would come down the pike if the FDA were to say that mercury is dangerous when used to fill cavities.

Here is my simple solution. Have Congress write a law both banning the use of mercury in dental amalgams and banning lawsuits. It can be done and needs to as people are still being subjected to this dangerous neurotoxin.

Come on FDA, do your job and protect the American public like you are supposed to do!!!

Taking Responsibility in a World Gone Mad

Today we mourn the death of 32 innocent people, many young adults just about to go out in the world and make their mark. There are calls for gun control, stricter laws, rules and other measures to hopefully prevent another incident like this occurring. While all well and good, the fundamental problem is not being addressed which I believe is a society that no longer has any sense of responsibility.

The America my parent came to was one founded on a strong work ethic and sacrifice. Today’s America is one where many point fingers at others when they do something wrong. Pat Sullivan Jr. passed along an email he received called The Death of Common Sense. While I don’t agree with everything the post contains, I still think that common sense, and the lack of its use, is at the core of the tragedies that keep on occurring in our society. We live in a country where Don Imus gets fired for reprehensible behavior, yet we buy CDs of rappers who say far worse, with little outcry. We trumpet the arrival of new video games which glorify violence, murder, theft and the degradation of women. How do we then justify our outrage at the tragedy at West Virginia University?

A nation that stresses increased personal responsibility may not have prevented the horrors we are now finding out about, but then again, maybe it would have. Maybe that young man may have seen an America as a land of true opportunity, a country where people are held accountable for their actions, where the government doesn’t hide facts that show a possible cause for autism and thimerosal, and a country where our leadership takes responsibility for their actions.

Still, at this time, I think it is most important to wrap our hearts and thoughts around the families who have lost loved ones.  They will need a lot of help healing themselves.

An Addendum to Yesterday’s Post

Yesterday I discussed the problems within the supplement business, today’s headlines bring more distressing news, one company, Hi-Tech Pharmaceuticals, has had a multi-charge indictment put on it and it’s principals that reads like a description of all that is wrong with the nutritional supplement industry. This puts a nasty blanket of suspicion on all of us, regardless of the fact that most companies are stand-up citizens who produce good products and follow the law to the letter and then some.

In a well researched article on MSNBC, the reporter lays out a sordid tale of deception, illegal dealings and discussions of murder and blackmail. The company was found to have added the drug Cialis to their herbal “male-enhancement” supplement, which is something I have been privy to being done by others in the supplement industry. This is where our industry needs to be stronger, policing itself with more vigor and speed than ever before. If not, the FDA will step in and regulate nutritional supplements in a a far heavier handed way than is necessary.

Hey Supplement Industry – Get Your Act Together!!!

With all of the cry wolf alternative health fear mongers falsely claiming that CODEX is coming to America, they won’t discuss the supplement industries ugly secret which is how poorly we self-regulate our industry. In a report garnering headlines at MSNBC.com, a number of supplements which claim to contain chondroitin, either didn’t or had much less than the labels claimed. This is intolerable in our industry and almost beckons government intervention.

Instead of whining about a false impending doom called CODEX (which by the way cannot come to fruition in the US because of the DSHEA bill), start getting going after the lousy manufacturers and distributors who sell crap to consumers. If this trend of bad publicity continues, then the FDA has no choice but to step in and increase surveillance. In my opinion the biggest screamers against FDA interference are those who produce lousy products or people who use questionable practices in their clinics. There is one women, who claims to be a doctor (and is a total fraud), charges $14K to come to a clinic she works at to inject people with a protocol so lacking in science, but high in hype, that people line up to have the work done on them. Unfortunately for many, the results are disastrous. I have worked with a number of them, some physicians, who have had horrible side-effects, some lasting for years.

Maybe the time has come for intelligent regulation of this industry. Sadly, as with most regulation, it will come at a terrible price.

Another Stupid CNN Anti-Supplement Article

You would think by now, CNN would monitor its writers for accuracy but in the case of Caleb Hellerman, I guess he gets a free pass. His article posted on the CNN website today is such a load of garbage that you would have to wonder where this writer gets his paycheck from. Entitled No scientific evidence diet supplements work this pile of trash is unbelievably poorly written and so lacking in honesty, I think it should be listed under fiction instead of being on a news website.

His claim that there is no evidence that nutritional supplements would is a bold faced and unadulterated lie. There are so many studies showing efficacy that he should be ashamed to have even written this drivel. My challenge to Hellerman is that I can come up with 10 studies showing benefits to every one that shows otherwise. His bringing up the embarrassing recent Danish study which purports to show that antioxidant nutrients may shorten life spans should tell you that his prejudice regarding supplements cloud his judgement. The study was so flawed and so obviously twisted since it clearly eliminated any study showing benefits to antioxidant nutrients that no scientist with any credibility would take it seriously. I challenge Hellerman to subscribe to to an email put out by Tishcon called Vitasearch which comes out weekly with studies showing benefits of nutritional supplements from numerous peer-reviewed journals around the world.

This clearly biased writer (cannot call him a reporter as this would imply his ability to report the truth) also states, “studies have found virtually no evidence supplements improve health your health.” Is he really serious?  Can he be that dishonest? I guess so. What would motivate a writer to so blatantly write nonsense like this is beyond me unless there is something nefarious going on. Either that or he is illiterate and unable to read research papers that number in the thousands that show benefits to taking supplements.

Shame on Hellerman and even more shame on CNN for writing this person a paycheck and publishing his crap.

Overeating and Liver Damage

In an article published in the March 31-April 1 issue of New Scientist, writer James Kingsland talks about how overeating and the obesity epidemic are causing more and more people to be diagnosed with liver disease. If I asked you what the leading cause of cirrhosis of the liver was you would likely say alcohol. Guess again. Some may say hepatitis but that would be wrong also. Obesity is the leading cause of a diseased liver in most affluent nations.

Other interesting tidbits include:

  • 5-10 percent of Americans have liver disease.
  • 2/3rds of them have non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).
  • Four cups of coffee a day seems to reduce the risk of NAFLD!
  • Children are now being diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver.

One interesting finding is that liver disease, in early stages can be reversed by changing dietary habits. The key is to eat healthy (less fat and simple carbohydrates) and exercise. I would add that taking the herb milk thistle and the amino acid glycine (1-3 grams daily) would greatly improve liver health.

The one thing that annoyed me about the article was the talk of developing drugs to fight off liver disease. I can see it being critical in late-stage disease where liver transplantation is the only option but you know that pharmaceutical industry will market the hell out of the drug instead of making people change their lifestyle. What I did like was the last quote of the article from Dr. David Jones is “I put the fear of God into them, then I send them off to buy a heart rate monitor and to exercise. I tell them it’s the best £50 they’ll ever spend. And patient after patient comes back with normalised liver function tests. They feel a lot better, the tiredness goes away. It’s quite extraordinary.”  Advice well given.

Medicare Fraud – A La Congress

If you missed last weeks Sixty Minutes broadcast on CBS TV, you probably aren’t seething as much as those of us who did. Turns out, that nice little Medicare reform bill that was supposed to make life better for senior citizens did nothing more that enrich the most profitable industry of all, the pharmaceutical (herein renamed harmaceutical).

Our Congress, led by Republican’s, passed a bill that is so one-sided for a particular industry that I believe that criminal charges of theft should be filed against every Congressman that voted for the bill. It will cost you and me, the taxpayers, an estimated 534 billion dollars. The bill disallows Medicare from negotiating with the harmaceutical companies to lower prices for drugs. This should make everyone of you completely outraged. If you want to read the story, click here to go to the CBS website.  Just be prepared to be angered.

Until Americans demand lobbyist reform, we will continue to be ripped off, our taxes stolen from us and our health will be at the mercy of profiteers. The Senate is trying to pass a bill to reverse this travesty but guess what?  The Republicans are fighting it and the President has threatened a veto if passed. Who does he work for?  You can bet it isn’t for the American people.

Economics Over Your Child’s Life – The Conservative View of the World

In a book I reviewed earlier this week, How Everyday Products Make People Sick, by Dr. Paul D. Blanc, there is one part that both angered and sickened me. It had to do with a review of the effects of lead by the conservative think tank – the American Enterprise Institute – Brookings Joint Center AEI/BJC on Regulatory Studies. The comment shows the kind of denial and obfuscation that the conservative right uses to protect industry’s ability to dump toxins on us despite overwhelming research.

Lead is a well known neurotoxin that was used in both gasoline and paint prior to the 1970s. According to numerous studies, lead causes IQ levels to drop, especially in children. What amazed me is that the AEI/BJC did not dispute the fact that lead was neurotoxic but that economically parents gain only $1,100 per IQ point while their children gain $1,900 through lead abatement. Are they kidding me??? Do we measure life benefits in terms of parents versus children? What kind of moral system do these people hold dear? One of their comments was “This analysis suggests lead standards will redistribute resources from parents to their children, because the benefits to parents are less than the costs of the standards. The Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Housing and Urban Development should reconsider their lead standards.”

Appalling?  You bet. Morally corrupt?  Closer to the truth. My parents came to this country back in 1953 to make their kids lives better, not at our expense but at theirs. The AEI/BJC is one of the many groups that our present administration looks to for advice. What does that say for us when the argument used to reconsider reintroducing lead into our environment is that parents should make more money at the expense of their children?

But lest this be a Bush-Bashing party, let me make it clear that this kind of disgusting government behavior has been going on for centuries and by just about every government in this world. In 1868, the British Fisheries Preservation Authority wrote a pamphlet entitled On Pollution of the Rivers of the Kingdom. they saw the problems back than.

Dr. Blanc even points out that in 1549 writers talk about things like sick building syndrome (not that term exactly) in a paper called Aerarium Sanitatis. We know that pollution and the dumping of toxins are killing us and causing incalcuable damage to our children and generations to come. As long as it is business as usual, we will continue to be dumped on and lied to about the dangers that surround us.

Please get this book. I don’t care if you get it through clicking on the link below or through any portal you chose, get it. It is one of the finest books on the effects of environmental toxins on human health I have ever read and believe me, I have read a lot of them.

 

How Everyday Products Make People Sick: Toxins at Home and in the Workplace

Toxicity and Obesity – The link is there

My post today is from the lovely town of Bogota, Colombia where I am lecturing at a major medical conference on the topic of obesity and toxicity as well as testing protocols for environmental toxins. My hosts, Heel of Colombia (wonderful homeopathic products) heard my talk in Baden Baden, Germany last year at Medical Week and asked me to come here and bring my message to South America. To view the PowerPoint presentation, click on the link below.

Toxicity and Obesity

Tomorrow, I will post my second lecture on laboratory testing for environmental toxins.

Nutritional Research Review

Thanks to the people at Tishcon, here is the weekly review of nutrition research.

  • Lipoic acid (ALA) was reported to be helpful in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. Of all of the reasons given for its efficacy, the ability to chelate mercury from the brain was not listed. For more information about that, go to Dr. Andrew Cutler’s website and pickup his book Amalgam Illness.
  • Supplementing with vitamin C and garlic may help people with marginally high blood pressure bring it back to normal. What was interesting is that vitamin C alone did little to lower either systolic (top number) or diastolic (bottom number) and garlic only affected the systolic blood pressure. Together they worked on lowering both. The dosage for the vitamin C was 2,000 milligrams and the garlic was supplemented at 650 mg/d of bulb powder.
  • Vitamin K1 along with vitamin D and calcium work synergistically in building bone density. Seems that together, these nutrients build more and denser bone than when alone.
  • Curcumin – the active agent found in Turmeric – May Prevent Breast Cancer Metastases. As many of you have see, I LOVE curcumin and this is just another reason to make it a part of your everyday supplement regime.
  • Probiotics have been shown to benefit the immune system in immune compromised people. If you are sick or in the hospital, get some high-potency probiotics in you.
  • L-Carnitine is showing benefits in handling stress according to a study from the journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. The authors of the study concluded that, “… both the 1- and 2-g doses were effective in mediating various markers of metabolic stress and of muscle soreness. Use of LCLT (L-Carnitine-L-Tartrate) appears to attenuate metabolic stress and the hypoxic chain of events leading to muscle damage after exercise.”
  • In a study from the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition it showed that increased carbohydrate intake lowers HDL (good cholesterol) and increases triglycerides. Basically put, if people were to lower their sugar and high fructose corn syrup intake, they would have a better lipid profile and they would lower their risk of developing cardiovascular disease.
  • The European Journal of Clinical Nutrition reported that taking multivitamin/multimineral supplements decreased C-Reactive Protein levels by up to 43%. CRP is a known risk factor for developing cardiovascular disease along with other diseases. Yet another study showing the benefits of nutritional supplements. Do you think the mass media picked up on this one?  Of course not but if some lousy study on how nutrients are not beneficial came out, man would that ever get a big write-up.
  • Vitamin D2 (ergocalciferol) has been the predominate nutritional supplement form for people who want to add extra D to their diet. In a study from the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, vitamin D3, also known as cholecalciferol is the only one that has shown real benefits and should be the one people supplement with.

If you want more detailed information about the studies mentioned above, go to www.vitasearch.com

 

Curcumin – the active agent found in Turmeric – May Prevent Breast Cancer Metastases