Category Archives: Health

Bellevue Washington Presentation

Toxicity talk from Bellevue, Washington

Here is the Powerpoint Presentation I did in Bellevue, Washington on June 26th, 2008 to the Puget Soung Functional Medicine group. Many thanks to Dr. David Musnick for inviting me to speak.

Stay Out of Hospitals to Live Longer

Pretty sad to read an internet news article entitled “Don’t let a hospital kill you” but that is becoming the state of affairs in our for-profit medical world. “According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 99,000 people die each year because of infections acquired in the hospital”. This is an unacceptable number.

Sloppiness, a “this kind of thing happens” mentality and a focus on profit instead of patient care are just some of the reasons why this is happening in America. The article linked to above from CNN.com lists a few things to help prevent the infections that are killing people when they go to the hospital. Well worth reading before your next visit.

Inflammation and Laboratory Testing

The Newest Finding in the Use of Laboratory Testing in Inflammation

I just gave a talk in Boulder, Colorado at the Healing Journey Seminar on the use of laboratory testing and inflammation. For those of you interested in the subject, I’ve uploaded the Powepoint presentation. Enjoy!

Incontinence Drugs Cause Memory Problems

Incontinence drugs like Detrol, have now been linked to memory problems and other psychological ills.  According to this article on MSNBC.com, “The people who took the drugs had a 50 percent faster rate of cognitive decline compared to those who didn’t take any.” That is pretty staggering if you ask me. Other drugs in the same class, known as anticholinergics also have similar effects.

So what does Pfizer, who makes Detrol say? Here is a quote from Ponni Subbiah, Pfizer’s vice president of medical affairs, “Detrol has been on the market since 1998. It has been prescribed more than 100 million times worldwide.” further more he states “the frequency of events and the role of Detrol in their causation cannot be reliably determined,” Huh? So basically they say that despite what the research tells us, lots of people are taking it and there is no way you are ever going to prove that it’s bad. Pfizer’s mind-numbing denial just goes to show how they clearly think money over health of their customers. I guess they must be working on a brain enhancing drug to make up for the brain numbing effect of Detrol. I think that maybe they have the people working at Pfizer on Detrol in order to come up with the kind of nonsensical comments they make.

My favorite part of the article was the following comment – “Our message is to be careful when using these medicines,” said U.S. Navy neurologist Dr. Jack Tsao, who led the study. “It may be better to use diapers and be able to think clearly than the other way around.”  I would add that it might behove you to try some GPC (glycerophosphocholine) or PS (phosphatidyl serine) to boost brain function as well

More Deceit From the Pharmaceutical Industry

It just keeps coming it seems, the pharmaceutical industry has stooped to levels even I didn’t think possible. Merck was just found to have paid academic scientists to put their names on papers they didn’t write. Who wrote the papers? Company hired medical writers of course.

According to Dr. Catherine DeAngelis, JAMA’s editor-in-chief, “The manipulation is disgusting. I just didn’t realize the extent.”  I think her use of the word disgusting pretty much sums up my opinion of this revelation. The article about this scandal is in today’s Journal of the American Medical Association. You can read the two articles, one by Ross, Hill, Egilman, and Krumholz and the other by Psaty and Kronmal

One JAMA report says internal company data showed in 2001 that Vioxx patients in two Alzheimer’s studies had a higher death rate than patients on dummy pills. Merck didn’t publicize that “in a timely fashion” and provided information to federal regulators that downplayed the deaths, the report said. It’s time to reign in the industry through Congressional legislation.

Lest you think that only Merck is guilty of this deception, think again. I am sure that you will see more of this cropping up in the coming months. In my opinion, this type of behavior is driven by executives of pharmaceutical companies need to impress Wall Street and fluff up their balance sheets instead of having patient’s health in mind.

Here is the result of a paper done by Choudry, et al published in JAMA about how pervasive the industry’s hooks into medicine is:

“Eighty-seven percent of authors had some form of interaction with the pharmaceutical industry. Fifty-eight percent had received financial support to perform research and 38% had served as employees or consultants for a pharmaceutical company. On average, CPG authors interacted with 10.5 different companies. Overall, an average of 81% (95% confidence interval, 70%-92%) of authors per CPG had interactions. Similarly, all of the CPGs for 7 of the 10 diseases included in our study had at least 1 author who had some interaction. Fifty-nine percent had relationships with companies whose drugs were considered in the guideline they authored, and of these authors, 96% had relationships that predated the guideline creation process. Fifty-five percent of respondents indicated that the guideline process with which they were involved had no formal process for declaring these relationships. In published versions of the CPGs, specific declarations regarding the personal financial interactions of individual authors with the pharmaceutical industry were made in only 2 cases. Seven percent thought that their own relationships with the pharmaceutical industry influenced the recommendations and 19% thought that their coauthors’ recommendations were influenced by their relationships.

What is truly sad is how many people have suffered health and financial wise due to the greed and immoral behavior by the pharmaceutical industry.

Connecticut Training – PowerPoint Presentation

Mitochondrial Insufficiency, Type II Diabetes and Infertility/Pregnancy

Autism, Asthma, Allergies and Obesity Presentation

I’d like to thank the people who attended a training session I was part of this past weekend in Old Greenwich, Connecticut. It gave me a great surge of energy to meet so many people who are passionate about health and nutrition.

As promised I have uploaded my two presentations above for you to read and use (just make sure you tell people where you got the slides). Please also visit my other blog site, ToxicWorldBook.

Toxins and Diseases – The Research

There is a lot of data out there on the links between disease and environmental toxins. Problem is, there is a LOT of data on the links. Where to go if you need to see how strong the data is? Well look no further than The Collaborative on Health and the Environment’sCHE Toxicant and Disease Database.

From Abnormal sperm (morphology, motility, and sperm count) to Wilm’s Tumor, this database is chock full of information on the links between the poison’s we are exposed to and the health concerns many of us face.  A definite favorite link to keep if you’re a health care practitioner.

An important thought as well is to make sure you test for the toxins instead of just going out and looking at a disorder and immediately thinking that the toxins listed are the cause of the disease. You can’t treat strictly based on what you think is there. Both the US Biotek test for Environmental Pollutants and the Whole Blood Elements Test from Doctor’s Data is the way to go.

My Latest Presentation on Lab Testing and Environmental Health

San Francisco and Los Angeles April 2008 Presentation by Dr. Mark Schauss

I’d like to thank the people who came to my presentation I did with Robert Crayhon this past weekend in San Francisco and Los Angeles. It was fun to see old friends and make new ones. The enthusiasm to help people that everyone had was invigorating and inspiring. Also, please stop by my other blog ToxicWorldBook.

As promised, here is the PowerPoint presentation for you to read and use (just tell everyone where you got it from). Just click on the link above. Tomorrow, I’ll add the PDF file of the presentation as well.

The U.S. is Not the Leader in the Fight Against Toxicity

In a remarkable book written by Mark Schapiro Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What’s at Stake for American Power, he details how the European Union (EU) has supplanted the United States as the leader in the fight against environmental toxicity. On June 1, 2007, the parliament of the EU voted for a new law called REACH Registration, Evaluation, and Authorization of Chemicals.

One part of this law forces companies to prove the safety of chemicals before they come to market. More importantly, it forces previously grandfathered chemicals to be tested for safety which was vehemently opposed by not just the American Chemical Society but by our own government. It scared them so much that they sent in C. Boyden Gray, the heir to the RJ Reynolds tobacco fortune to lobby against it. This is the same Republican operative who worked to eviscerate the EPA under Reagan by applying cost-benefit analysis over risk-based decision making. In other words, make money first, care about peoples health second. According to the magazine the New Republic, “So many different money trails lead to, by and through Gray it is bewildering.”

In retrospect, I’m glad my government in their ultimate arrogance decided to lobby as hard as they did because in the end, this we’re better than you attitude is what pushed the EU parliament to pass the bill. According to one European diplomat quoted in Mr. Schapiro’s book “If their only message is why we should not do anything more than they’re doing in the United States, then why should we listen? The more the United States give the impression of mounting an attack against REACH, the less we listen….. We are not going to ask the United States for permission. If we were to listen to the United States, how would we explain to European citizens where the two hundred chemicals in their bodies came from? What are we doing to them? This is the same not just for Europeans, but for Americans and every country in the world.”

The Bush Administrations steadfast belief that it is more important to make a dollar today for their big buddies than protecting the citizens of the United States is causing us to lose the leadership role we had for decades. He has lost us the respect from the world, not just because of the ill-conceived war, but because the world sees us as only caring for profits, not for people under the guise of jobs. How many jobs could we create by leading the world in the research of safer products? Millions of them. Sad to say, we won’t see a change soon unless there is a change in the White House come this November. We need it to save our children and the billions of children unborn coming to this world in the next hundred years.