Category Archives: Nutritional Supplements

Tara Parker-Pope: A Reporter Who Needs a Different Job

The New York Times, a newspaper you either love or hate, typically has a fine line-up of reporters and writers but one in particular needs resign from her position and find another line of work that does not require the ability to do careful research and intelligence. Tara Parker-Pope, needs to switch from reporting to something that only requires manual labor. Her recent article, “News Keeps Getting Worse for Vitamins” is an embarassment and is just another example of an inability she has to find out what the word truth means.

If she had bothered to research the studies she cites instead of choking the nonsense down like an obese person at an all you can eat buffet, she would have seen that what was presented was biased and consisted of terribly constructed research. The quantities of vitamin C and E used in the cardiovascular and cancer study were ridiculously low. Go to my podcast site labinterpretation.podhoster.com and listen to episode 13 where I discuss the issues that should have made the studies Ms. Parker-Pope cites go unpublished.

One of the major problems I have with the study on Vitamin C was the insanely low dose used. They used 500 mg of C daily when all intelligent researchers and clinicians know that you need a minimum of 2 grams and with cancer, 10 grams daily to get the needed effect. It is similar to the nonsense from the Mayo Clinic when they tried to disprove Dr. Pauling and Dr. Cameron’s work on cancer. They used intravenous vitamin C and Mayo used oral C and yet they claimed it was the same (it is definitely not). This is blatant dishonesty and the media is supposed to be objective and uncover the truth, not chow down on anything the so-called experts say. Ms. Parker-Pope, find a new job.

LEAP MRT – A Tech Sheet on What the Test Does

LEAP MRT Lab Interpretation LLC Tech Sheet

As anyone who has read my book or been to my other blog site – toxicworldbook.com, knows, the LEAP MRT test by Signet Diagnostics helped save my daughter Tasya’s life. It was such an important tool in helping her not only control her seizures but in also helping to control her temper tantrums.

Because of the help that this test has given the Schauss family, I continue to espouse its many uses at almost all of the lectures I give around the world. Because of this, I have been asked to post some additional information about it, explaining what it does and how it works. You can download the Word document and read about the LEAP MRT test. Enjoy.

Boulderfest 2008 Presentation

Mark Schauss – Boulderfest 2008 Presentation

This weekend I had the pleasure and honor to speak at Boulderfest 2008 put on by a company I no longer have anything to do with unfortunately due to unethical management. Here is the PowerPoint presentation I gave this past Thursday, July 17th.  Also, to all the attendees, I was energized by all of your care and interest in helping people. It is inspiring!!!

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

My Book is Out and Available

My book, Achieving Victory Over a Toxic World is now available through multiple outlets. It is the story of a child, my daughter, and her battle with a rare type of epilepsy, given little chance of recovery by the medical world, but through it all she has made it through, not perfectly, with the ability to live a normal life.

It also deals with what I believe caused her disorder, environmental toxicity. We are polluting our world at a staggering ratewhich is causing epidemics of diseases unheard of in human history. Big corporations would want you to believe this is not happening but my book shows you the truth.

The scariest part of my research delved into the effect these toxins are having on our most vunerable citizens, our children, and the up coming generations. In the final two parts of the book, I give you real world ideas on how to cope with the toxins and how you can begin the movement toward changing our world before it is too late. The increase in the rate of autism, asthma, epilepsy, ADHD, childhood cancers, cannot be explained by a “genetic epidemic”. We are poisoning ourselves and we can change that.

To order the book, you can go to either Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble.com or for faster service my publisher –  AuthorHouse’s web site . This book represents my 20+ years of research along with the passion that comes with fighting for a daughter’s life. I can guarantee one thing about the book and that is it will move you, both emotionally and physically to help us change the world.

Book Cover Picture

Cholesterol Lowering Drugs are Worthless in Most Cases – Part Three

Before I get into today’s discussion on inflammation, please go to this link put up by Chance News, a group dedicated to reviewing information about the use of statistics in the news. They review the cholesterol news and and the statistics behind it. Go down halfway down the page to see the report.

Inflammation. That is the key driver of many disease progressions. From arthritis to coronary heart disease and from cancer to many neurological disorders, if you control inflammation, you control the disease. Two things are important in determining what to do when it comes to your, or your patient’s inflammatory issues. First is proper laboratory testing is lifestyle changes.

The tenet of biochemical individuality is that each person must be dealt with as a unique being. By suggesting that everyone who has a risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) should take one drug or one supplement is an insult to Dr. Roger Williams concept. The only way to determine what is going on is to do the appropriate lab tests.

When looking for markers of inflammation as they relate to coronary heart disease, one jumps out as being a primary marker and that is C-Reactive Protein. CRP is a protein produced by the liver and is increased during inflammatory processes. People with elevated levels are more likely to have a coronary event than people with low levels. It is important to note that a single high reading is not a good marker for CHD, a number of elevations (>3.0 mg/L) would signify a problem. ZRT Laboratories is a place to get a simple, in-home test (Cardio/Hormone Risk Test) that uses blood spot and saliva to test not only for CRP, but a number of other coronary risk factors as well as hormone levels.

What would cause an elevation in inflammatory markers? Toxicity is one so testing for urinary markers of petrochemicals which is done only by US Biotek, is a good place to start. By seeing if you are excreting chemicals like benzene, styrene, xylene, toluene, phthalates or parabens, you can find out where your exposures might be coming from. Another good test to run is a Hair Elements test from Doctor’s Data to determine possible heavy metal exposure. To help you better understand the report, I suggest Dr. Andrew Cutler’s book – Hair Test Interpretation: Finding Hidden Toxicities.

Another source of inflammatory triggers is food and the best test I have ever found in determining which foods can cause inflammation is the LEAP MRT. Developed by Signet Diagnostics, it can pinpoint the foods that cause the body to release pro-inflammatory prostaglandins, leukotrienes and cytokines that drive the inflammation process. It was the one test that helped my daughter control her seizure activity as well as behavioral issues. It has a great track record in relieving irritable bowel syndrome as well as migraines, both driven by inflammatory triggers.

If you want to become heart healthy, you need to find out whether your body is inflammed and if so, what is causing it. Once you do that, you reduce your risk of developing not just heart disease, but a number of other health conditions.

Cholesterol Lowering Drugs are Worthless in Most Cases – Part Two

This past Friday, I talked about the issues with Lipitor® and the lack of the association between high cholesterol and coronary heart disease. Now let’s talk about real problems that comes up by taking this drug.

Say the side-effect rate is 3-5% (which is the pharmaceutical industry line) which means that given one-percent of people get a benefit, five-percent get side-effects that can be rather serious. Guess what? That estimate is way under what practitioners in the field are seeing. Reports indicate that in the real world the side-effect rate is closer to 15%.

Obviously, this would mean that we need to move away from pharmaceutical intervention to lower cholesterol to alternative, “natural” ones right? Wrong. Turns out cholesterol levels in people with heart disease are not really much higher than people without heart disease. Also, low cholesterol (under 160mg/dl) may increase the risk of a number of health disorders like stroke, cancer, depression, and suicide. Lowering cholesterol is not the issue, in spite of what the nutraceutical industry would like you to believe. They are being no different in their claims than the pharmaceutical industry.

The real culprit in heart disease is inflammation. Lower inflammation and not only do you lower the real risk for heart disease , you lower the risks for a myriad of other diseases from diabetes to arthritis, from cancer to migraines, seizures and irritable bowel syndrome to name a few.

In tomorrow’s blog, I will discuss tools that will help you determine your level of inflammation along with things you can do to alleviate it.

Dr. Emily Senay Continues a Myth on CBS’s Early Show

It just agravates me to no end when television personalities makes statements that perpetrate myths and do it with a straight face. This morning, on a bit about probiotics, Dr. Emily Senay of the CBS Early Show said something that is just boldly untrue. She said that nutritional supplements are not regulated by the FDA. That is a flat out lie. Click here to watch the video.

The DSHEA bill, passed in the ’90s, gave consumers free and fair access to nutritional supplements but it did give regulatory jurisdiction to the FDA. Don’t believe me, go here to the FDA website, look at the left hand column that says “Products FDA Regulates.” Wow, under food it says “Dietary supplements”. So Dr. Senay, either you lied on TV, or the FDA is lying. You have continued this myth over and over and over whenever you talk about supplements. Time for you to come clean.

Don’t give us the “I meant they don’t approve supplements” line either. You said what you said and you have repeated this many times. The FDA does regulate supplements and can pull a product off the market whenever they see fit. Most of the time they do a fine job and will take dangerous supplements off the market.

It is time for reporters and the media as a whole to stop the continuation of a lie. Dr. Senay, it’s time for you to get on the air and tell people the truth.

Cancer and Supplementation – Bad Journalism, Poor Writing, Lousy Science

The November 3-9, 2007 issue of the British science magazine New Scientist has an article about Ten Ways to Avoid Cancer. Some of the suggestions like reducing body fat, getting more physical, lowering the intake of red meat, alcohol, junk foor and preservatives are all excellent. One, startled me. It was a suggestion to avoid nutritional supplements. I had to see the report that would make this claim.

The study put out by the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research is called Food, Nutrition, Physical Activity and the Prevention of Cancer: A Global Perspective. I read over the reasoning behind the suggestion they made that supplements cause cancer but I really fail to see how they came up with that reasoning. All I could find was references to a few studies that implicated beta-carotene to an increased risk of cancer in smokers (wow aren’t they a major risk group already?), selenium and calcium actually being protective. How a journalist can make a sweeping statement like avoiding supplements when the recomendation was “Aim to meet nutritional needs through diet alone” and that they even qualified that by saying that “This may not always be feasible”.

Where do those two quotes state to avoid supplements?  In reality, the notion that you can get all the nutrients you need from your diet is an absolute myth. The foods we get at the market today do not have the kind of nutritional backbone they claim. Supplementation is essential to even meet the needs of a non-stressed, healthy person much less someone living in the toxic world we do.

The only real caution the panel makes is that supplements shouldn’t be used to “prevent” cancer. Now I disagree with them on that but that is no where near saying to avoid them to prevent cancer.

Shame on the New Scientist for so twisting the report so much. Bad journalism equals misleading data which causes panic and harm to the general public.