Category Archives: Healthcare

Arogance Intruding on Peace

Posted on by
Reply

I was off to enjoy the afternoon at one of the local vineyards. We had taken a picnic as this particular vineyard had set up tables for just that purpose. After the tasting, you could go out and take in the panoramic views of the mountains while enjoying cheese and grapes with the wine of choice. This particular afternoon, the mountains had taken on the many breathtaking colors of blue for which they are named. The interplay of sun and clouds danced off the sides of the mountains bringing shades of Italy to the Piedmont of North Carolina. The Tuscany stone building set in the middle of the vineyard in combination with the infusion of Chianti grapes with the local wild cherry set a peaceful relaxation.

blue vine1The people next to us were chatting incessantly about this or that and I allowed the beauty of the afternoon drown out any intrusive thoughts. Then I started to hear that their patients were idiots who were taking vitamins and minerals. I could not separate the joy of the surroundings with the intrusion of lambasting individuals who were trying to stay healthy. It was obviously a table of doctors from the local medical institutions building up their egos; how smart they are and how stupid their patients are. Even if they believed this, could they not hold their voices down so as not to intrude on others?

The first thought that came to mind; why did you go to medical school to serve the masses if you have no compassion for the ones you serve. There must be empathy for sick, otherwise, you are just trying to make enough money to pay off your school loans, buy a large home on top of a mountain, and perhaps a yacht for the Chesapeake. Why would they let the disgust for their patients efforts destroy such a beautiful afternoon? Worse, why would you believe that twelve years of school was any better than millenniums of common practice for chronic medical conditions? After all, is medicine not an art to relieve the ailing by weaving science and centuries of common practice into a balm for suffering? We all know the eventual outcome – death. It is the living of the years between birth and death that we want to be filled with love, joy, and peace. Why would you want to give such arrogance an opportunity to destroy this tranquility?

blue

After the beginning of another tirade about how stupid his patient was for taking vitamin D3 and MSM to lower his blood pressure, I took another sip of Sangiovese and separated myself from this delusion of grander. – Pandemic Survivor

Understanding out of Chaos

Posted on by
2

Many Causes, One Disease, Many Cures
Resolving Multiple Factors for Disease States

“Double, double toil and trouble
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble” Hamlet, Shakespeare

Okay, this post is not for the layman in trying to resolve issues of their personal health. This post is to point researchers to a tool long used in the military and manufacturing for troubleshooting problems. The issues are multiple factor diseases. When there is more than one factor, analysis of the variance, ANOVA, only tells you that there is a statistical significance of one of the factor variances. It does not tell you which factor is causing the variance.

One of the issues that have long plagued medicine is multiple factors. In the ‘gold standard’ for statistical analysis of a drug or nutrient in how it affects a disease, typically only one factor is used. The double blind, placebo controlled trial is run. The reason for this is the complexity of the math when there is more than one factor and the understanding by decision makers of what the math model is telling you.

Elis R. Ott developed a technique for measuring multiple factors in how they vary from the average. In other words, the technique measures the group average variation from the average of the entire population. This technique is called analysis of the means. So in comparing to ANOVA it may be stated as: ANOM compares the group mean to the overall mean, where ANOVA compares the group mean to the other group means. ANOVA can tell you if there is a significant difference, while ANOM can tell which group mean is significantly different.

I can tell you from personal experience that ANOM is a very powerful statistical method to sort out both common causes and assignable causes. I was once the engineering manager for the world’s largest automotive battery plant. We made sixteen thousand batteries per day. That is over a million electrode plates per day. We of course used all the standard statistical techniques. Until ANOM was introduced, confusion continued to hold sway because the employees as well as the managers did not understand the math. When the graphical method of ANOM with the ability to compare multiple factors was introduced, we quickly achieved much higher production levels of quality product. It was also great because ANOM could be applied to either attribute data, go/no go, as well as variables data.  Also, much smaller sample sizes were needed to show significance. Clear decision making with expected results became trusted.

Here is an explanation from the SAS software statistical module: “A health care system administrator might ask which clinics in the system have a higher or lower rate of admissions than the average for all clinics. Questions of this type can be answered with analysis of means, which is an alternative to one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) for a fixed effects model. However, unlike ANOVA, which simply determines whether there is a statistically significant difference in the treatment means, ANOM identifies the means that are significantly different. As a statistical technique, ANOM is a method for making multiple comparisons that is sometimes referred to as a “multiple comparison with the weighted mean”. Analysis of means lends itself to quality improvement applications because it has a simple graphical representation that is similar to a Shewhart chart and requires little training to interpret. This representation is also useful for assessing practical significance.”

History: “Analysis of means compares the absolute deviations of group means from their over-all mean, an approach that was initially studied by Laplace in 1827. Halperin and others derived a version of this method in the form of a multiple significance test in 1955. Ott developed a graphical representation for the test and introduced the term “analysis of means” in 1967. Refer to Ott (1967) and Ott (1975). In the 1980’s Schilling extended the application to non-normal distributions. P. R. Nelson (1982a) and L. S. Nelson (1983) provided exact critical values for ANOM when the groups have equal sample sizes. P. R. Nelson (1991) developed a method for computing exact critical values for ANOM when the group sample sizes are not equal.”

This is really great because this technique can be applied to existing data when there are multiple factors to readily point to which is the most statistically significant. You can easily decide if calcium or vitamin D is more important or better you could compare vitamin D, vitamin A, calcium, and magnesium. The thing that adds to the value of ANOM is the ability to compare the interactions of the factors. Many of the interactions will mean nothing. However, the interactions of some of the factors will be greater than any one factor. So you might find that vitamin D is great for moving the population toward health. The interaction of vitamin D and magnesium would be even greater. We can make suppositions based on our understanding of the mechanisms, but until the interactions are statistically verified it continues to be viewed as a witch’s brew.

An example of this in the nutritional community is the argument between Dr. Cannell of the Vitamin D Council and the folks over at the Weston A. Price Foundation. Dr. Cannell has held that high levels of preformed vitamin A will lead to illness because of the apparent reduction in the serum levels of vitamin D. Weston A. Price Foundation has long held the importance of vitamin A and especially cod liver oil as an elixir for health. So the question becomes is vitamin A and vitamin D antagonist or are they cofactors of each other. I personally suspect that large amount of vitamin A with small amount of vitamin D is the issue driving the assumption that large intakes of vitamin A is bad. Given two to three months for the liver to clear of stored vitamin A with a serum level of vitamin D above 60 ng/ml; I suspect health would be improved with high intakes of both vitamins. I also suspect that there is enough data currently existing in clinical trials to ferret out the answer using ANOM. One of the major advantages of ANOM is that it gives a graphical solution that is easily understood by clinicians and decision makers without having to have a complete understanding of the math operating in the background.

So the group averages of different levels of vitamin A and vitamin D may look something like this when compared to the total population.
ANOM IllstrationAfter applying ANOM you would get a graphical solution like this. This created hypothetical  example shows that both high A and high D are statically significant. But better, it shows that the interaction of vitamin A and vitamin D is even more significant. (this would make sense as the known mechanisms for growth factors, necrosis factors, and immune system improvement require VDR/RXR dimers)
ANOM DecisionIf the above ANOM is truly represented as fact, then after giving the population high amounts of vitamin A and vitamin D you would get a shift like this:

Improved wellness after applying the new understanding.

Improved wellness after applying the new understanding.

Now just imagine the power of this when analyzing a population when the levels of vitamin A, vitamin D, magnesium, and calcium are known. You would be able to see the effect of the main factors as well as the interactions of the factors and decide based on statistical significance. Or better, you could make an analysis of different levels vitamin D3, vitamin D2, vitamin A from fish liver oil, beta-carotene, magnesium oxide, magnesium chelate, calcium hydroxide, and calcium citrate all in the same study. There would be no control population required as the group averages would be compared to the average of the entire population. This is more real world than how it is done now. Also, because the interactions are so difficult to predict by individuals during the trial, the placebo effect would not be as large a factor.
The clamor over the last many years have been that vitamin D provides no consistent benefit based on meta-analyses of many studies. The beauty of using ANOM for the meta-analyses would show that dose dependence is of extreme importance. No longer would critics be able to say that vitamin D has no effect. It would be plain there are no effects at lower levels or the effects would be shown to be dose dependent for different diseases.

Imagine doing drug studies and show variations of other drugs and nutrients and interactions in the same trials with a graphical method that could be easily understood. Or imagine analyzing all of the environmental factors that are issues for a disease like autism from existing data. For this reason, the inability to show clearly which factor is most important; it is not likely that this technique will ever be adopted. I know this is a very critical statement, but it is obvious that the preference of the medical community is to keep the argument going instead of solving the problems because of the economics involved. With increased wellness in the general population, healthcare/healthcare insurance job opportunities would be significantly reduced. Our leaders have to decide which is more important, your health or the economy. I suggest that empathy for each person’s wellness would strengthen the economy to a much greater extent than creating and maintaining jobs in the healthcare sector only. It would certainly give more trust in our leadership. – Pandemic Survivor

“Think, and then plot the data.” Elis R. Ott

Further Reading: Process Quality Control: Troubleshooting and Interpretation of Data, Fourth Edition Ott, Schilling, Neubauer 2005 http://asq.org/quality-press/display-item/?item=H1222 or Amazon
The Analysis of Means: A Graphical Method for Comparing Means, Rates, and Proportions, Nelson, Wludyka, Copeland; 2005 Amazon

Many Diseases, One Cause, One Cure –The Sun

Posted on by
Reply

“Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake.
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.”
Macbeth, Shakespeare

Does this sound like your typical medical researcher toiling away at work in the laboratory? It may as well be as far as the average person is concerned. When scientists start talking about chemical and biological mechanisms or how a particular drug affects disease, I am sure this is what it sounds like. This is really unfair to the researchers for it is the spin of medical marketing that cause our heads to ‘explode’ with too much misunderstood information. Hypocrisy and deception was of course the major theme in Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth.

It is fact that the medical establishment wishes you to view holistic medicine in this manner, a witch’s brew. How many news articles have you seen in the popular press since this past December have been placed simply to discredit the use of vitamin and mineral supplements? In particular vitamin D; it is the steroid/vitamin that results from our exposure to the sun. This is the thing that is the most alarming to the medical profession. That one source can heal, treat, cure, prevent, and diagnose a disease without it being called a drug that can be exploited economically.

And just how far has the medical establishment taken the bashing of supplements and food to treat disease? They have gone as far as passing a law that says nothing but drugs can be used for purposes of healing, treating, curing, and preventing disease. I find this extremely amazing as this one law totally ties the hands of doctors in their toolbox of treatment. It was however agreed to because the other option was to allow the FDA to treat everything as a drug. This would take away our freedom of access. Dr. X, would you please write me a script for turnip greens…..

Let’s take the sun as the one thing that is responsible for many diseases if it is taken away. Without the sun, the water cycle and clean fresh air would not exist. There would be no food sources as photosynthesis would end. You would only have fungi to stay alive. If you completely took it away and everything that it gives us, you would be dead in a very short period of time. So let’s take away some degree of the sun and see what happens. You get a host of chronic disease that is used by the medical establishment and government to support a large economic sector.

This is exactly what happened in the 1960’s as a prominent pediatrician, Dr. Cook, friend of the Kennedy’s, made the public declaration that vitamin D would cause birth defects. People were scared out of the sun, especially pregnant women. The use of cod liver oil as a supplement was held in an extremely negative view by medicine. Where was the science in this art? Then there was the large campaign by the medical professionals to keep us out of the sun because we might get skin cancer. RUN, IN FEAR of cancer! Of course, there is now an extremely close correlation between the use of sunscreen and the incident of melanoma. Also, other cancers have either staid the same as far as mortality or increased even with all of our efforts in the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on cancer research. There are now at least a hundred diseases that can be traced to the lack of vitamin D or our connection to the sun. Dr. X, would please write me a script for the sun………

Do you have someone in your family or a friend that makes their income from the medical/medical insurance industry? An entrenched “protection racket” used for apparent safety that under any other circumstance would be aggressively prosecuted. “Double, double toil and trouble, Fire burns, cauldron bubbles.” – Pandemic Survivor

One Disease, One Cause, One Cure

Posted on by
Reply

“Double, double toil and trouble,
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.” – Macbeth, Shakespeare

As I have read about diseases and medical cures, I have been fascinated by the approach to problem solving. I know that these are words you don’t normally hear in medical practice – ‘problem solving.’ It is typically about the disease, the cause, and the cure. It is also amazing to me to read research papers that will end with the statement about more needed research. I always ask the question; more research about what? Biological mechanisms for creating a new drug or the multiple factors that are the cause and cure of a disease?

Typically medicine has tried to identify a specific cause of malady with a specific cure. This makes it nice and neat for both patient and doctor. However, I do now believe after reading for several decades that there is no disease that has a single factor as a cause. The only exception to this is acute disease like infections or a broken leg. If the disease is chronic in nature or occurs over time, then multiple factors always come into play. Could it be possible that an acute disease has multiple factors? I do believe this the case with the common cold and other mild infections and perhaps that broken leg as well. This may also extend to significant infections where ninety percent of the victims die like the Ebola virus. The reason that I can say this is that ten percent of the infected lived, which means that other factors have come into play other than the Ebola virus. Has anyone really asked what these factors are? Could it just be that the survivors have better nutrition with stronger immune systems? What are the nutrients that have contributed to the better immune systems?

The claim in the last hundred years is that medicine has transformed into a science instead of an art. This is a flat out fabrication. Science has come into play in a limited fashion. Science has not been applied to medicine the way it has to say manufacturing or space travel. In both of these endeavors, all factors of significant importance are always considered. Unlike medicine, there are no laws preventing problem solving of significant factors. In medicine, the most significant factors of nutrition cannot be used to treat, cure, diagnose, or prevent a disease. I find this most fascinating in the limiting or hand tying of our doctors and researchers. Of course there are some limitations of factors in manufacturing like environmental laws to protect future generations. What is being protected in medicine by limiting significant nutritional factors? I was startled at California’s attempt to make it a felony for a doctor to use nutrition to treat a disease. I guess the answer is to follow the money without empathy for the ill and dying.

Also medicine has not used all of the tools that are available to them. A great example of this is the statistical methods that are used for problem solving or troubleshooting an illness. Techniques of identifying multiple factor statistical probabilistic predications were developed for the military in the 1950’s. The techniques were them applied to manufacturing in the 1960’s. The techniques then matured in the 1970’s and 80’s. For example, are there control charts in hospitals tracking cases of MRSA to be sure that prevention methods have remained stable in hospital operations?

If it is not one disease, one cause, and one cure it seems that the solutions are too difficult to communicated to all of the decision makers. Decision makers in medicine are you the patient, the doctor, the institutional managers, the medical education community, the medical research community, the insurance institutions, and government institutions. This much complexity, prevents the swift solutions for common causes and special causes or assignable causes of illness. I am sure that W. Edward Deming and Walter A. Shewart are ‘rolling in the grave.’ The last couple of decades have seen the development of chaos theory. How long before this new science is applied to medicine with its repetitive predicative perception of nature? Or, will chaos as an artistic pursuit in medical decision making continue? – Pandemic Survivor

War on Cancer to End? A Promising Cure for Cancer!

Posted on by
Reply

There is some exciting news happening in the world of cancer research.  The possibility exist that a cure will be implemented in clinical practice within the next two to three years.  Chemo therapy and radiation will go down the road of bleeding in the nineteenth century.  This exciting new treatment works by blocking the antibody that tumors put out to prevent the body’s natural immune system from destroying the tumor. This treatment process is called anti-CD47.  Clinical trials are to begin at Stanford within the next several months.  Here is a short You Tube video of how this treatment works. 

Of course, to make this exciting treatment work, the immune system must be working at an optimum level.  In the past, with chemo therapy and radiation treatments, the immune system gets depressed.  The other part of this equation, to boost the immune system, is being researched by Sloan Kettering.

As you can see, these types of treatments do not include the natural boosting of the immune system.  Long in the history of the war on cancer are natural substances that boost the immune system without any danger to the health of the person being treated.  These include, vitamin D3, vitamin C, vitamin A – not beta carotene, magnesium for cellular energy, zinc for T-cell response, and iodine for cellular energy and cellular apoptosis or programed cellular death.  And of course, there is the necessity of eliminating immune system depressing foods with the leader among these – sugar and other carbs that raise the glycemic index.  In recent news –“Promising cancer therapy treatment: Vitamin C” LA Times

Since the separation of allopathic medicine and holistic medicine at the beginning of the twentieth century, these natural treatments have been suppressed.  This article, Natural Cancer Treatment, from Dr. Mercola will give you a summary of this issue including over an hour documentary video of the various suppressed treatments. 

It will be interesting to observe the actions of Health and Human Services and its various organizations on the course of clinical trials and how this opportunity plays out.  It is an opportunity for allopathic medicine and holistic medicine to come together for healing the population of this dread disease.  What is in opposition of the cure for cancer?  It is the medical economy as the largest sector and the loss of jobs that may result.  Will our government decide that the economy is more important than the health of the nation and the benefits from a healthy nation?  Only time will tell.  Health and Human Services will have to decide if the economy is more important than your health.  Will it put an end to “Markets before Mandates” at a higher level in priority than to “Value Life?”  HHS PRINCIPILES. 

President Obama – it is now time for you to act to assure that your agencies do not block these protocols that include natural substances and you will have a long lasting positive legacy.  All I can do is pray for an end to the suffering – Pandemic Survivor.

Health is an ONOFF Issue

Posted on by
Reply

At one point in my career, I had responsibility for many engineers, forty mechanics, and associated support staff in a large industrial plant.  When a major maintenance issue would arrive and there was difficulty in trying to find a solution, I would try to release the tension by saying it was an ONOFF problem.  Of course I would spell out the letters very quickly.  There would be moments of silence as the mechanic raced through his mind trying figure out which control or mechanical part I was referring.  Then a slow smile would cross the face as the knowing became realization.  Every situation with equipment is whether the equipment or some component is on or off – ONOFF – especially true with computers.  This is the case with human biology as medicine turns to gene switches for disease cures.  This has become commonly referred to as epigenetic.

Foods that are available for consumption routinely turn off and on genetic switches.  This is because there are many “parallel” systems in the body for the major biological processes to occur depending on what the environment presents.  This type of robustness in our physiology has allowed us to survive in many different environmental conditions.  Stress, temperature, food, and even how you think, all act to turn on and off our genes.  Modern science is now using this understanding to make drugs to cure disease.  Unfortunately, the focus has been on drugs and not on optimizing nutrients for gene switching to prevent disease.  I guess the old saying, ‘you are what you eat,’ has now been given more significance.

Just in the last decade, the gene map was completed.  It was much smaller than originally thought with less than about 30,000 genes for the human body.  Interestingly enough the rest of the genetic material, about eighty percent, are switches that are use to either express the gene or make it go silent.  The largest question for health professionals at this point should be; what turns the switches on or off?

Methyl groups seem to be the primary players in this epigenetic switching maze.  How simple that a carbon atom and three hydrogen atoms grouped together can determine your health and well being.  Of course many methyl groups combined with other compounds is an organic molecule.  What controls the use and availability of the methyl groups is another matter.  We have long known that certain materials are essential to health.  These items have been reduced to the following: water, air, proteins, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals.

First it was the major groups of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates we considered for health.  Think of the 1910 Antarctic expedition by Captain Scott where the food was too low in fat.  The members of the group started to get sick and starved to death because they did not have fat to consume.  The Inuit people know that whale blubber and seal fat are the staples of life in the cold for its energy and nutrients.  The recent emphasis on fats (omega-3 good, trans-fat bad) is critical to health.  I suspect we have made the similar errors in protein and carbohydrates (too many carbs –especially wheat, not enough protein) that are yet to be discovered.  Then throw in genetically modified foods – ouch!

We are now in the trial and error stage of understanding where to use micronutrients versus the use of drugs to heal disease.  The money of course is in the drugs and this is where the focus will continue to be for our large research organizations.  However, all government research funded projects for genetic switching should solve the problem of optimum nutrition (GMO foods, nutrient switching) before any money is spent on drugs for healing, curing, diagnosing, and preventing disease.  After all, it is our money.  Sustaining large organizations without empathy for the individuals it serves is just plain evil.  If the money is first spent on researching micronutrients for epigenetic healing, the need for research of drugs will be significantly diminished because of less disease.  Of course we are where we are; a nation ailing with large amounts of chronic disease.  How ironic that our economy is suffering from so much chronic disease when the major motto of Health and Human Services is ‘markets before mandates’ with the belief of a strong medical economy is more important that the health of the individual.

We know that the sun through the production of vitamin D3 is very significant.  Close to ten percent of the genome is controlled by vitamin D and its co-factors.  I don’t know how large the percentage of the genes is controlled by methyl groups, but I am sure that it is significant and most likely larger than the group for vitamin D.  Since all organic molecules are a combination of methyl groups, then all genes have some switches controlled by methyl groups in combination with cofactors (I never was much for logic, I am more of a links and connections kind of guy).  The complete control of genetic switching is made by all the proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, minerals, environment (light, temperature, air, and water), and yes your state of mind.  Could it be that methyl folate from spinach and betaine from beets is all we need for the methyl donors for health?  Life in all its complexities is really just a matter of ONOFF.

Don’t worry, be happy, eat your beets and spinach, and spend lots of time in the sun.  – Pandemic Survivor

All Chronic Disease is from Poor Nutrition

Posted on by
Reply

I was given several tape cassettes on this subject some years ago by a friend.  The fact that it was a cassette should tell you that it was in the eighties.  I listened to the speaker as I drove to displace the boredom.  He was all about the fact that all chronic disease was created by poor nutrition.  At the time I thought that he was just trying to sell supplements and he was. Now after several decades of dealing with the philosophy of medicine, it has become apparent that our medical industry is more interested in selling their product than they are with your healing.  Supplement seller or medical industry – who has your wellness in mind?

Last week my work took me into seven pharmaceutical plants.  Some of the plants made prescription meds, some made over the counter meds, and others made supplements.  The purpose of meds versus supplements was stark when considering chronic disease.  I have no problem with the meds made to heal infections, pain, or other quick onset diseases.  However, when treating chronic disease, supplements are far superior for resolving the illness.

One of the most disquieting statistics that I have come across in my research is the number of prescription meds used by people on Medicare and Medicaid.  People over sixty-five on the government plans average over seventeen prescription meds.  The thought of the side effects that are generated is frightening.  Several of the meds are to treat symptoms of chronic disease, but the rest of the meds are to treat the side effects caused by the meds.

The use of supplements to make up for poor nutritional value in our food is a necessity.  Processed and genetically modified foods are most of what we consume.  With the new approach to creating large agricultural yields and drugs that are genetic switches, I suspect we don’t have a clue to what we are doing to our health.  But, you say that our life expectancy has increased and that is true.

It is my belief that the thought of making money instead of wellness, otherwise known as having a strong medical economy by our government, has moved from snake oil salesmen into the medical industry.  Science is available to show proper nutrition is far superior to using drugs for treating chronic disease.  However, no one is willing to pay for the studies that are necessary to overcome the laws created to sustain the FDA and other agencies of Health and Human Services.  This is the responsibility of HHS, but that does not get politicians elected.

If you are suffering from chronic disease, it is time for you to do your own research.  There are a few excellent practitioners out there with your wellness in mind and know how to treat, cure, heal, and diagnose disease by being sure that you are getting proper nutrition.  How do you determine if that person has your wellness in mind?   – Pandemic Survivor

Disability – A System Issue

Posted on by
1

There are multiple things in our present society that are causing a rise in disability rates.  In a recent article for NPR “Unfit for Work: The Starling Rise of Disability in America” Chana Joffe-Walt writes: “The federal government spends more money each year on cash payments for disabled former workers than it spends on food stamps and welfare combined.”   Where have we gone wrong?

Personal Responsibility

Our leaders have failed us as it has happened in the past history of the US.  When settlers first came over on the Mayflower, it was thought that everyone should share equally whatever the community provided.  This system failed miserably because of human nature.  That is if someone is willing to give you something and you don’t have to work; you take it.  Work is the thing that gives added value and increase.  The leaders saw what the issues were and changed it so that everyone was on their own.  If you didn’t work you didn’t eat.  At some point, hopefully not too late, our current leaders will see the error of their ways and change.  There is no something for nothing.

Food Causing Illness

There has been a false science permeating the US solely for the purpose of creating markets.   This has been particularly dangerous in the food industry.   Under the guise of generating large yields to stave off world hunger, our grains and other foods have been genetically modified.  This would not be an issue if the foods had been properly tested for health consequences.  Since the early 1980’s, I have not been able to eat wheat without getting indigestion.  Also, my joints ache; I lose focus, and in general feel miserable.  The wheat you eat today is not your grandfather’s wheat.  Dr. William Davis in his book, “Wheat Belly” believes that the change in wheat is the cause of the obesity problem in the US and many other types of disease.

We can consider the five major things that have created problems in the food industry and it always seems to be about creating markets instead of the best benefit of mankind.  GMO (genetically modified organism) wheat, GMO corn, processed and GMO soy, concentrated juices and the consumption of two much sugar, and trans-fat as in margarine have all lead to serious generalized pain and illness.  Avoid these things and you will not believe how much better you will feel.  You may even feel like you want to go back to work.

Corn seems to be another issue that will ultimately cause severe damage to the population.  In a recent study released from Australia, hogs that were feed GMO corn had severely inflamed guts.  Also rat studies have shown huge tumors being formed in GMO fed animals. I have a friend that lives in central Piedmont North Carolina.  He has always raised corn for both animal feed and for his own food supply.  He remarked to me recently that years ago he had to constantly scare the crows away from his sweet corn.  Now with GMO corn, the crows will not even bother to eat it.  If the crows want eat it why should we?  After all the EPA has given corn a number as a registered pesticide. This has been a major help in the shelf life of the corn by inserting a gene that creates a pesticide, but the next morning you are having that bowl of corn flakes, think pesticide.

Nutrients

And then there are nutrients: Vitamin D, Iodine, magnesium, and sulfate are recent deficiencies that have been made worse in the last fifty years.  Over seventy percent of healthcare spending is for chronic disease.  I believe science has been manipulated for the purpose of having a large population with chronic disease to support a large health economy.  After all, when your Secretary of Health and Human Services writes the nine principles of government intervention into healthcare with four being “markets before mandates” and number nine “to value life”, then what would you expect.

So Many Wrongs – Where to Start

After two failed back surgeries, severe sleep apnea, and many years of chronic severe pain, my doctor offered to write a letter for disability.  He suggested seventy percent disability because of my apparent mental and physical impairment.  However, I was reared to understand that we are responsible for our own provisions.  I did not have my legs shot off in the war or was born with severe disability.  My problems have been because of a government system of creating markets over the health of the population.  We have simply become nothing more than cows for the profits of the medical insurance industry.  Regardless of recent commercials that have been run by that industry saying they are not the bad guys, I ask you this – would you buy insurance so that you could have regular oil changes.  This is exactly what you are doing when you pay an insurance company for preventative care.

Start by repelling the affordable healthcare act.  We passed it to see what was in it.  IT is now time to send it away.  Take away the monopoly of the insurance companies by state and make your insurance national.  Allow all health insurance companies to compete in all markets. Take away groups and force insurance companies to put everyone in the same group with the exception of a high risk group like car insurance.  Health insurance for preventative care should not be allowed or at least closely controlled.

Restructure the Health and Human Service agencies so that there is real science and not science pointed to a healthy economy, but pointed toward health of individuals.

Allow doctors to practice their art and not be simply technicians that do the biding of HHS and large pharmaceutical companies.  Remove all forms of pharmaceutical advertizing and leave that to the professionals.

Clean up our food sources.  Train the population in nutrition.

That should about do it.  Have a good day!  – Pandemic Survivor

“Excess Vitamin D Linked to Retardation” – November 25, 1964

Posted on by
Reply

What started the scare of vitamin D supplementation?  It was a fear campaign that was started by doctors from worry of vitamin D causing mental retardation.  It was just bad science, and worse, it was extremely bad medicine.  Dr. Robert E. Cooke, Pediatrician from John Hopkins, seems to have been at the lead of making the announcement public.  This bit of bad news may be solely responsible for the suffering and deaths of millions of people from 1964 until the present day.  Consider this summary paragraph at the end of the article in the Spokane Daily Chronicle: “In addition to mental retardation, Dr. Cooke said, an excess of vitamin D apparently causes narrowings of major vessels of the body, kidney ailments, heart murmurs, and high blood pressure.”  This last sentence makes me think that the good doctor knew better.   This sounds like someone just throwing out fear statements with an agenda.  Of course, modern research has shown just the opposite of everything that was stated except you may get heart arrhythmias if you are not getting enough magnesium.

I am sure that the thalidomide scare of birth defects also drove the misinformation of Dr. Cooke about vitamin D.  Huge numbers of mothers had been misinformed about thalidomide.  There were many cases of birth defects and lots of pictures in the press of malformed babies.  No one wants malformed babies!  The drug was used as a sedative for anxiety and morning sickness – ouch.  There were over 10,000 cases of malformed babies around the world.  Pictures of babies with missing limbs were horrific.

This was the end of the use of cod liver oil, CLO, as a supplement on a scale of any size.  I was thirteen at the time and was a happy guy because I did not like the taste of the cod liver oil.  I remember well my mother remarking that it was odd that she had been told all those years that the CLO was good for you and now the medical profession was telling us to stop.  Sound familiar?  It is no wonder the public does not know who to trust when we have been told lies for over fifty years for profit in the name of not harming the population.  If you don’t believe this is still going on, consider the three billion dollar fine that GSK just agreed to pay for misrepresenting drugs.  Of course in those days, there was more trust of the medical profession than today.  The public has become weary.

The question becomes, how close was Dr. Cooke tied to politics?  He was friends of Eunice and Sargent Shriver.  Mrs. Shriver is the sister of President John F. Kennedy. I am sure there was some good that came from this relationship.  The Kennedy institute that was formed for children with developmental problems.   And then there was the Wisconsin connection as he married a colleague from there.   The University of Wisconsin is ground zero for the science of vitamin D and analog development.  There has even been admission by UW researchers that beneficial vitamin D science was withheld to prevent the competition from beating them to drug development.

I am not saying there was anything out of the ordinary in these relationships, but it seems odd to me.  I am sure the press put extra emphasis on his announcement because of his relationship with the Kennedy’s.  With one statement, Dr. Cooke changed the face of medicine.  And now, it will take decades to correct.  Dr. Cooke is enjoying his retirement in the sun in Florida – odd.  I hope his grandchildren don’t spend too much time in the sun, we wouldn’t want them to get all those illnesses he described.

To keep alive a Coppertone slogan from that time – ‘Don’t be a Paleface’.   – Pandemic Survivor

All Governments Should Promote Vitamin D3 Supplementation

Posted on by
Reply

The best and most effective way to immediately reduce the cost of healthcare, have a more effective medical system because of less chronic disease, a healthier population where wellness will increase productivity, and a better economy is to promote the supplementation of vitamin D3 and sun exposure without sunburn.  All citizens could be given free vitamin D3.  This program would be by choice of the individual so as to not force government on the people.

This would be very effective for all countries of the world except for the US.  For countries with single payer medical insurance or government medical insurance for the entire population, this would be particularly beneficial for cost reduction in healthcare.  Also, it would solve a lot of problems with doctor shortage because physicians would be freed up from treating as much chronic disease.

Mary Meeker, in her report to promote general discourse on economic conditions in the US, USA, Inc. (image below is plate 315 from the slides– for full report visit KPCB where Mary works: http://www.kpcb.com/insights/usa-inc-full-report ), had very interesting suggestions in how to bring a dying US economy back to life.  This report suggests treating the US as a company and handle revitalization in a similar manner as a corporate rescue.  She suggested that the largest drain on the economy of the US is entitlements, in particular Medicare and Medicaid.

And then there is this graph that is most startling from her discussion of healthcare cost in the US:

The thing that is blatantly obvious about this graph is that we are not getting the benefit from our healthcare dollar as the rest of the world.  Why is this?  There is approximately $4000 per capita that goes as the cost of medical insurance (!?) every year and not medical treatment.  We truly have given up freedom for security.  The medical industry has become this bloated by extremely poor government policy that allows insurance companies to profit without providing wealth creation to the population.  If the US was being treated as a company, the CEO and board of directors would be replaced by the stock holders (or citizens should vote to replace all of our present leaders – congressmen and president).  I believe the Affordable Health Care Act was designed intentionally to fail in an effort to force all medical insurance under government control, but not necessarily to correct this blotted system.  It certainly has driven the cost of healthcare higher.  Just imagine what we could do with national debt if we used 1.2 trillion dollars ($4000 x 300 million people) each year as an investment in things that would create wealth (insurance does  not create wealth – just imagine if you were paying a third party to pay for your oil changes – why you do this with preventative healthcare?).

To President Barack Obama and the Congress:  If you want to solve the healthcare dilemma, then, create a healthy population by being sure we have enough proper nutrition to prevent disease and allow a long healthy life through your administrative departments.  This includes in particular magnesium, sulfur, iodine, vitamin C, and vitamin D3.  Limit the things that cause disease as most of the rest of the world has already done – ban fluorine in our drinking water, stop the use of bromines in food and citrus drinks, limit the use of genetically modified plants and animals until complete assessment of safety and efficacy can be made, and require labeling on existing genetically modified foods so that we know what we are consuming.  Yes, there would be a struggle as people in the healthcare insurance industry, a non-wealth creator, find new jobs, but poor government policy has already slammed the economy as manufacturing, a wealth creator, has been run out of the country.  If your beliefs are; we have limited resources in the world and population should be controlled, then continue to allow us to die off for the benefit of the elite.  You still have time to act even if the ‘stock holders’ kick you out of office in January.    – Pandemic Survivor