Tag Archives: longevity

Pain, Pain Meds, and Disability

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Americans are dying from pain meds and suffering more pain because of pain meds.  We not just talking about illegal drugs like: heroin, methamphetamines, cocaine, marijuana, etc. We can add to that prescription pain meds, in particular, the opiate meds.  We can also add to that over-the-counter pain meds, NSAIDS.  Why are we using so many pain meds?  It is because of the pain created by the food we eat, the lack of nutrition, and the choices we have made in medicine.  This leads to an extremely high incidence of chronic illness and thus, PAIN.

pain

Around the beginning of the 20th Century, money was funded away from nutritional medicine and toward patent medicine.  This created a population of chronically ill.  To resolve the pain of chronic illness, the population has turned to pain meds to treat symptoms and not the actual disease.  This has created many types of social problems as well as created an economic nightmare for healthcare.  Dr. Mercola Article on how this happened.

A lot of the pain comes from deteriorated cartilage.  But the meds that are used to treat pain, prevent the repair of cartilage.  Baby boomers have taken large amounts of NSAIDS that have caused deterioration of cartilage, and the need for joint and back surgeries.

“In human studies, NSAIDs have been shown to accelerate the radiographic progression of OA of the knee and hip. For those using NSAIDs compared to the patients who do not use them, joint replacements occur earlier and more quickly and frequently. The author notes that massive NSAID use in osteoarthritic patients since their introduction over the past forty years is one of the main causes of the rapid rise in the need for hip and knee replacements, both now and in the future.” – See more at Journal of Prolotherapy.

This of course is to say nothing of the number of deaths, kidney failures, heart failures, bleeding of the stomach and gut, and liver failures from over-the-counter meds.  All caused by taken more and more meds to prevent pain.  We have the greatest medical system in the world when it comes to treating acute illness.  But with chronic pain, we fail miserably.  Add to this the use of prescription meds and illegal meds and the social and economic issues continue.  I feel your pain and experienced pain for three decades before researching to find that it was just nutritional issues.

When it comes to nutrition, it seems that we are left to our own resources to find cures.  Without the use of the internet and the many professionals that reported on the issues, I would most likely be dead.  I am only one out of ten Americans over sixty that is not on a prescription med.  Begin your research into nutritional healing.  The most of it has to do with not getting enough vitamins and minerals.

This issue cannot be resolved simply by eliminating the use of pain meds with more guidelines for doctors.  The only way that we as a society can overcome this issue is for our institutions to reach a higher level of moral standards.  By that, I mean institutions should adopt standards (yes, specifically Health and Human Services) and educate the population on the research that has already been done to relieve chronic illness and pain with nutrition.  It is not our genome that is at fault.  It is the nutritionally and emotionally stimulated epigenome that needs repair.

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Startling Findings

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William Faloon of Life Extension Magazine presents their latest findings on serum testing with vitamin D.  What he finds is that the general recommendations for supplementation is two low based on testing of their members.  This article is a must read from January LEF Magazine:

“Startling Findings About Vitamin D Levels in Life Extension Members”

Why Suffer Vitamin D Deficiency?

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During a recent interview Dr. John Cannell of the Vitamin D Council kept making the same point over and over.  Here is the approximately one hour audio interview on vitamin D in health and disease.  You may also find the link to this interview on the home page of the Vitamin D Council.

The point:  Why suffer vitamin D deficiency in particular if you have any form of disease when it is perfectly safe to have the serum level of a sunny country?

Now the serum level for vitamin D in a sunny country is 54 ng/ml to 90 ng/ml per Grant and Holick.  To achieve this level takes a different amount of sun exposure and supplementation for everyone as each person’s rate of use of vitamin D is different.  There is no need to wait for some study to come out and say with certainty that vitamin D will treat or prevent this disease or that disease when it is safe at an extremely beneficial level.

Scientist will take many years to make treatment studies show the benefits of vitamin D for a multiple of reasons.  No one wants to fund the studies when there is no profit to be made and government funding for treatment studies can be extremely slow.  However, through anecdotal experiences that are communicated this paradigm shift can move very quickly.

Do not die vitamin D deficient! – Pandemic Survivor

Seizures and Electrolytes

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From the Epilepsy Foundation we find that a seizure is: “A seizure is a massive disruption of electrical communication between neurons in the brain—.“  You can find this at their web site and this page defines a seizure and a seizure threshold.

As someone that is not trained in biology or medicine it seems that a seizure occurs when the ‘break-over voltage’ exceeds the resistance of the circuit.  This is how a semiconductor works as well which starts conduction when the ‘saturation voltage’ is reached.  So let’s think about how signals travel down neural pathways.  It would seem that they travel through a series of gates that control the ‘saturation’ levels of sodium and potassium along the pathway.  The ‘action potential’ varies along the axon causing the sodium gates to open and allow sodium into the axon and then the potassium gate opens and allows potassium to rush out so that through this mechanism the ‘signal’ travels along the axon.  When the signal reaches the synapse then neural transmitters are released to carry the signal to the next neuron through its dendrites.

The cell and axon returns to a stable voltage ‘without’ transmitting when the sodium potassium pumps through its action causes the sodium to be forced outside the axon and potassium to be brought into the axon thus reversing the signal or action potential.  The cell body is somewhat more complicated but know that calcium gates are somewhat controlled by the concentration of magnesium.

It is interesting that the article immediately goes to neural transmitters like GABA and ACH and how too much of these will cause the cells to be over stimulated and continue to fire.  This is somewhat different in how engineers would look at a semiconductor and what causes it to fire.  Yes we look at the voltage of the base to control whether the semiconductor is on or off.  However, we control what voltage causes the semiconductor to turn on/off by the amount of ‘doping’ or mineral/metal that is placed in the semiconductor during manufacture.  The equivalent of this in the body of the cell and the axon is how the gates of the cell are working to allow conductive ions in and out and if there is adequate amounts of these electrolytes available.

Ions that are associated with this conduction are calcium, magnesium, sodium, and potassium.  So it would just seem that a proper diet is extremely critical for a stable environment of electrical conduction in the cell.  That is you need to eat and absorb enough of these minerals so that proper electrical potentials are maintain.

Before you consider changing your diet and taking supplements be sure that you consult with your physician to get him to approve your changes.  If he is resistant please suggest that he read the articles that I am suggesting for you.

Also as vitamin D is extremely important to maintain a healthy endocrine system, proper levels of this vital nutrient should be maintained.  The newer understanding is each cell makes its own steroid form of vitamin D from the storage form of vitamin D.  The cell does not have to get it through the serum level of the steroid as converted in the kidneys.  So does vitamin D affect the threshold levels for seizures?  Here is a study that was done in 1974 that says that there is an association:  “Anticonvulsant Action” of Vitamin D in Epileptic Patients? A Controlled Pilot Study  – 1974 Claus Christiansen, Paul Rødbro, and Ole Sjö

Also Dr. John Cannell talks extensively about seizures that are associated with autism and how that autism may be a result of vitamin D deficiency: “Vitamin D Deficiency’s Role in Autism”

Also Dr. Cannell has located many research articles that can be linked from PubMed through his research page on epilepsy.

ADP/ATP or your energy cycle in the mitochondrial bodies is important as this is where the energy for the sodium/potassium pump comes from.  Magnesium/calcium balance in the mitochondria is extremely critical in proper operation of this ‘energy engine’.  Some researchers claim that as much as 30 percent of the energy that is processed through these engines is used to maintain this balance.  It should also be noted that ADP and ATP are ions and the cation that this reaction works best with is magnesium.

We typically get enough calcium from our diets but whether we properly absorb the calcium is dependent on whether we are replete in vitamin D.  Magnesium however is another story.  I particularly like Krispin’s page on magnesium on how much is enough.  She is a life long nutritionist puts together a very clear way to get to proper magnesium levels.  Krispin’s webpage on magnesium.

Vitamin D levels that are replete tend to cause magnesium to be reduced in your body.  It typically takes about three months or longer for magnesium levels in the cells to reach a healthy value.  There are many research papers that you may access at www.mgwater.com.

Potassium is also not properly understood as you can see that we need a minimum of 4.7 grams per day from this report from the Institute of Medicine from February, 2004.  This article also tells you the proper  balance of sodium and chloride.  “Dietary Reference Intakes: Water, Potassium, Sodium, Chloride, and Sulfate”

Krispin does a great job on how to determine how much potassium we should get in a day based on weight and what foods to get if from.  Krispin’s webpage on magnesium.

If you get a chance you may want to read her page on forgiveness:  this is great piece of work in how we our bodies relate to our environment and memory.

Iodine properly works for energy balance as well and I would suggest these two articles on iodine:

Donald W. Miller, Jr. MD  “Iodine for Health”

This recent article by Dr William Davis of the Heart Scan Blog written for life extension magazine:  “Halt on Salt Sparks Iodine Deficiency”

I know this is a lot but taking only neurotransmitter stabilizers without being sure that you have proper minerals for electrical balance is just a road toward bad health.  Remember the health of the brain activity is related to neural transmitter balance and electrolyte balance.  This is true of the heart as well as a majority of the cells in the heart are neural cells.

Remember that electrolytes are really inexpensive and cannot be prescribed so that is not much of a profit motive to actively treat using proper diet to achieve mineral balance.  Yet minerals may be more critical than neurotransmitters.  I have always suspected this was the case in depression.  Not enough potassium and magnesium to drive the signaling pathways.

EAT YOUR BUCKET OF DIRT!  Just kidding   – Pandemic Survivor

H1N1 and Vitamin D

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H1N1 and Vitamin D

It seems to be medical fact that we get more cases of the flu in the winter than in the summer.  I have never had the flu in the summer or personally know anyone that has had the flu in the summer.  However, everyone that I know has had the flu in the winter.  It only seems logical that there is a seasonal occurrence that is driving this real phenomenon.

Dr. John Cannell of the Vitamin D Council has designated a complete newsletter to the understanding back May, 2009, H1N1 Flu and Vitamin D.  I referred to this newsletter in my first article on the flu and vitamin D, Another Pandemic, H1N1, Protect Yourself. Now Dr. Cannell gives us an update about children in his September 2009 Newsletter and how it is that children that are deficient with vitamin D are most likely at risk of getting the flu.  Vitamin D Studies of Interest

I am totally with Dr.  Cannell.  How can we simply just stand by and watch children suffer from this disease when we know that more than fifty to seventy percent of children are deficient depending  on which study you chose to read.  If you have children, be sure to keep them replete in vitamin D by following Dr. Cannell directions in this October 2008 newsletter Vitamin D in Pediatrics. Under vitamin D and dosage he states that in general that children need about 1000 IU of D3 for every 25 lbs of body weight per day.  I found this amount to be effective in adults as well.  I weigh 235 lbs and take 10,000 IU each day that I do not go into the sun and every day between the end of September and the end of March when we are in ‘vitamin D winter’.

So what are our country and the health organizations doing about this vitamin D deficiency and the relation to the flu?  Not much!  There is hope however as the Public Health Agency of Canada has decided to take the vitamin D level of people having the H1N1 virus.  This is really encouraging as Canada takes its lead for supplementations levels from the Institute of Medicine, IOM, here in the US.  If Canada confirms this finding that low levels of vitamin D are significant in relation to the flu then maybe the US will take action.  But here again, I am with Dr. Cannell, how many children have to die before we stop depending on just acquired immunity through flu shots and build our innate immunity through doing what is natural to us.  We must remember that the US is slow to act as the Canadian Cancer Institute requested all Canadians take a minimum of 1000 IU of D3 per day and the US did not follow.

You may read the story on the website of the Vitamin D Society of Canada:  http://www.vitamindsociety.org/

Story from the Globe and Mail.  http://www.vitamindsociety.org/news_article.php?id=26

The story broke here in the US by Nutraingrediants-usa.com and emaxhealth.com:  http://www.nutraingredients-usa.com/Research/Canada-examines-vitamin-D-for-swine-flu-protection

http://www.emaxhealth.com/1275/83/33165/vitamin-d-might-protect-against-h1n1-flu.html

And then there is this article in how the US should follow Canada’s lead from the Health Sciences Institute in Baltimore:  http://hsibaltimore.com/2009/08/24/h1n1-prevention/

You know the thing that is most interesting is one of the references that is driving the Canadian study is a report from 1946 that shows evidence that persons with low vitamin D levels were more likely to have the flu.  Why have we waited so long to investigate!!??

On the heels of this comes the study from Oregon State University that states that primates have kept the vitamin D innate immunity system in place for 60 million years!  Here is the story, “Key feature of immune system survived in humans, other primates for 60 million years”, from Eurek Alert.  http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-08/osu-kfo081809.php

Now what pops into my mind as I read this is Linus Pauling’s writings on vitamin C.  It was very clear that only primates and guinea pigs do not make their own vitamin C.  So why is it that the vitamin D immune system has survived in primates and not other mammals?  Maybe this is the system that has taken the place of the vitamin C system in primates.  So what do we do about it?  We tell people for the last fifty years to get out of the sun!!!!  I know that this may be somewhat of a leap, but I do not think it is much of one considering the research on vitamin D immunity.

You should read again this paragraph about vitamin D immunity from my post, A Tale of Two Women:  “Vitamin D3, it seems works, along several pathways to help heal disease.  Number one it helps at a genetic level to tell immature tumor cells that they are just that and to stop growing or cellular apoptosis. The D3 also helps the blood supply network that is feeding the tumor to stop growing from a genetic level because this is not the normal design of the body or angiogenesis.  Also it raises the level of innate immunity so the body develops appropriate defensins such as cathelicidin antimicrobial peptides, phagocytes, and neutrofil granulocites that help destroy and adsorb ‘bad cells’ and ‘foreign bodies’ in the blood system.  There is also an aid to T-cell regulation in this complex system of immunity.  And if you are taking chemo one of the problems is thrombosis and vitamin D3 helps to control this issue as well.”  What this paragraph says is that vitamin D raises the innate immune system to fight all pathogens including viruses.  This reminds me that I need to do a post on the immune system and vitamin D.  There is really some fascinating research out there – coming soon.

So maybe the true magic in healing comes from a balance of giving the body what it needs.  I believe that Dr. Cannell and Dr. Pauling are both correct and that in primates that vitamin D is a greater fighter of viruses than vitamin C.  This may be just the opposite for non-primate mammals where vitamin C immune system is more important than the vitamin D system. Non-primates make their own vitamin C and primates and guinea pigs do not make vitamin C.  This article from WebMD seems to support my understanding:  http://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/news/20090223/low-vitamin-d-levels-linked-to-colds You know Dr. Pauling was reported to have taken between 12 grams to 20 grams of vitamin C per day.  His contention was that the less colds and other infections that you have the longer you live.  He lived to be 93.  Imagine how long he may have lived if he had taken 5 to 10 thousand IU’s of D3 as well.  What a headache that we may cause for government to solve in a population of healthy ‘really’ old people!!!  I am sure that as soon as the government makes a proclamation to take more vitamin D that the retirement age will be raised at least 10 years.

Anyway, what should we do for ourselves and our children.  Be sure that they get enough of vitamin C and vitamin D this winter and I suspect if you do this we will have many happy endings.

Go into the sun this winter through supplementation!!!!!!!!!!!   Pandemic Survivor

Thinking about Cholesterol

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Let’s just stop for a while and do some critical thinking about cholesterol.  I am not bound by having a medical degree or much education in the biological sciences.   This frees me from boundaries that are typically imposed when trying to come up with a new theory or hypothesis.  There are just about always these preconceived notions about how a process works that stops researchers from considering other pathways or avenues or even superhighways though they are clearly marked.  Of course this is really good for the keepers of the cash cow.  With that out of the way this makes it possible to allow my imagination to run free without restraint.

Okay so researchers, maybe you should pay attention to what I am about to say because some day it may make you a super star if you pursue my line of thinking.  However, if you work for one of the companies that make statin drugs and start talking about what I am proposing then you better put your things in a box and start looking for a new job.

So what is cholesterol?  It has the word sterol in it so that most likely makes it a fat.  So what do we know about fats?  They are necessary for life because I remember the story about the arctic explorers that had this canned food that was primarily carbohydrates and protein and they started to get sick and bloat.  It was later discovered that you have to have fat to survive.  It has also been discovered that we do not need carbohydrates to survive but this battle still rages on.  We do know that low fat foods that have the fats replaced with sugars or other carbohydrates just make us fatter.   I have proved this over and over by the amount of weight that I gain when I eat low fat foods.  And on top of that, the low fat foods just make me want to eat more.

Now there have been all of these stories about how cholesterol in the blood causes your arteries to clog up with plaque and this stops the blood flow.  When your blood does not flow for more than about five minutes you die and this is not good to a long life.  I have read studies that say that too much cholesterol causes this plaque problem and heart disease.  I have read studies that say there is no correlation between cholesterol and heart disease in more recent literature.  It was suggested that since a high amount of cholesterol would cause heart disease and that since cholesterol is fat that we eat too much fat and this causes us to have heart disease.  This seems so counter intuitive to the understanding about the explorers that did not get enough fat.

We can just put all of that aside and say that cholesterol is a marker and not necessarily a cause and effect for heart disease.  Now what does being a marker mean?  Well it means that a certain thing is an indication that something will happen.  It is like the speed indicator in your car.  If it says that you are going 70 mph that the car is going very fast and all the physical things that you can expect to happen at this speed will happen.  The speed indicator is not the cause of the car moving at this speed.  The indicator only says that the car is going at this speed.

Now, when I had severe back pain and my vertebral disc were failing and I had sleep apnea, I had very high cholesterol readings.  I had one test that indicated that my cholesterol was over 240.  The test also said that my fasting triglycerides were 680 or extremely high.  I also had problems with my heart because I was having pre-ventricular contractions and one time even a sudden fast heart rate.  My heart rate went over 200 bpm and stayed there for over 15 minutes.  I was in so much pain from the pressure on my spinal cord that I just thought that maybe this was it and I would just die and get rid of the pain.  However, my heart slowed down and I was just fine except for the severe continuous ever hurting downright destroying evil pain – pain – pain.

Then I started taking vitamin D3.  My spine healed.  My sleep apnea went away because the nerves for the lungs and throat were free to do what they were supposed to do.  My heart started working just fine.  My energy returned.  My brain healed.  My mind cleared. And guess what else happened.  That’s right on my last blood test, my cholesterol was 175 and my fasting triglycerides were 72.  Now how could this be because since I have been out of pain I eat the worst diet ever.  I am still overweight (BMI 130) even though recently my metabolism seems to be speeding up and I have lost 10 lbs in the last month. I eat now because I can because there is no pain when my gut gets big unlike before when my spine was shot.  So why would eating cheeseburgers and french fries and milk shakes cause my lipid profile to improve?

Thinking about arterial plaque, I have recently read that this plaque is a very small percentage of the gooey stuff that holds it together from cholesterol.  It is mostly calcium dross.  I like the word dross because that is what forms when you get too much oxygen over molten metal and so this is what happens in the arteries and not the veins where the oxygen is low.  Too much oxygen in the arteries causes the calcium in the blood to form dross.  This makes about as much sense as what we have been told about how the fat causes our arteries to plug.  If it was just fat, then the veins would clog as well.

So following the logic of the ‘eat low fat’ people, we should just stop breathing as this would not allow oxygen into the arteries and cause dross to plug them.  Now you guys that majored in the biological sciences still with me or have I sucked all of the air from your systems?  I know this is way out, but what fun!!!!!!!!!

When reading about how our body makes vitamin D, I discovered that the ultraviolent B radiation on cholesterol in the skin causes it to turn into vitamin D.  This vitamin D along with some isomers and other products like metabolites that it forms makes up our vitamin D physiology.  Now not being hampered by a biological religious cult, I would just think that as our bodies get enough vitamin D to where systems get satisfied that we stop making cholesterol.  When we do not go out into the sun and our vitamin D level gets low, our liver and skin spits out lots of cholesterol and our body starts screaming at us, ‘GO INTO THE SUN’.  We go into the sun and if there is enough UVB then our body makes D3.  We are happy as our pineal gland starts spitting out the commands for all of these happiness squads of hormones that can now act because we have enough vitamin D.

Process of vitamin D being made from cholesterol, University of California Riverside.

This also makes sense from understanding that the plaque in our arteries is a calcium plaque and the primary system for controlling calcium absorption is vitamin D.  If we do not have enough vitamin D then calcium serum regulation falls to the parathyroid hormones like a failsafe system.  We survive and do not thrive.

And while I am thinking about it, I do not believe there is a single case of secondary hyperparathyroidism when the serum 25(OH)D level is above 40 ng/ml in the medical literature.  At least that is what a bunch of guys from Spain have said in 2003.  You would think that knowing how PTH and 25(OH)D work together that we would increase the level of 25(OH)D before we started chopping out peoples parathyroids.  This happened to a friend of mined and he simply increased his 25(OH)D, his serum calcium normalized and he did have to get his parathyroids chopped.

So then, cholesterol is just a marker for low vitamin D levels in the body which means that we need to take action to get the level of vitamin D up so that over 2000 genes can turn off when they are supposed to be off and on when they are suppose to be on.

Changing the cholesterol level to try to prevent heart disease then would be like making the speed indicator on the car read 35 mph when we are really going 70.  We are just looking for an accident to happen because we do not know that we are going so fast because of the artificial indication.  I suspect this is what happens when we take statin drugs which I understand are just bad mimics of the vitamin D feedback system that tells us to stop making cholesterol.  This is really bad because when we do go into the sun we do not have adequate amounts of cholesterol to make vitamin D.  Okay, biological geeks, did you get it?  This is the reason for all the confounded data in your studies because your theories just – well- truly suck!

I say to you, the manufacturers of statin drugs, that I do not believe that you are so bad at logic and biological science that you could get this so wrong.  I think that you had dollars signs in your eyes because you could not figure out a way to profit from healthy people replete in vitamin D.  So it is obvious that you love money more than people even though it is the people, your customers, that is providing you this money.

I suspect that there is enough data out there from other studies that an energetic researcher could crunch around to show that when peoples serum 25(OH)D levels are less than 32 ng/ml that they have a problem with high cholesterol.  Get the levels up to above 50 ng/ml for a couple of months and I would suspect that you would see a significant drop in cholesterol.  It happened to me and others that I know.  Are our bodies just freaks of nature?

It seems that doctors that have tried this on patients with heart disease have had great success.  Why don’t you go visit with Dr. William Davis at the Heart Scan Blog and see for yourself.

Even better –GO INTO THE SUN!!!!!!!!!!!   – Pandemic Survivor

Nutrients for Back Pain

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As you know from My Story, I ‘grew’ out of back pain by taking nutrients that allowed the vertebral disc to heal.  Now modern medicine says that this is not possible, but let us explore these two brief stories from people that I know that helped me get to the understanding of the nutrients that I took.

First it was a friend that was somewhat of an athlete.  After a surgery on his knee to removed damaged cartilage, he spent enormous amounts of time in the sun with his shirt off.  Against his doctors advice he continued to run.  It is important to keep up exercise for cartilage health as this is the only way that fluids move in and out of the cartilage to provide nutrients.  Cartilage is not feed directly by the blood system.  After a year he went back to the doctor and had his knee imaged as a follow up to the surgery.  The cartilage had grown back.

Second, I knew a lady that had back pain.  She said that after the summer in her garden that her back pain had gone and that she had grown an inch in height.  Again, significant height variation that is more than the normal from hydration is an indication of the health of vertebral disc.

The only thing that was in common with these two healings was sunshine and exercise.  The sunshine provided the vitamin D and the exercise allowed nutrient flow to the cartilage.

Nutrients that I took:

Vitamin C 1000 mg/d

Multivitamin

Magnesium as glycinate 800 mg/d

Vitamin D3 – enough to keep my serum 25(OH)D3 above 50 ng/ml for me at 203 lbs this was about 10,000 IU/d  in the winter and in the summer I only took 5000 IU/d

Vitamin A – from fish liver oil 5000 IU/d

Zinc – 25 mg/d

Boron – 3 mg/d

Calcium – 500 mg

Sulfur – MSM 1000mg/d and glucosamine sulfate 1500 mg/d

I could not really walk so I had purchased an inverter about three years prior.  I am not promoting the Hang-Up brand but this is the one that I used and it worked very well.  I would not really hang upside down but would rock 45 degrees back and then forward and this would work my spine like an accordion to pump fluids in and out.  I did this twice each day for 10 to 15 minutes.

Now from looking at these vitamins it is hard to imagine that is all that I did.  Let me tell you when you are in pain and the back is screaming at you the vitamin D does wonders.  Of course I was under the care of doctor during this time and he told me not to take the vitamin D3 in such large amounts that it would make my organs turn to ‘stone’.  He checked my serum calcium and my 25(OH)D and was satisfied that I was not doing anything harmful to myself.

There was not anything on the net about improving back pain with vitamin D at that time.  However, now Dr. Gerry Schwalfenberg, University of Alberta, has published case studies on using Vitamin D. Improvement of Chronic Back Pain or Failed Back Surgery with Vitamin D Repletion: A Case Series Gerry Schwalfenberg, MD From the Department of Family Medicine, University of Alberta, Canada

In his case studies, he does not use as much vitamin D as I did.  I do think that you should try to maintain your serum 25(OH)D level above 50 ng/ml as I stated above.

The pain got much better for about a 4 month period.  It then started to hurt up and down my back, but the places where the bulges existed got much better.  What was going on with my back as the disc healed was that the nerve roots were trying to find new homes as the disc increased in height.  I could exercise the part of my spine that was hurting and it would get better the next day.  After the first three months I was able to go to the gym.  I had a very kind trainer that would help me exercise without putting any compression on my spine. Within 10 months I was able to do 125 lb dead lifts and the pain in my back was gone.  I had grown back to my original height of 6 ft after six months and at the end of 10 months I was two inches taller than I had ever been.  I am sure because I was kept out of the sun as a child because of my heat stroke that my DNA had never fully expressed itself.

I think that it is very important for cellular differentiation that you get both Vitamin A and Vitamin D.  I got the largest growth spurt when I was taking both.  Also please note that I was not using beta-carotene but vitamin A from fish liver oil.  There has been much comment about not taking this preformed vitamin A.  We always ate liver every other week when I was growing up and I never had any problems.  Liver about the size of your hand has 100,000 IU of vitamin A.  I say eat as the endogenous people did – like the wolf where the internal organs are consumed first.  If you like liver then you have it made.

Again, do this only in the care of a doctor in particular if you have injuries in your cervical disc.  I had stenosis so bad at C3-C4 and since this is where the nerve for the lung originates the surgeon was really concerned I would just stop breathing.  I had severe sleep apnea (central) from this but after the pain was gone the doctor would not operate.  The sleep apnea took almost two years to resolve but it finally got there.  I have no more poping or snapping in my neck at all and can move it in any direction at will.

Sounds simple, it is simple.  I still do not understand why no doctor ever asked to take my vitamin D level when DDD is so similar to rickets.  I am truly sadden by the number of people that are still out there hurting when the solution is so simple.  There is hope for your pain so be of good cheer.  I know that it hurts and my prayers are for you.

Go nekkid into the sun!           – Pandemic Survivor

The Tragedy of Deficiency Disease

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I was at the gym this morning on the treadmill when a woman that was a friend of my friend that was on the treadmill next to me came in.  She had a cane and I discovered that she had just had a knee implant.  It seems that she had a minor injury some 15 years ago and her knee continued to get worse until there was apparently no cartilage left.

I did not ask her age, but she appeared to be about 40 years old.  She had dark skin which is a real problem for vitamin D deficiency.  From the material that I have read it appears that about 80 percent of the population with light colored skin are deficient and 99 percent of people with dark skin are deficient.  Here is an article today from the Visit Bulgaria website.  It is a worldwide problem.

Of course the problem with dark skin is that the melanin content of the skin slows the rate of production of vitamin D3.  This means that to get the same amount of vitamin D a dark skin person may need to stay in the sun 2 to 10 longer than a person with light skin depending on skin pigmentation amount.

If this lady had been treated with vitamin D when she first had the injury and educated in how much she needed to heal her knee, she would not have to had the replacement.  It is difficult to imagine the amount of pain and the pain that she continues to have.

This first came to my attention with my neighbor that was an athlete and played baseball for a local college.  He would have made it in the pros but it seems that he had a problem in hitting the curve ball.  He had to have knee surgery when he was in his twenties.  His doctor told him that he should not run.  He loved the sun and spent as much time as he could in the sun with his shirt off.  He ignored his doctor and continued to run.  Later he had his knee imaged and discovered that the cartilage had regenerated.  Sun and exercise seem to be the magic formula for him as the sun gave him vitamin D and the exercise allowed the flow of fluids to his knee.

Think about the list of diseases that you have read from a prior post and we see this ever day with friends and acquaintances that we meet.  Pain from diseases are debilitating and life destroying.  It truly grieves my heart.

To think that there truly is a relative simple solution of keeping the vitamin D level up is tragic.

GO INTO THE SUN AND SUPPLEMENT!!!!!!!!!!!  – Pandemic Survivor

Lies, Damn Lies, and Vitamin D

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Where did we go so wrong with sunshine and vitamin D?  Were these just people in the medical professions ignoring the facts as they concentrated each day on how to heal chronic disease?  If they were truly concentrating on chronic disease, why wasn’t the pharmacology of vitamin D studied more for determining how it could possibly help to heal disease?

This is a lot of questions considering the millions of people who have died of these diseases in the twentieth century.  How can we make sense of this without considering that just maybe some misdirection was happening?  In the early forties, one researcher made the statement that the amount of skin cancer that was prevented by staying out of the sun was minor compared to all the other cancers that could be prevented by going into the sun.  What happened to him and why wasn’t this line of research pursued?

Well it seems that there was some fear going on by those who held intellectual property rights to vitamin D and how it could be used to treat disease.  Supplements that you could buy over the counter had been made with extremely small amounts of vitamin D to the point that it was not beneficial for use.  It seems that the manufacturers thought that these supplements would interfere with their sales of prescription drugs.  I suspect there was also the thought that there were other applications like cancer that could be treated and prevented with higher amounts and the dollar signs were going off in their eyes.

The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation held the rights to the vitamin D patents and licensed them to anyone who wanted to make vitamin D products.  It seems that they were trying to manage the license to maximize profits without concern of what they were doing to the health of the community.

The government brought suit against WARF and 17 other entities for trust violations on vitamin D in 1944.  It appears that there was ‘arbitrary and unreasonable prices’ and limited the potency of preparations so that it would not compete with their pharmaceutical products.  Now since this was when WWII was raging, I doubt that anyone in the press was paying too much attention.  What were a few kids with rickets not being able to get the vitamin D they needed as opposed to all that was going on with the war?

The settlement in the case happened when WARF turned over the patents for public use.  Here is the headline from the NY Times in 1946:

VITAMIN D PATENTS GIVEN TO THE PUBLIC; U.S. Court Decree Ends Civil Anti-Trust Suit Against Wisconsin Foundation PROHIBITIVE COST CITED Asst. Dist. Attorney Says Persons Who Most Needed Rickets Cure  Were Unable to Get It

Special to THE NEW YORK TIMES
January 15, 1946, Tuesday
Page 16

CHICAGO, Jan. 14–Patents controlling Vitamin D, the so called “Sunshine Vitamin,” which prevents and cures rickets, became public property today when Federal Judge John P. Barnes signed a consent judgment terminating a civil anti-trust suit filed last October against the Wisconsin Alumni Foundation and seventeen other defendants.

You can purchase the article from the NEW YORK TIMES archives.

It seems that this brought an end to the misadventure with vitamin D as far as rickets was concerned.  The patents had become public property so that anyone could make D3 and the market place would make the vitamin readily available to those who needed it.  But then THE LIE began to be perpetuated about how D3 and D2 were equal in the human body in the 1930’s.  This was great news for WARF because they continued to control the rights for many D analogs and perhaps D2 as well.  D2 is not a natural substance in the body as it is made from irradiating fungus.

But of great concern is that the beneficial findings on vitamin D and its effect on chronic disease were not published because WARF wanted to protect its intellectual property.  It appears that letting people die was okay as long as WARF protected its property.  You can hear a recent presentation at youtube where Hector De Luca, professor of biochemistry UWM, describes this very thing.  You can hear how wonderful the drug has been to Wisconsin in funding research but says nothing about how many people died because they did not publish the beneficial findings.  Vitamin D, the New Old Wonder Drug:   Listen to the introduction about how many vitamin D analogs have made life wonderful for millions of people and profited WARF.  It just makes me angry as this protection of an institution for profit brought much disease that led to pain and death to others in not telling how just plain vitamin D3 would get the job done.  All very legal and deadly! It looks like the thing that they were sued for in 1944 is still going on in a different format.

If you really wanted to protect your patents on vitamin D analogs and improve your market size, how would you do it?  You certainly would not want to report how good a job just plain old vitamin D3 would do as this is the least expensive of the supplements on the market.  If people got replete with D and 75% of chronic disease disappeared what would happen to the medical industry?  After all, it has a right to protect itself and its growth.

You know what would really be great for the growth of this industry would be to figure out some way to keep people out of the sun.  If we can’t keep them out of the sun at least figure out a way to prevent the skin from making vitamin D.  Remember that cute little girl with her ‘hiney’ showing bright white as the dog pulled her paints down from the 1960’s?  And here is Plough, Inc. finding a great new market for selling a consumer product that would be really beneficial to millions to reduce burns and prevent skin cancer – sunscreen – the DAMN LIE.

It did prevent sun burns and this was great for the entertainment industry and all the ‘fun parks’ that were being developed because people could stay out in the sun longer and spend more money.  However, since sunscreen was presented in the sixties, the rate of skin cancer has gone up about two fold or more.(See Note 1.)  There is a great article in To You Health called, “ The Sunscreen Dilemma”,  by Jacob Schor, ND. For further reading you may also consider this as well hypothesis about melanoma from 1993: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8287144 .  The increase of many other chronic diseases has been documented during the same period.  The vector of vitamin D3 in so many chronic diseases is amazing and I suspect the number one cause of the increase in chronic disease.  The second being exposure to so many industrial chemicals that in some cases are put into our foods and call ‘food’.

So Plough did really well in the sixties selling Coppertone and its Dr Scholl’s line of foot products.  So what if you created a market by keeping people out of the sun and increasing chronic disease – how could you profit from it?   By developing and selling drugs for treating chronic disease.  So Schering  a company that specialized in drugs to treat chronic disease merged with Plough in 1971 to form Schering-Plough, Inc.   In a recent review of SP’s annual report it was interesting to note that 20 percent of their income was from their sunscreen products and 80 percent was from statins, hypertensive, chemotherapy, and other drugs for treating chronic disease.  It was the ‘70’s when the push for really using sunscreen products truly began and it was a great marketing campaign to sell pharmaceuticals for treating chronic disease.  What—?

Now with a pending class action suit that was filed against SP and others in California in 2006 and at least one study coming back to show that sunscreen may actually make the incidence of skin cancer worse, Schering-Plough sells out to Merck.  Now I suspect depending on how the common stock was handled that the liability exposure was significantly reduced by this acquisition.

Ah, lies, damn lies, and the conforming to the institution for protection of the institution truly is evil as described by M. Scott Peck in ‘People of the Lie” when empathy is not taken into consideration.  Dr. John Cannell of the Vitamin D Council simply says that we have ignored the facts over the years.  I say that we have ignored the facts as negligent misadventure with intent to profit from death and disease.

GO INTO THE SUN AND DO NOT WEAR SUNSCREEN.  STAY ONLY LONG ENOUGH UNTIL YOU JUST START TO TURN PINK.  WEAR THE LEAST AMOUNT OF CLOTHES POSSIBLE DURING THE MIDDAY SUN. IN THE WINTER USE TANNING BEDS OR SUPPLEMENT WITH VITAMIN D3.           – Pandemic Survivor

Note 1:  Skin cancer rates from 1975 to 1995 annual percentage rate increase was 5.1 percent.  Given that the natural logarithm of 2 times 100 is about 70.  70/5.1 = 13.7 years to double.  So at 28 years we would have a factor of times 4. http://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/othskin.html   SEER fact sheet on skin cancer.