A new study published in the journal Pediatrics, found that children who spend a lot of time at indoor swimming pools during their early years are more prone to developing asthma and other breathing problems as they grow older, compared to others who do not frequent indoor pools.
They believe that harmful gases trapped indoors from the chlorinated pools are to blame for the airway damage. The main culprit: trichloramine, or nitrogen trichloride, is created when chlorine reacts with ammonia, which can be found in the sweat and urine from swimmers.
Swimming is both a great form of exercise and a vital life-saving skill for little ones. However, I don't recommend swimming in swimming pools, whether indoors or out, since your body absorbs more chlorine by swimming in a chlorinated pool than you would by drinking tap water for one week.
If you don't have access to a lake, ocean or other natural body of water, using peroxide (not bromine) is also an alternative for chlorine in your private pool. A product called Baquacil is available at most pool stores that can do the job safely. If all else fails--try to stick with outdoor pools, as at least the fumes are whisked away by the open air.
Pediatrics 2007 Jun;119(6):1095-103
19 June 2007
5 June 2007
When Doctors Strike, Fewer People Die
In 1973 doctors in Israel staged a month-long strike and during that month, mortality fell by 50 percent. A couple of years later, a two-month work stoppage by doctors in the Columbian capital of Bogotá led to a 35-percent decline in deaths. And during a “work slowdown” by doctors in Los Angeles protesting against the sharp increase in premiums for liability insurance, the number of deaths fell by 18 percent.
Once doctors were back at work full time, mortality immediately jumped back to the previous level. Every year, 1.2 million Britons are hospitalized as a result of improper medical care. In the United States – where 40,000 people are shot to death each year – the chance of getting “killed” by a doctor is three times greater than being killed by a gun. And every year significantly more people die from an infection sustained while in the hospital than as a result of traffic accidents.
Over 20 years ago the American culture critic Ivan Illich wrote that health care has become a threat to our health. But this is still not the prevailing image. Modern healthcare is considered one of the triumphs of the twentieth century. Most people are convinced that a close family member or friend without a pill or a doctor’s input wouldn’t be alive today. But as lauded as today’s doctors are, they are no more effective – when it comes to medicine – than the priests of yesteryear.
More recently Gary Null performed a comprehensive literature review and found that the conventional medical system is responsible for killing nearly 800,000 people every year in the US alone.
Today we live twice as long, an average, compared to a century ago, but this progress is not due to modern medicine. Cholera, typhoid, tuberculosis and dysentery were already on the decline when antibiotics and vaccines were introduced.
The reason?
Hygiene and Better Nutrition.
And while doctors first discovered and proclaimed the importance of these two factors, it doesn’t mean that soap and boiled water are medical remedies. It is typical that the man who conducted the first heart transplant in the world, the South African physician Christiaan Barnard, points to Thomas Crapper as one of humanity’s greatest benefactors.
Crapper was a British plumber who invented the flush toilet. The greatest advance in modern medicine in the twentieth century was the advent of “emergency care”. If you develop an acute, life-threatening infection, suffer a heart attack, a serious care accident or an operable tumor, the best place you can be is in a western hospital. The same applies to a new hip or a cataract operation. But such “crisis moments” are the exception.
The vast majority of most conditions concern chronic illnesses, cancer and cardiovascular disease. And western health care has sadly little to offer in this regard. Old plagues have been supplanted by new ones. The post-war belief that illness would be eradicated has come to naught. Eighty percent of the most common treatments and medicines have not even been thoroughly tested (New Scientist, 17 September 1994), don’t contribute to our health or even threaten it. For example, excessive use of antibiotics not only leads to resistance, but can also damage your body’s natural, friendly bacterial balance.
Recent research also shows that mammograms more often lead to cancer than detect it. And that it is often safer not to operate on prostate cancer. And that low-cholesterol diets increase the chance of dying. And so forth.
The problem lies with our vision of modern healthcare: health is the normal state of being for humans and illness is something that comes from the outside, an enemy to be fought. Often, healthcare resembles a military operation. Even the terminology is similar: the war on cancer… Doctors see the body as a machine whose dysfunctional parts are replaceable. This machine can be controlled externally by medicine and medial technology.
The use of chemotherapy against cancer is a striking illustration of this way of thinking. The body is poisoned to beat the cancer. The worst part is that the results are dreadful: in over 90 percent of cases, chemotherapy has nothing to offer. When 118 oncologists at a major cancer institute in the United States were asked whether they would opt for chemotherapy if they were cancer patients, three-quarters said they would turn down the treatment.
Why?
Cancer Treatment is “Ineffective and Unacceptably Poisonous.”
And yet, a great many people subject themselves to this poisonous therapy. This is due to another concerning aspect of modern health care: the conflict of interest between doctors and the pharmaceutical industry.
Patients can only think that they are buying what they think they need. Patients have become objects in a system in which technology is the master and the doctor is God. They lie in hospital beds while doctors consider their “status”. They are so closely identified with a sick body part that they lose themselves completely. They have become an illness instead of human beings.
The defenseless patient is the inevitable result of the fact that health care has degenerated into an industrial system in which – and this is inherent to such a system – procedures are more important than people. In this system, taking responsibility and independence have gotten lost. “The pre-eminence of technology leads to inner debilitation,” genetic expert Hans Galjaard once told Ode. And this lays the foundation for illness.
There May Be Another Way
Or, better yet: there is another way. Healing appears to be a complex process in which–contrary to the accepted western view–not only medicine and tangible cells play a role, but also intangible aspects such as hope, belief, trust and will. Take prayer, for example.
Doctors know from experience that patients who ask “why” when blood work is ordered and doesn’t simply undress for the doctor, usually fare well. And how can it be that a mother produces antibodies in her breast milk when her baby is suffering from an infection? All doctors take the Hippocratic oath, but do these doctors–who continually intervene in the body’s natural processes–realize that this ancient Greek master once said that “the healing power of nature” is the most important of all?
This is why Chinese, Indian, Native American and other “primitive” medicine practices are geared towards supporting the body’s self-healing processes. These traditions assume that nature is perfect and that the body wants to be healthy.
We continually hear stories about people who inexplicably heal from incurable illnesses. People, for example, who doctors give up on because their tumors are no longer treatable. They walk out of the hospital – and the health care system – choose their own path and “miraculously” heal. Years later, scans pick up no trace of the tumor.
Modern medicine passes such cases off as “anecdotal” because there is no concrete explanation. But perhaps these anecdotes prove the self-healing power of the human body. Perhaps treatments and medicines mainly serve to stimulate the body’s spontaneous healing process. A phenomenon that is just as ancient as health care itself, points in this direction.
It is known that people get better when they take pills that have no demonstrable physical effect: the placebo, which comes from the Latin for “I shall please”. It’s easy to accept that the medicinal effect of the brews and potions of the doctors of the past can be explained by the placebo effect. Those potions had no provable medicinal effect. But the same is true for the majority of modern medicines: only 20 percent have been proven to have a scientific effect. This means that doctors prescribe pills and treatments that are essentially inert. But that doesn’t mean they don’t work: their healing power comes from the placebo effect.
For many disorders – from pain and high blood pressure to asthma and arthritis – placebos appear to offer substantial relief to 70 percent of patients. Placebos are even effective in cases of psychiatric disturbances, e.g. depression. Or in any case no less effective than “real” medicines.
Your Mind Can Heal Your Body
A dramatic example of this is the multi-center double blinded placebo controlled randomized trial of knee arthroscopy surgery that showed patients that received the sham non surgical intervention performed as well as those that had the real surgery. This was published in the most prestigious medical journal in the world.
The simple fact that a doctor prescribes a pill is apparently sufficient to boost healing. Expectations and trust play a crucial role here. And trust grows with the attention given by the doctor. Various placebo studies have shown that doctors themselves are the best medicine. A doctor who listens, mobilizes patients’ ability to heal themselves. Moreover, the placebo effect indicates that all types of “health care” are effective once the patient believes.
This also explains the increasing success of alternative therapies. Aside from the fact that the treatment methods – such as homeopathy and acupuncture – have numerous proven healing effects, alternative therapies generally show more respect for patients. They take an integral approach instead of merely addressing the symptoms. And the natural medical doctor generally spends more time and attention on his patients. He listens to their whole story, including their feelings of sadness and despair. This attention restores “patients’ faith in their own healing.”
Attention and care are therefore crucial. But these are qualities seldom found in the modern health care system. Doctors who want to give their patients attention are hounded by hospital administrators and insurance companies clamoring for “efficiency”. It is telling that The Economist recently argued that health care could learn a whole lot from McDonald’s in the area of efficiency…
New technology, medicines or procedures will not lead to a better and cheaper healthcare system. What will, is the willingness and ability of individuals to take care of themselves. Only when patients take that step, will modern medicine fall from its pedestal.
Take Control of Your Health
Taking responsibility is more than sticking to a low-cholesterol diet. It means asking questions. What can I do myself? How can I live my life differently? What lifestyle would suit me better? It means no longer seeing the doctor as an all-knowing master but as a partner who can help find the best method of healing based on the conviction that everyone can find his or her own answer to an illness. It means: seeking the best therapies both in the conventional and alternative circuits.
Dr. Andrew Weil targets seven characteristics of successful patients. They won’t take “no” for an answer; they actively seek alternative treatment methods; they seek advice from people who have recovered from the same illness; they constructively cooperate with doctors and other healers; they are not afraid of a radical change in their lives; they see their illness as an opportunity for growth; and they accept themselves as they are.
That last characteristic is essential because dying is not failing. Dying is a natural process that no one can avoid. Modern medicine digs its heels in against death, but in so doing robs people of the meaning of life.
Ultimately, healing is not always physical recovery. It is possible to find meaning and acceptance in death. In that respect, an illness—even one that is terminal—offers an opportunity to “heal”. Ultimately, a dignified death counts. There is a story about this, in which an old man in the hospital witnesses how doctors try, in vain, to bring a fellow patient back to life using tubes and machines. After this experience, the man begs his doctor to spare him a similar end.
“Listen doctor,” he says, “I don’t want to die with my body stuffed with tubes. I don’t want my children to remember their father like that. I have always tried to live with my head held high. I am not complaining that I’m dying. But I want to die like a human being, not like a plant that someone comes to water every day—I don’t want to die like him.”
But the man’s wish goes unheeded. The hospital system is simply programmed to extend people’s lives as much as possible. Ultimately, the man is able to free himself from the tubes and machines. He leaves a note for his doctor: “Death is not the enemy, doctor; inhumanity is the enemy.”
Ode Issue 999
Once doctors were back at work full time, mortality immediately jumped back to the previous level. Every year, 1.2 million Britons are hospitalized as a result of improper medical care. In the United States – where 40,000 people are shot to death each year – the chance of getting “killed” by a doctor is three times greater than being killed by a gun. And every year significantly more people die from an infection sustained while in the hospital than as a result of traffic accidents.
Over 20 years ago the American culture critic Ivan Illich wrote that health care has become a threat to our health. But this is still not the prevailing image. Modern healthcare is considered one of the triumphs of the twentieth century. Most people are convinced that a close family member or friend without a pill or a doctor’s input wouldn’t be alive today. But as lauded as today’s doctors are, they are no more effective – when it comes to medicine – than the priests of yesteryear.
More recently Gary Null performed a comprehensive literature review and found that the conventional medical system is responsible for killing nearly 800,000 people every year in the US alone.
Today we live twice as long, an average, compared to a century ago, but this progress is not due to modern medicine. Cholera, typhoid, tuberculosis and dysentery were already on the decline when antibiotics and vaccines were introduced.
The reason?
Hygiene and Better Nutrition.
And while doctors first discovered and proclaimed the importance of these two factors, it doesn’t mean that soap and boiled water are medical remedies. It is typical that the man who conducted the first heart transplant in the world, the South African physician Christiaan Barnard, points to Thomas Crapper as one of humanity’s greatest benefactors.
Crapper was a British plumber who invented the flush toilet. The greatest advance in modern medicine in the twentieth century was the advent of “emergency care”. If you develop an acute, life-threatening infection, suffer a heart attack, a serious care accident or an operable tumor, the best place you can be is in a western hospital. The same applies to a new hip or a cataract operation. But such “crisis moments” are the exception.
The vast majority of most conditions concern chronic illnesses, cancer and cardiovascular disease. And western health care has sadly little to offer in this regard. Old plagues have been supplanted by new ones. The post-war belief that illness would be eradicated has come to naught. Eighty percent of the most common treatments and medicines have not even been thoroughly tested (New Scientist, 17 September 1994), don’t contribute to our health or even threaten it. For example, excessive use of antibiotics not only leads to resistance, but can also damage your body’s natural, friendly bacterial balance.
Recent research also shows that mammograms more often lead to cancer than detect it. And that it is often safer not to operate on prostate cancer. And that low-cholesterol diets increase the chance of dying. And so forth.
The problem lies with our vision of modern healthcare: health is the normal state of being for humans and illness is something that comes from the outside, an enemy to be fought. Often, healthcare resembles a military operation. Even the terminology is similar: the war on cancer… Doctors see the body as a machine whose dysfunctional parts are replaceable. This machine can be controlled externally by medicine and medial technology.
The use of chemotherapy against cancer is a striking illustration of this way of thinking. The body is poisoned to beat the cancer. The worst part is that the results are dreadful: in over 90 percent of cases, chemotherapy has nothing to offer. When 118 oncologists at a major cancer institute in the United States were asked whether they would opt for chemotherapy if they were cancer patients, three-quarters said they would turn down the treatment.
Why?
Cancer Treatment is “Ineffective and Unacceptably Poisonous.”
And yet, a great many people subject themselves to this poisonous therapy. This is due to another concerning aspect of modern health care: the conflict of interest between doctors and the pharmaceutical industry.
Patients can only think that they are buying what they think they need. Patients have become objects in a system in which technology is the master and the doctor is God. They lie in hospital beds while doctors consider their “status”. They are so closely identified with a sick body part that they lose themselves completely. They have become an illness instead of human beings.
The defenseless patient is the inevitable result of the fact that health care has degenerated into an industrial system in which – and this is inherent to such a system – procedures are more important than people. In this system, taking responsibility and independence have gotten lost. “The pre-eminence of technology leads to inner debilitation,” genetic expert Hans Galjaard once told Ode. And this lays the foundation for illness.
There May Be Another Way
Or, better yet: there is another way. Healing appears to be a complex process in which–contrary to the accepted western view–not only medicine and tangible cells play a role, but also intangible aspects such as hope, belief, trust and will. Take prayer, for example.
Doctors know from experience that patients who ask “why” when blood work is ordered and doesn’t simply undress for the doctor, usually fare well. And how can it be that a mother produces antibodies in her breast milk when her baby is suffering from an infection? All doctors take the Hippocratic oath, but do these doctors–who continually intervene in the body’s natural processes–realize that this ancient Greek master once said that “the healing power of nature” is the most important of all?
This is why Chinese, Indian, Native American and other “primitive” medicine practices are geared towards supporting the body’s self-healing processes. These traditions assume that nature is perfect and that the body wants to be healthy.
We continually hear stories about people who inexplicably heal from incurable illnesses. People, for example, who doctors give up on because their tumors are no longer treatable. They walk out of the hospital – and the health care system – choose their own path and “miraculously” heal. Years later, scans pick up no trace of the tumor.
Modern medicine passes such cases off as “anecdotal” because there is no concrete explanation. But perhaps these anecdotes prove the self-healing power of the human body. Perhaps treatments and medicines mainly serve to stimulate the body’s spontaneous healing process. A phenomenon that is just as ancient as health care itself, points in this direction.
It is known that people get better when they take pills that have no demonstrable physical effect: the placebo, which comes from the Latin for “I shall please”. It’s easy to accept that the medicinal effect of the brews and potions of the doctors of the past can be explained by the placebo effect. Those potions had no provable medicinal effect. But the same is true for the majority of modern medicines: only 20 percent have been proven to have a scientific effect. This means that doctors prescribe pills and treatments that are essentially inert. But that doesn’t mean they don’t work: their healing power comes from the placebo effect.
For many disorders – from pain and high blood pressure to asthma and arthritis – placebos appear to offer substantial relief to 70 percent of patients. Placebos are even effective in cases of psychiatric disturbances, e.g. depression. Or in any case no less effective than “real” medicines.
Your Mind Can Heal Your Body
A dramatic example of this is the multi-center double blinded placebo controlled randomized trial of knee arthroscopy surgery that showed patients that received the sham non surgical intervention performed as well as those that had the real surgery. This was published in the most prestigious medical journal in the world.
The simple fact that a doctor prescribes a pill is apparently sufficient to boost healing. Expectations and trust play a crucial role here. And trust grows with the attention given by the doctor. Various placebo studies have shown that doctors themselves are the best medicine. A doctor who listens, mobilizes patients’ ability to heal themselves. Moreover, the placebo effect indicates that all types of “health care” are effective once the patient believes.
This also explains the increasing success of alternative therapies. Aside from the fact that the treatment methods – such as homeopathy and acupuncture – have numerous proven healing effects, alternative therapies generally show more respect for patients. They take an integral approach instead of merely addressing the symptoms. And the natural medical doctor generally spends more time and attention on his patients. He listens to their whole story, including their feelings of sadness and despair. This attention restores “patients’ faith in their own healing.”
Attention and care are therefore crucial. But these are qualities seldom found in the modern health care system. Doctors who want to give their patients attention are hounded by hospital administrators and insurance companies clamoring for “efficiency”. It is telling that The Economist recently argued that health care could learn a whole lot from McDonald’s in the area of efficiency…
New technology, medicines or procedures will not lead to a better and cheaper healthcare system. What will, is the willingness and ability of individuals to take care of themselves. Only when patients take that step, will modern medicine fall from its pedestal.
Take Control of Your Health
Taking responsibility is more than sticking to a low-cholesterol diet. It means asking questions. What can I do myself? How can I live my life differently? What lifestyle would suit me better? It means no longer seeing the doctor as an all-knowing master but as a partner who can help find the best method of healing based on the conviction that everyone can find his or her own answer to an illness. It means: seeking the best therapies both in the conventional and alternative circuits.
Dr. Andrew Weil targets seven characteristics of successful patients. They won’t take “no” for an answer; they actively seek alternative treatment methods; they seek advice from people who have recovered from the same illness; they constructively cooperate with doctors and other healers; they are not afraid of a radical change in their lives; they see their illness as an opportunity for growth; and they accept themselves as they are.
That last characteristic is essential because dying is not failing. Dying is a natural process that no one can avoid. Modern medicine digs its heels in against death, but in so doing robs people of the meaning of life.
Ultimately, healing is not always physical recovery. It is possible to find meaning and acceptance in death. In that respect, an illness—even one that is terminal—offers an opportunity to “heal”. Ultimately, a dignified death counts. There is a story about this, in which an old man in the hospital witnesses how doctors try, in vain, to bring a fellow patient back to life using tubes and machines. After this experience, the man begs his doctor to spare him a similar end.
“Listen doctor,” he says, “I don’t want to die with my body stuffed with tubes. I don’t want my children to remember their father like that. I have always tried to live with my head held high. I am not complaining that I’m dying. But I want to die like a human being, not like a plant that someone comes to water every day—I don’t want to die like him.”
But the man’s wish goes unheeded. The hospital system is simply programmed to extend people’s lives as much as possible. Ultimately, the man is able to free himself from the tubes and machines. He leaves a note for his doctor: “Death is not the enemy, doctor; inhumanity is the enemy.”
Ode Issue 999
Most Vitamins Are Now Made In China
You may be surprised to know that China is actually one of the largest exporters of many drugs and vitamins. About 90 percent of all Vitamin C sold in the United States is from China, for example. They also produce 50 percent of the world's aspirin and 35 percent of all Tylenol. Ditto for the majority of Vitamins A, B12 and E.
Hot on the heels of the poisoned pet food scandal, and reported instances of toxic food and toothpaste, all eyes are now turning toward the Chinese vitamin market. How safe are they?
The industry in China appears to be split between top-notch operations and bottom-of-the-barrel producers. Since the United States does not require country-of-origin labels for any of our drugs, foods or supplements, there is no telling where that vitamin you are taking came from.
China also suffers from the same conflict of interest that we are seeing here in the United States, where the regulators have financial interest in the industries they are supposed to regulate and inspect.
Supplements can sometimes be helpful; however, your best bet will always be to try to get the majority of your vitamins and minerals from the food you eat. You can’t “make up” for a poor diet by simply adding vitamin supplements. Processed foods are sorely lacking in nutrients, but eating plenty of raw organic foods, farmed locally (or as nearby as possible), can supply you with most of the vital nutrients that you need.
Hot on the heels of the poisoned pet food scandal, and reported instances of toxic food and toothpaste, all eyes are now turning toward the Chinese vitamin market. How safe are they?
The industry in China appears to be split between top-notch operations and bottom-of-the-barrel producers. Since the United States does not require country-of-origin labels for any of our drugs, foods or supplements, there is no telling where that vitamin you are taking came from.
China also suffers from the same conflict of interest that we are seeing here in the United States, where the regulators have financial interest in the industries they are supposed to regulate and inspect.
Supplements can sometimes be helpful; however, your best bet will always be to try to get the majority of your vitamins and minerals from the food you eat. You can’t “make up” for a poor diet by simply adding vitamin supplements. Processed foods are sorely lacking in nutrients, but eating plenty of raw organic foods, farmed locally (or as nearby as possible), can supply you with most of the vital nutrients that you need.
25 April 2007
11 April 2007
Why Are Swimming Pool Workers More Prone to Colds?
I've warned you in the past about staying away from swimming pools due to the unsafe amount of chlorine found in most public water systems. If you remain skeptical at all about this important issue, you'll be really surprised how damaging the pool water can be for workers, according to a Dutch study.
Researchers reviewed the health of more than 600 pool employees at 38 pools and measured trichloramine, a volatile chemical known to be an irritant to a patient's eyes and upper respiratory tract.
In comparison to those who worked near and, not necessarily, in pools, swimming instructors were more than three times likely to suffer chronic colds and more than two times likely to encounter sore throats and sinus problems. Compared to the average Dutch citizen, pool workers were generally at a greater risk for a host of respiratory problems, for example, like a seven-fold increase in breathlessness while walking.
The probable culprit -- tricloramine exposure -- is a given in this case, because levels of this harmful chemical at poolside can be as much as three times higher than normal. Just a reminder, your body absorbs more chlorine swimming in public pool in an hour than drinking unfiltered tap water for a week.
European Respiratory Journal, Vol. 29, No. 4, April 2007: 690-698
Yahoo News April 9, 2007
Researchers reviewed the health of more than 600 pool employees at 38 pools and measured trichloramine, a volatile chemical known to be an irritant to a patient's eyes and upper respiratory tract.
In comparison to those who worked near and, not necessarily, in pools, swimming instructors were more than three times likely to suffer chronic colds and more than two times likely to encounter sore throats and sinus problems. Compared to the average Dutch citizen, pool workers were generally at a greater risk for a host of respiratory problems, for example, like a seven-fold increase in breathlessness while walking.
The probable culprit -- tricloramine exposure -- is a given in this case, because levels of this harmful chemical at poolside can be as much as three times higher than normal. Just a reminder, your body absorbs more chlorine swimming in public pool in an hour than drinking unfiltered tap water for a week.
European Respiratory Journal, Vol. 29, No. 4, April 2007: 690-698
Yahoo News April 9, 2007
6 April 2007
Smash Arthritis With Exercise
As you know, exercise does a world of good to protect you from a number of maladies, including depression and cancer. The same can be said for the power of exercise in treating arthritis, according to an Australian study.
Researchers reviewed the health of more than 8,700 middle-age and older women in their 70s, suffering from the pains of arthritis over some three years. Surprisingly, exercise had no effect on the arthritis symptoms experienced by middle-age women, but that wasn't true for older women.
Older patients exercising at least 75 minutes per week felt fewer arthritis symptoms and those who worked out for twice as long -- 150 minutes every week -- experienced even fewer problems.
Apparently, more researchers of conventional medicine are beginning to understand the real therapeutic value of exercise, based on the comments of the lead researcher: If we could put out a pill that would solve a lot of problems, it would be physical activity, but we can't wrap it up into a little pill and give it to people.
Again, more evidence you must treat exercise like a drug that must be carefully prescribed to achieve the greatest benefit to your health. Just remember, walking isn't enough to satisfy the serious exercise debt most of you have accumulated over the years.
If you're looking to start an exercise plan and don't know where to begin, I suggest by reviewing my beginner's page.
Arthritis Research & Therapy, Vol. 9, No. 2, March 29, 2007 Free Full Text Study
Researchers reviewed the health of more than 8,700 middle-age and older women in their 70s, suffering from the pains of arthritis over some three years. Surprisingly, exercise had no effect on the arthritis symptoms experienced by middle-age women, but that wasn't true for older women.
Older patients exercising at least 75 minutes per week felt fewer arthritis symptoms and those who worked out for twice as long -- 150 minutes every week -- experienced even fewer problems.
Apparently, more researchers of conventional medicine are beginning to understand the real therapeutic value of exercise, based on the comments of the lead researcher: If we could put out a pill that would solve a lot of problems, it would be physical activity, but we can't wrap it up into a little pill and give it to people.
Again, more evidence you must treat exercise like a drug that must be carefully prescribed to achieve the greatest benefit to your health. Just remember, walking isn't enough to satisfy the serious exercise debt most of you have accumulated over the years.
If you're looking to start an exercise plan and don't know where to begin, I suggest by reviewing my beginner's page.
Arthritis Research & Therapy, Vol. 9, No. 2, March 29, 2007 Free Full Text Study
22 February 2007
TV Does More Damage to Your Children Than You Ever Imagined
All that time children spend in front of a TV may be doing far more harm to them than you ever thought possible. In addition to being a trigger for obesity, the "glow box" may raise their risks of bad eyesight, premature puberty and autism, according to a new report. And that's not all...
A British psychologist identified 15 different side effects related to children spending long hours in front of a television. Among them:
* Cancer
* Alzheimer's
* Heart trouble
* Healing
* Diabetes
The trigger for some of these conditions: Watching TV disrupts the production of the hormone melatonin which explains why young girls may be reaching puberty sooner or kids are developing cancer at a younger age than ever before.
Because severely limiting your child's TV time is indeed a life-saver, I urge you to review this important list of 20 fun activities you can do with them that have absolutely nothing at all to do with sitting indoors in front of a box for hours.
Physorg.com February 19, 2007
A British psychologist identified 15 different side effects related to children spending long hours in front of a television. Among them:
* Cancer
* Alzheimer's
* Heart trouble
* Healing
* Diabetes
The trigger for some of these conditions: Watching TV disrupts the production of the hormone melatonin which explains why young girls may be reaching puberty sooner or kids are developing cancer at a younger age than ever before.
Because severely limiting your child's TV time is indeed a life-saver, I urge you to review this important list of 20 fun activities you can do with them that have absolutely nothing at all to do with sitting indoors in front of a box for hours.
Physorg.com February 19, 2007
26 January 2007
Drinking, Bathing or Swimming in Chlorinated Water May Increase Your Risk of Bladder Cancer
Chlorinated water may increase your risk of bladder cancer, whether you drink it, bathe in it or swim in it, according to a study of over 1,000 people. The study is the first to support what I have been saying for some time: that chemicals in water are not only harmful when ingested, but also when they are absorbed through the skin or inhaled.
In fact, this new study found that swimming and showering in chlorinated water may be even worse than drinking it. While study participants who drank chlorinated water had a 35 percent greater risk of bladder cancer than those who didn’t, those who swam in chlorinated pools had a 57 percent greater risk. Meanwhile, those who took longer showers or baths in areas with higher trihalomethanes (THM, a chlorine by-product) levels also had an increased cancer risk.
THM, while potentially dangerous when ingested, may be even more detrimental when it is absorbed through the skin or lungs because it does not undergo detoxification via the liver.
While installing a reverse-osmosis filter to purify your drinking water is a good step, you could still be exposed to contaminated water when you:
* Shower or bathe
* Wash your hands
* Wash laundry
* Rinse fruits and vegetables
* Wash dishes, glasses, and other utensils
To protect your family's good health, you should have your water professionally analyzed to find out what's in it. If it's currently safe, then having a small point-of-use filter is a nice added level of protection. But if you find contamination, you should seek expert advice as to what treatment system can remove it.
American Journal of Epidemiology January 2007, Volume 165, Number 2, Pp. 148-156
ScientificAmerican.com January 18, 2007
In fact, this new study found that swimming and showering in chlorinated water may be even worse than drinking it. While study participants who drank chlorinated water had a 35 percent greater risk of bladder cancer than those who didn’t, those who swam in chlorinated pools had a 57 percent greater risk. Meanwhile, those who took longer showers or baths in areas with higher trihalomethanes (THM, a chlorine by-product) levels also had an increased cancer risk.
THM, while potentially dangerous when ingested, may be even more detrimental when it is absorbed through the skin or lungs because it does not undergo detoxification via the liver.
While installing a reverse-osmosis filter to purify your drinking water is a good step, you could still be exposed to contaminated water when you:
* Shower or bathe
* Wash your hands
* Wash laundry
* Rinse fruits and vegetables
* Wash dishes, glasses, and other utensils
To protect your family's good health, you should have your water professionally analyzed to find out what's in it. If it's currently safe, then having a small point-of-use filter is a nice added level of protection. But if you find contamination, you should seek expert advice as to what treatment system can remove it.
American Journal of Epidemiology January 2007, Volume 165, Number 2, Pp. 148-156
ScientificAmerican.com January 18, 2007
24 January 2007
The History of Spinal Surgery
The first treatise on the treatment of spinal injuries dates back to around 1550 B.C., in the Egyptian writings known as the Edwin Smith papyrus. Hippocrates (460-370 BC), considered the Father of Medicine, is also considered to be the father of spinal surgery, having stated: "Look well to the spine for the cause of disease." His recommended method of treatment consisted primarily of traction and immobilization; similar treatments appear in ancient Arabic and Chinese literature as well. Early physicians avoided direct surgical intervention, which resulted in complications such as blood clotting, destruction of the muscle tissue, and paralysis. While medical knowledge continued to expand under physicians such as Galen of Pergamon (129-200 AD), who also coined the word, 'scoliosis,' Paulus of Aegineta (625-690 AD), Avicenna (980-1037 AD), Serefeddin Sabuncuoglu (15 c.), and Sir Percival Pott (17 c.), surgery on the spine did not become common practice until the early 1900's.
In 1953, Dr. Paul Harrington of Houston, Texas, began to develop what is now known as the Harrington instrumentation system. While initial results were promising, long-term follow up demonstrated poor results, and hardware failure was basically inevitable. The Harrington rods are essentially straight & rigid, which disrupts the normal curves in the spine. This led to dislodging of the hooks used to secure the rod.
A similar rod system was developed in 1976 by Dr. Eduardo Luque of Mexico City. These contoured rods attempted to avoid the high incidence of hardware failure through multiple points of fixation; however, this led to a higher rate of neurological complications. Dysesthesia - loss of the sense of touch - was seen in 1 out of every 10 patients.
Pedicle screw fixation, originally developed in 1949, has become a popular alternative to hooks and wires. Unfortunately, there is a very high risk of damage to the nerves and blood vessels, especially if the placement of the screws is inaccurate or unstable. Conventional placement of pedicle screws results in an accuracy rate of 45 to 85%.
New methods of surgical scoliosis correction are in high demand as research continues to document the poor long-term effects of rod instrumentation. Approaches such as spinal stapling, endoscopic instrumentation, and wedge osteotomies attempt to maintain spinal mobility while being as minimially-invasive as possible, but these procedures may not be ideal for every scoliosis patient.
No surgical procedure has ever demonstrated a 100% correction in every patient. Despite the best efforts of the medical community, surgery remains a last resort for people living with scoliosis. What is the reason for this? One might consider the lack of consideration for the position of the head & neck, both important functional components of the spine. Another reason could be the disregard for and damage done to the associated soft tissues - muscles, tendons, & ligaments - that are important in maintaining spinal integrity.
Although medicine continues to search for a "quick-fix" and an easy answer, the truth is scoliosis cannot be permanently corrected through external forces. Only through a thorough understanding of the biology & physics responsible for the deformation can the process be arrested and reversed. True scoliosis correction requires a comprehensive & holistic rehabilitation of the spine and all associated soft tissue components... and this requires a lot of hard work!
10 January 2007
If prescription drugs are so good, where are all the healthy drug takers?
When observing the state of modern medicine and the unprecedented influence of pharmaceuticals, an interesting paradox arises. The drug companies claim that pharmaceuticals can do wonders for people: lower their cholesterol, end clinical depression, reverse osteoporosis, eliminate allergies, calm your children and many other similar promises. But if prescription drugs are so good for people, where are all the healthy medicated customers?
There aren't any to speak of. There's nobody taking twelve prescriptions who has a clean bill of health. In fact, the more prescriptions a person takes, the worse their overall health. And if you approach the healthiest people you can find in a local fitness center and ask what prescription drugs they're taking in order to be so healthy, they'll give you a rather confused look: they don't take prescription drugs!.
So how is it that the pharmaceutical industry can be claiming to make people healthier in the first place? And what happened to common sense here? A rigorous scientific view of the whole situation can only conclude that prescription drugs are, in fact, making people sicker. It's like a massive clinical trial, and the results of the trial are rather obvious: we're swallowing more drugs than ever, and we're getting sicker. In fact, the more drugs a person takes, and the longer they take them, the more rapidly their overall health deteriorates.
So why are drugs approved in the first place?
During development, prescription drugs are designed to target a single measurable marker, such as cholesterol levels or bone density. There are thousands of such markers to target in the world of modern medicine, and if a specific drug can alter any measurable marker in a positive direction -- without killing too many people during the clinical trials -- the FDA eventually declares it to be "safe and effective" and the drug is unleashed for public consumption.
Indeed, the drug may effectively impact that one marker. But here's where the problem starts: every drug has a systemic effect, and these systemic effects are not accurately measured (or admitted) in clinical trials. For example, statin drugs do, in fact, lower bad cholesterol levels. But they do this by compromising the ability of the liver to create all types of cholesterol, including the "good" cholesterol and important hormones that the body manufactures from cholesterol. Statins may have one measurable, positive effect according to the medical charts, but they simultaneously throw off the body's healthy physiology in a hundred other ways such as blocking your sex drive.
Clinical trials don't pay much attention to these other effects; they're just looking to prove one particular thing and get FDA approval to market the drug as a miracle cholesterol fighter. What other effects the drug has on the human body are largely ignored. And when clinical trial participants start showing these severe effects, they are typically "dismissed" from the trial in order to ensure that trial results look positive. In this way, extremely toxic drugs are actually approved by the FDA as "safe."
Prescription drugs represent a war on the American people
This situation means that, right now, prescription drugs are killing 100,000 Americans each year and injuring more than two million. Those are the statistics from the Journal of the American Medical Association, and that figure doesn't include the 40,000 or so who are killed each year by over-the-counter pain medications. These are staggering figures: it's like having twenty-five 9/11 attacks each year, but instead of terrorists flying the airplanes, it's pharmaceutical company CEOs. There are more deaths and injuries caused each year by pharmaceuticals than in any U.S. war or conflict since World War II.
And yet pharmaceuticals continue to be marketed as miracle drugs that can help people be healthy. But as I've mentioned, there are no extremely healthy people taking lots of prescription drugs!
The counter argument
The obvious counter to this argument is that people only start taking prescription drugs after they're already sick. But that's not true: statins are now being pushed onto perfectly healthy people who have cholesterol levels of 115, for example. They're supposed to start taking statins as a preventative measure, even though there's nothing wrong with them. With a similar lack of wisdom, the American Diabetes Association has recommended that all diabetics start taking statin drugs even though there is no scientifically proven benefit to doing so just in case some benefits are someday discovered!
And statin drugs are already known to cause an alarming number of dangerous side effects. After being consumed for just a few days, statin drugs start interfering with normal liver function. Within a matter of weeks or months, the patient often shows new symptoms or disorders. Upon visiting a western medical doctor, they are diagnosed with another disease or condition and -- guess what? -- given another prescription drug to take in combination with the statins. In the business world, this is called "upselling the customer" -- getting the same customers to buy more stuff, thereby greatly increasing your profit margin.
And so it goes: one prescription after another, like boxcars on a train, until the patient is: 1) financially depleted, and 2) suffering the ravages of extreme chemical toxicity from prescription drugs. By the time a typical patient finally dies from complications caused by the prescription drugs, they may have spent $100,00 or more on drugs alone. And that number can be multiplied even further if "heroic drugs" are prescribed during the patient's last surviving days.
Dangerous drug interactions are rarely tested
There's another factor to consider here, too: prescription drugs are rarely tested for dangerous interactions with other drugs. In other words, even though the FDA might have approved drug A for one thing, and drug B for another, nobody ever tested what happens in human beings when both drug A and drug B are taken together. Far too often, the combination is toxic, and many prescription drug combinations are fatal. Those that are not fatal may cause other injuries, meaning they will destroy the patient's liver or pancreas, which will of course create demand for even more prescription drugs to deal with those issues.
In this way, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. When you visit a western medical doctor and take even a single prescription, you're caught in the spiral of pharmaceutical dependence. The only way to escape this trap and actually restore your health is to give up all prescription drugs and, instead, make radical changes to your diet and lifestyle -- and seek our naturopathic or holistic treatments -- to restore your health. This is the only way to create lasting health.
Where are all the healthy, happy, athletic prescription drug takers?
Getting back to the main point here, doesn't it make sense that if prescription drugs made people healthy, there would be all sorts of healthy, happy, athletic people walking around touting the benefits of all the drugs they're taking? If drugs were good for you, there should be hundreds of thousands of such people right now. They should be mentally sharp, have low body fat, high bone density, healthy digestive tracts, healthy blood chemistry, vibrant skin, high energy, excellent moods, and so on. And yet this is not at all the case.
Typically, when you meet a person who is taking multiple prescription drugs, they are overweight or obese, chronically fatigued, mentally depressed, sickly in appearance, mentally clouded, suffering from several blood chemistry problems, burdened with weak immune systems, suffering from low bone density, and emotionally unstable. Sadly, this is not only the typical prescription drug patient I'm describing here, this also describes many doctors and health care workers who dole out the drugs in the first place.
Given this reality, it takes a great leap of imagination to believe that prescription drugs are somehow good for you. It's almost like walking into a Michael Jackson video, seeing a roomful of half-dead zombies drooling on each other, and shouting like Jim Carrey, "I want whatever they're taking!"
The promise of drugs is seductive
It's seductive, of course, to imagine that perhaps your state of mental anguish is simply a "brain chemistry imbalance" that can be corrected with antidepressant drugs. It's tempting to treat your osteoporosis with a doctor-recommend pill rather than getting into the habit of daily walking. It's convenient to live on heartburn medications instead of having to make healthy food choices for a change. Popping pills is always easier than changing your life, but popping pills is like making a deal with the Devil: you always end up losing.
When you take prescription drugs on a long-term basis, you're sure to come out worse than when you started. Prescription drugs are only appropriate for short-term interventions that save a patient's life while they make radical changes to their diet, nutrition and lifestyle that correct the underlying imbalances. For example, an obese middle-aged man suffering from extremely high cholesterol is obviously at risk of a sudden heart attack. Statin drugs might be legitimately used for a few weeks or months just to keep the guy alive while he makes radical lifestyle changes that will ultimately bring his cholesterol (and his body weight) down to reasonable levels.
The legitimate uses for prescription drugs
That's a reasonable, legitimate use of prescription drugs. But that's not the way they're being promoted today. Thanks to the culture of greed and widespread lack of ethics at pharmaceutical companies, statins and other drugs are being pushed as lifetime medications while any mention of diet, nutrition or exercise is either completely avoided or, at best, glossed over. The result is that patients are told drugs are the only answer.
Doctors are culpable in this as well: most don't even understand nutrition 101, and few bother to take the time to work with patients on lifestyle changes in the first place. Of course, most doctors would say that it's the patients who aren't interested in making changes, and they're right about that, but there's also something rather negligent about the fact that the vast majority of doctor visits result in a 90-second conversation and a prescription for the latest brand-name drug. (If you're a doctor and don't fit this description, good for you! But make no mistake: your colleagues are miserable healers...)
So why are prescription drugs so popular?
The only reason prescription drugs are so popular today is not because they work, but because they are extremely profitable. It's profitable for the drug companies who mark them up as much as 500,000% over the cost of the raw ingredients, it's profitable for retailers like Walgreens who mark them up even further (and whose business relies primarily on drug profits), it's profitable for newspapers and magazines who gladly cash checks for millions of dollars in drug advertising, and it's even profitable for doctors who receive all sorts of free vacations, "consulting fees," and other not-so-subtle bribes in exchange for writing prescriptions for brand-name drugs.
The system is extremely profitable to everyone... everyone except you, that is. You suffer devastating health consequences when you participate. You get stuck with the medical debt. Your insurance rates go sky-high. And to add insult to injury, you're sicker now than before you started taking the drugs!
Our system of modern medicine is a sham, folks. It's primarily a drug racket that's dominated by Big Pharma. The science is largely distorted (and often outright fraudulent), the ethics have all but disappeared, and the long-term price of all this is going to be enormous. We have an unprecedented problem on our hands that's sickening an entire generation and creating stratospheric long-term health care costs for the next round of working taxpayers unlucky enough to stumble onto all this.
But don't worry: when everybody's sicker than ever, the drug companies will promise they have the next big cure. All you have to do is pop daily pills at $200 each, and all your health problems will be solved!
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