HealthBeat News

Author: Wellness Club

  • A More Practical View Of Government Assistance

    With all of our elected officials working so very hard these days to “earn our support” and to convince us of the truth, wisdom, and enlightened righteousness of their ways (as opposed to the evil and unenlightened ways of their opponents) this little homily might be both timely and entertaining.

    The Montana Cowboy

    A Montana cowboy was overseeing his herd in a remote mountainous pasture when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of a dust cloud towards him.

    The driver, a young man in an Armani suit, Gucci shoes, RayBan sunglasses and Versace tie, leans out the window and asks the cowboy, “If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me a calf?”

    The cowboy looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, “Sure, Why not?”

    The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects it to his Apple iPhone V cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on the Internet where he calls up a GPS satellite navigation system to get an exact fix on his location, which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo.

    He next opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany. Within seconds he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has been processed and the data stored. He accesses an MS-SQL database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with e-mail on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response.

    Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet printer, then turns to the cowboy and says, “You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves.”

    “That’s right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves,” says the cowboy.

    The cowboy watches in amusement as the young man selects one of the animals and stuffs it into the trunk of his car.

    Then the cowboy says to the young man, “Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?”

    The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, “Okay, why not?”

    “You’re a Congressman for the U.S. Government,” says the cowboy.

    “Wow! That’s correct,” says the yuppie, “but how did you guess that?”

    “No guessing required,” answered the cowboy. “You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew to a question I never asked. You tried to show me how much smarter you are than me; and you don’t know a thing about cows. This is a herd of sheep. Now give me back my dog.” 

  • FDA Says: We’re Baaaack! No Vitamin Is Safe!

    FDA Proposed “Regulations” Will Kill Vitamins, Benefit Big Pharma.

     

    • The FDA was prevented 17 years ago from killing off your access to natural supplements, and they are sore losers – they have never forgotten it and they have not forgotten who their masters are.
    • They now have proposed new “regulations” that will effectively kill off the natural supplement industry.
    • These are “regulations”, not “laws”, so they can be enacted, enforced, changed, enhanced and expanded at the whim of a bureaucrat – not a lawmaker.
    • The Wellness Club along with many others in the natural health field is asking you to contact your elected representatives to object to this destructive power-grab by the FDA
    • Click here http://www.capwiz.com/lef/issues/alert/?alertid=51641606&type=CO  to email a petition to your Congressional members.

     

    America is becoming a nation of Bureaucracies out-of-control in their thirst for power, control, and money.

    • There is the BATFE (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives) who have been found to be selling guns to Mexican drug lords. (News for “Fast and Furious”)
    • We have the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) groping little old ladies and children while their agents traffic in drugs. (TSA agents arrested for drug-running)
    • The USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture) fills it’s days sending out gun-waving agents to raid small family farms and food cooperatives for daring to sell unpasteurized milk. (Raw Milk Raid)
    • Armed agents from the U.S. Department of Justice and the US Fish and Wildlife Services teamed up to raid the factories of Gibson Guitars. (Gibson Guitar Raid)
    • Heavily armed swat teams from the Department of Education have taken to kicking in doors to conduct their raids. (Dept Of Ed Raid)
    • And of course, who can ignore the FBI as they mete out their form of justice on various religious groups, women, children, and infants – serving as judge, jury, and executioner all-in-one: what a time and money-saver! (FBI raids)

    So, let us not forget our beloved FDA – who is seeking to further increase it’s ability to protect it’s masters in the Pharmaceutical industry with “regulations” that will effectively end your ability to obtain and use the vitamins, minerals, herbs, and other dietary supplements that you have used safely for decades and have come to depend upon as a part of your good health program. (Draft Guidance for Industry: Dietary Supplements: New Dietary Ingredient Notifications and Related Issues)

    We wrote about this recently in Dr. Myatt’s Wellness Club Forced Out Of Business? when we described the problem and asked you to contact your elected representatives to object to this power-grab.

    To those of you who did call or write your representatives we say thank you. To those who have not yet done so, we ask you to please do not put it off any longer.

    If the FDA gets it’s way you can kiss your natural supplements goodbye!

    We at The Wellness Club are not the only ones sounding the alarm on this – recently many of the other “big names” in the natural health field have taken up the call: Dr. Mercola, Life Extension Foundation, the Alliance for Natural Health USA, the Arizona Naturopathic Medical Association, and many others are joining their voices in warning against this bureaucratic power-grab.

    Here is some information that we recently received from the AZNMA (Arizona Naturopathic Medical Association ):

    Dear AzNMA Members

    Greatest Threat Since FDA Tried to Turn Nutrients into Prescription Drugs!

    Let Your Voice be Heard on September 8th (We know the date is past but please let your voice be heard anyhow)

    The FDA has proposed new guidelines that will enable the government to ban the most effective dietary supplements you are now taking.

    If these guidelines are enacted, many of the most valuable supplements you take today will be removed from the market.

    What is Being Done to Stop this Travesty?

    To give you an idea about how dangerous these draconian proposals are, Life Extension® helped organize a protest. And dozens of other health freedom organizations agreed to synchronize a consumer revolt.

    We need to convince Congress to review the FDA’s absurd claims and stand against the draft New Dietary Ingredient (NDI) guidelines. Please join us in this nationwide campaign!

    We’re asking each of you to phone your Senators and Representative on September 8 (even though this date is past please call any way) and voice your opposition to the NDI (dietary supplement) guidance.

    Tell them why you’re upset over the NDI guidance, and ask them to hold hearings on the FDA’s position.

    The FDA is clearly overreaching its authority, and the logic of its arguments is beyond absurd. Congress has FDA oversight and needs to review the agency’s actions in creating this new guidance.

    Please call the congressional switchboard toll-free at 1-877-762-8762

    They will connect you with your Representative’s office. You can use the same phone number to be connected to the office of each of your two Senators. Here is a Citizen’s Petition you can read to the health staff member you speak with:

    “The FDA has proposed guidelines that place burdensome new restrictions on dietary supplements introduced after October 15, 1994. That means that nutrients that I have been safely using over the course of three decades will be subject to the FDA’s oppressive policies that mandate costly animal testing. This translates into forced withdrawal from the market of many of my dietary supplements and higher prices for me if the supplement is allowed to be sold again. I ask that you call the FDA Office of Nutrition, Labeling and Dietary Supplements at 1-888-723-3366 and demand that they withdraw the proposed guidelines they issued in July 2011 and work with the Alliance for Natural Health to formulate safety guidelines that make sense for the consumer and the economy.”

    Click here http://www.capwiz.com/lef/issues/alert/?alertid=51641606&type=CO  to email this same petition to your Congressional members (but please also phone it in … it’s that important!).

    After speaking with the office of your Representative and two Senators, call the FDA Office of Nutrition, Labeling and Dietary Supplements at 1-888-723-3366 to read the following citizen’s petition to them:

    “I am petitioning the FDA regarding your draft guidance on New Dietary Ingredient notifications for dietary supplements known as Draft Guidance for Industry: Dietary Supplements: New Dietary Ingredient Notifications and Related Issues.

    I demand that you immediately disregard all the proposals you outlined and instead consider a rational and scientific approach to regulating new dietary ingredients that will be submitted to you by the Alliance for Natural Health within the next 90 days.

    Your proposed guidelines on New Dietary Ingredients will cause the price of my supplements to skyrocket, and some of these life-sustaining supplements are likely to disappear altogether.

    This is not acceptable especially when there are no significant reports of adverse reactions to the supplements the FDA may ban.

    In as much as your threat to ban my access to new dietary ingredients is causing me great anxiety which is injurious to my health, I insist that you immediately put your proposed new guidance on hold for a 90-day period so that the Alliance for Natural Health can submit comments to ensure a system that protects me against unsafe ingredients without destroying my access to low-cost effective nutrients.”

    You will be hearing more about this urgent matter from Life Extension and other health freedom organizations very soon.

    Thank you for taking the time to have your voice heard.

    Mark Strom, ND
    Legislative Co-Chair
    Arizona Naturopathic Medical Association

    Please – resolve to take action now. Do not depend on “someone else” to do it – they may be depending on you!

  • Cancer Scandal: Poison For Profit

    Is It Right For A Doctor To Profit From The Misery Of Cancer?

    Opinion by Nurse Mark

     

    Dum Vivimus, Vivamus

     

    Doctors are not allowed to profit from selling drugs, right? Everybody knows that – doctors just write a prescription for whatever medicine is best for the patient, and that’s it – they don’t sell the drug or make profits from it, right?

    Wrong!

    There is one kind of doctor who is allowed, even encouraged to profit from the sale of drugs, and those profits are often so large as to be obscene.

    Those doctors are cancer doctors – oncologists – and they are allowed by law to buy chemotherapy drugs from the drug companies and to re-sell them to desperate cancer victims at a “set” profit. That profit is regulated, supposedly to keep doctors from charging whatever the market will bear. To get around this restriction, chemo doctors usually get deep discounts off the “wholesale price” and then bill the insurance companies (or the unfortunate patient without insurance) for the retail sticker price.

    With many chemotherapy treatments costing thousands of dollars per day, and with little or no solid proof that the treatment is doing anything more than making the poor patient miserable, this might be called “quackery” – a name that oncologists give to natural treatments with far better proof of effectiveness – yet it is perfectly legal.

    Most chemotherapy is outright toxic – it works under the supposition that because cancer cells grow more rapidly than healthy, normal cells they take up (absorb or ingest) substances more quickly than normal cells. This is not far off the mark for many cancers, and most early (and many current) anti-cancer drugs – “chemo drugs” – are toxins that exploit this characteristic of cancer. The idea is that the toxin can be given and will kill the cancer before it can terminally poison the patient.

    Sometimes it works.

    Often it doesn’t.

    Chemo drugs that are claimed (usually based on “research” done by or funded by the drug companies) to statistically extend “mean survival time” by some amount – usually mere weeks or months – more often really just makes the patient’s life seem longer with horrid side-effects.

    Is it possible that the best function of many of these drugs is to extend life long enough for the patient’s wallet (and probably the life savings of the patient’s entire family, including future generations!) to be completely emptied?

    We understand the fear that a diagnosis of cancer brings to someone. The fear of illness, of disability, of disfigurement, of pain, of death.

    We understand that life is precious – invaluable. No mere coin has greater value than a human life – no price can be set.

    Yet oncologists set an exorbitant price on human life every day with their wildly profitable patented drugs.

    Could this be why un-patented natural treatments are not recommended by your oncologist? Could it be that treatments given freely to us by Mother Nature simply don’t generate the big profits that drugs do?

    If an oncologist knew of a simple, non-toxic, effective treatment that could stop many cancers in their tracks and even make them wither up and go into remission, should he tell his patients about it? Even if it doesn’t make him a profit?

    Should the oncologist trade thousands of dollars a day in profit by toxic chemicals for whatever reasonable amount can be charged for the teaching and coaching that will help a cancer victim learn the simple dietary changes that can cause a metabolic shift that puts cancer on the run and turns that patient from a victim into a survivor?

    Certainly an ethical cancer doctor should do those things – but will he?

    Let’s be honest – there are plenty of people who have been told they have cancer, given chemotherapy, and now are told they have been cured. There are some cancers for which chemotherapy is proven to be highly effective.

    Some cancers, in their early stages, will go away on their own.

    But there are also plenty of people who have endured the misery of chemotherapy and lived not a day longer than they would have lived without it.

    Even if a cancer patient elects to try the chemotherapy regimen (assuming they can afford it) that the oncologist is offering, there are natural (but un-profitable – read “inexpensive”) treatments and strategies that work synergistically with conventional treatment to improve outcomes and lessen or even eliminate the nasty side-effects of many conventional chemotherapies and that will often allow smaller, less toxic doses and regimens to be equally effective.

    Someone facing a diagnosis of cancer and the chemotherapy that will inevitably be offered might want to ask the oncologist about a proven dietary strategy which will cause a metabolic shift that will stop many cancers in their tracks. This metabolic state literally starves most cancers to death, while actually providing improved nutrition that will correct a host of other health problems too.

    Ask the oncologist about using a metabolic technique called Dietary Ketosis In The Treatment of Solid Tissue Malignancy – better yet, print out this free medical paper (references and all) and show it to your oncologist. If your oncologist gives you a blank look, or pooh-pooh’s it saying “that mumbo-jumbo diet stuff doesn’t work!” (or words to that effect – we’ve heard ’em all…) then just smile and nod your head and resolve to book a Brief Telephone Consultation with Dr. Myatt just as quickly as you can – for it is Dr. Myatt who wrote the paper and teaches other doctors on this subject!

    Why would Dr. Myatt offer an important scientific paper for free or make Brief Telephone Consultations available so inexpensively? Because she and all of us at The Wellness Club believe that it is morally wrong for cancer treatment to be a for-profit cash cow – especially when those for-profit treatments cause so much misery and provide so little benefit.

    And after all – if someone is willing to spend thousands of dollars a day and endless days in a treatment center having toxic chemotherapy drugs dripped into their veins don’t you suppose it might be worth it to them to spend 20 minutes in a telephone call with the doctor who wrote the paper on a simple and effective dietary change that could help turn the misery of that chemo treatment into a success in the battle against their cancer?

    Wouldn’t it be worth trying a diet that is easy to follow (no complicated juicing schemes or odd food “rotations”), delicious (no pond-scum tasting “health drinks” or monotonous rabbit-food), and inexpensive (no special, unobtainable, order-only-from-us specialty foods) if there was a chance that it could halt the cancer and enhance the effect of the chemotherapy?

    Finally, here is a “news-flash” for anyone who hadn’t figured it out: We are all terminal! We are all going to die of something, sometime. It is up to each of us to make the very best of what we have until that time comes.

    Dum Vivimus, Vivamus – Let Us Live While We Live

    Our goal at The Wellness Club is to help people to live while they live.

     

    The Latin phrase “dum vivimus, vivamus” is thought to have been an Epicurean motto, and has been attributed to the Latin poet Horace (QUINTUS HORATIUS FLACCUS 65-8 B.C.). It is generally translated as “While we live, let us live!”

    The meaning of this phrase was expanded on by the Puritan pastor, author and hymn writer Philip Doddridge (1702-1751) in an epigram on his family coat of arms, which included this motto:

    “Live whilst you live,”
    the Epicure would say,
    And seize the pleasures
    of the present day.
    “Live whilst you live,”
    the sacred preacher cries,
    And give to God each moment as it flies.
    Lord, in my views, let both united be;
    I live in pleasure whilst I live to Thee.

     

    Dum Vivimus, Vivamus – Let Us Live While We Live

     

    References:

    1. “How Medicare’s Payment Cuts For Cancer Chemotherapy Drugs Changed Patterns Of Treatment” Health Affairs, Published online ahead of print 6/17/10, content.healthaffairs.org
    2. “Medicare Cuts May Have Led Docs to Prescribe More Chemo” HealthDay News, 6/17/10, consumer.healthday.com
    3. “Medicare Cuts Increase Cancer Treatments, Study Finds” David Cameron, Harvard press release, 6/17/10, hks.harvard.edu

  • Can I Get Too Much Of These Supplements?

    When it comes to vitamins and herbs and dietary supplements, can there be “too much of a good thing”?

     

    By Nurse Mark

     

    We often get questions from people who don’t really understand the difference between the drugs that Big Pharma synthesized in it’s labs and that your conventional doctor so willingly prescribes, and the natural vitamins and minerals and herbals that Mother Nature obligingly creates for us.

    For several generations now people have been raised on pharmaceuticals – and not only do they expect prompt, even miraculous effects or results from these synthetic substances, most people have an instinctive awareness that too much of many of these substances can be harmful, poisonous, toxic, even fatal.

    While it is true that too much of virtually anything can be, well, too much – that is to say that you can overdose on almost anything, including water – most natural substances tend to be far less likely to cause harm when used sensibly.

    Yes, we all have heard of the people who turn themselves blue by taking huge doses of colloidal silver daily for years, or the overweight, out-of-shape, and dehydrated baseball player who collapsed in the heat and died at spring training camp after using ephedra as a weight-loss aid – the FDA loves to use these stories in it’s war on natural medicine and the press likes to sensationalize them because, well, after all, it is all about selling newspapers and commercials…

    What we don’t hear about are the people who have been limping along, chronically malnourished from our nutrition-light modern diet who experience near-miraculous improvements in energy and overall health through the simple addition of an optimal-dose daily multivitamin like Maxi Multi or discover that they can throw away their “little purple pills” for that long-standing GERD and heartburn when they improve their digestion with Betain HCL or digestive enzymes like Similase.

    Unlike most pharmaceutical drug offerings, which tend to have a prompt and often profound effect (think “tranquilizers” or “muscle relaxers” or “asthma inhaler”) most natural substances tend to have a more subtle effect. Often someone may use a natural substance for days or weeks or months without noticing any big obvious change – until they suddenly realize that they feel better and somehow no longer feel those aches and pains or whatever other problem was bothering them – it’s just, well, better now.

    Unlike the “water pills” given for congestive heart failure, or the “blood pressure pills” given for hypertension that will have an obvious effect virtually overnight (often at the expense of some nasty side-effects), the simple dietary change and few simple herbs that will accomplish the same thing might take a week to achieve full effect – but they do it without the dangerous side-effects…

    We often work with fertility patients who are receiving treatment from Dr. Jeff Braverman who works closely with Dr. Myatt to use natural herbs and supplements to enhance his high-tech, cutting-edge infertility treatments. This synergy of cutting-edge “high-tech” and scientifically-based natural therapy has proven to be highly effective. Still, it leaves some folks wondering about the possible interactions between these two treatment modalities, and about the potential for there to be “too much of a good thing” as can be seen in this patient’s questions:

    I had a telephone consultation with Dr Braverman last week & while I wait for blood test results he suggested I start taking melatonin, antioxidants, mixed greens, etc. I have found the melatonin here & have been taking it but I was unsure what products from here to take for all the others. Dr Braverman suggested Maxi Multi, Maxi-Flavone & Maxi Greens. I see that the Maxi-Greens has some of the same ingrdients as the Maxi-Flavone – if I take both, will I be taking too much of those ingredients or is it safe to take both? Also, if I take all 3 of these products mentioned above, plus the Melatonin, can I also order & take the CoQ10? What about things like Lipoic Acid, Lycopene, Acetyl L-Carnitine – should I be taking those too?

    I really want to be sure that I am taking the right stuff & not doing anything that would have adverse side effects. Would they all work together or would that all be too much? I just want to be sure I order the correct stuff & get the maximum benefit for my fertility journey which has been such a struggle for the past 5 years.

    Regards
    Giselle

     

    Hi Giselle,

    In general terms, you should understand that dietary supplements such as those you mention are not akin to pharmaceutical drugs in that they are not isolated, synthetic compounds designed to modify or interfere with specific or discrete physiologic processes, but rather they are concentrated nutrients which provide the nutritional building blocks needed to allow your body’s own natural processes to achieve a more healthy balance and better function.

    As you know, our modern way of life, coupled with the decline in the nutritive values of our modern diet has left a lot of people sadly malnourished in many ways and this results in a wide variety of health problems including sub-optimal fertility.

    To say that you might “overdose” on these natural substances would be like saying that someone could “overdose” on fresh vegetables – it’s possible, but highly unlikely!

    Still, this is a complicated subject and it is easy to become confused and misdirect one’s efforts – which is why we always suggest a Brief Consultation with Dr. Myatt to help you get a much clearer understanding of the nuances of these dietary supplements and a far more focused approach to using them to achieve your health goals. This intense 20-minute conversation with Dr. Myatt could be your very best natural health-improvement investment ever!

    I will be happy to work with you to get a Brief Consultation scheduled.

    Please find more information regarding Dr. Myatt’s Brief Telephone Consultations here: https://www.drmyattswellnessclub.com/BriefConsults.htm

    Cheers,
    Nurse Mark

  • Out-Of-Control Blood Sugar?

    Out-Of-Control Blood Sugar?

     

    Isn’t this dangerous? What to do?

     

    By Dr. Myatt

     

    The availability of inexpensive electronic gizmos for the testing of blood sugar (often called “diabetic meters” or “glucose meters” and sold cheaply by giant chain stores like Wal-Mart, Walgrens, CVS and others) has give a lot of otherwise healthy people something more to worry about.

    You see, we tend to be enamored of “tests” and “numbers” and we want to be able to satisfy ourselves by means of these tests and numbers that all is well with our health.

    The problem comes in the interpretation of those tests and numbers – we must be careful when we go looking for “absolute” levels or numbers for our human bodies rarely oblige us by being exactly normal and average and according to the “numbers” – whether it is blood pressure, pulse, cholesterol, or in the case of the writer of the following question, blood sugar.

    Judith wrote:

    my glucose level goes from 74 to 90’s to 76 to 120 within days… I eat NO sugars or breads, or starches (grains, potatoes) no high glycemic fruits or vegetables, exercise almost daily, eat loads of organic vegetables, raw and lightly cooked, use only extra virgin olive oil and extra virgin coconut oil….. my hormones test is in balance… my cbc is within normal range… what can be causing this fluctuation?????

    Here is my answer to Judith:

    This is a normal range of fluctuation based on eating. Blood sugars will ALWAYS go up after meals and that is normal.

    Your levels are still quite low. I see nothing abnormal here.

    In fact, this is a normal fluctuation all within one day.

    Two additional things.

    First, did you know that 58% of all protein is gluconeogenic, meaning that it can be converted to glucose? So even protein (which we MUST have) gets made into a small amount of glucose.

    Secondly, if you are worried about your sugar levels, have an A-1C test performed. This is a blood test that tells what your average glucose levels have been for the preceding 4 to 12 weeks. It is now the “gold standard” for measuring blood sugar levels in diabetics.

    Again, blood glucose will always fluctuate based on eating, even without carbs. Your levels look great.

    You are worrying about a “non issue”!

    In Health,
    Dr. Myatt