HealthBeat News

Author: Wellness Club

  • Surviving The Bad Times

    Surviving The Bad Times – When the lights go out and your debit card doesn’t work…

     

    By Nurse Mark

     

    Our world is a restless and sometimes dangerous place – whether the disaster-de-jour is naturally-caused as in the earthquakes of Chile or Haiti or Turkey, the floods or tornadoes or hurricanes right here in our own country, or the man-made disasters that fill our daily news reports from around the world – terrorism, chemical spills, riots, strikes, social unrest, economic meltdowns, and all manner of other unpleasantness.

    My point is that we need to be thinking: If Bad Things Happen and it’s up to me to look after the safety, health, and well-being of my family am I prepared to do so?

    A brief excerpt from a recent article by author Barbara Simpson – the entire article can be found here: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=127205

    Picture this: Your city is in virtual ruins because of a natural disaster. You’re trying to gather your family and stay with your belongings and what’s left of your home or business. You have no electricity, water or food. Your main goal is to stay safe, stay together and stay alive. Think Haiti. Chile. New Orleans. As hours pass, you realize there’s no police or firefighter protection for you, and there’s no military in sight.

    And in another correspondence over the weekend:

    Emergency tip from a friend in Chile:
    “We’ve all came through the event okay, and we’re fine for now. Our only immediate issue is a shortage of cash! The earthquake instantly converted all of Chile to a ‘cash-only’ society!  Checks, and even credit cards, are currently worthless here and of absolutely no use.  Some items can be bartered, but, right now, cash is king!”

    Have you thought about how you might manage? If power and phones are out for more than a few hours? If it is not safe to travel, even to the corner grocery? And if you can get to the corner grocery, and the power is out, what good is that? You’ll not be able to use your credit card or write a check… even if there is what you need available the stores will likely be locked since they will be without power too. And if the stores have been “opened” as many were in New Orleans during hurricane Katrina are they a safe or wise place for you to be?

    Lets face it, there are times when it is best just to hunker down in our homes and ride out the storm.

    Are you prepared to do that?

    Do you have a week or two worth of non-perishable food on hand? Food that can be prepared without electricity or natural gas? Sure, you might have a sack of rice, or beans, or pasta – but without power or gas how will you boil them?

    What about water? Will it be safe to drink municipal water (if it is still running) or do you have a backup supply? Do you have an emergency water purifier in case local water becomes contaminated?

    Are there any medicines that you must have? What about your vitamins and supplements? Since food might be a bit of a problem, your vitamins become even more important! You can get along just fine for quite a while on reduced rations – as long as you are maintaining your nutritional status with vitamins, minerals, and micronutrients.

    Here are a few random thoughts on this from me:

    Protein: In terms of maintaining health through diet, protein is an essential nutrient. Carbohydrates, that is breads, pastas, beans, rice, and the like are not essential – they are just empty carbs and they are often expensive to prepare in terms of energy for boiling or baking. If food is short we’ll take what we can get – but health-preserving protein will be “golden.” Why not consider keeping a few containers of whey protein on hand? A couple of tasty servings of whey, simply mixed with water, will go a long way toward meeting your daily protein needs and keeping you fit and strong. While you are at it, add a serving of a fruit and vegetable drink like Red Alert or Greens First to your whey shake, and you’ll be getting the equivalent of 10 servings of fruits and vegetables! To really top it off, add some flax oil and a scoop of Maxi Fiber to make it a “full meal deal”! See our recipe for the Super Shake – if the power is out you may not have ice or your blender (unless you have a small generator – not a bad idea either!) but the Super Shake can be mixed up and shaken by hand in any jar or container with a snug-fitting lid.

    Vitamins: Troubled times are NOT the time to “economize” and “cut back” on your vitamins and other supplements! Lets think about this for a moment – you take your vities to stay healthy and to make up for the missing nutrition in our food (see Vitaminless Vegetables) during the good times – so why would you cut back on these during lean times? More than ever you will need to ensure that your body has all the nutrition it needs in order to remain strong and fend off illness and infection! Here’s my suggested minimum: keep at least a full month, or better two months supply of Maxi Multi, Maxi Greens, and Maxi Marine fish oil on hand for each member of your family. Keep on hand the same amount of any other important supplements that you use as well.

    You will also want to be sure you have a good supply of things such as Dr. Myatt’s B.A.M. to treat infections, activated charcoal and / or Enteraklenz for G.I upsets and charcoal poultices, Bromelain because it’s such a good anti-inflammatory, and cayenne lobelia tincture for shock, hemorrhage, and cardiovascular emergencies.

    All of these things, like whey protein and Maxi Multis, will keep well in their containers – they do not need refrigeration or other special treatment – so they can be kept in stock for emergencies. Just remember to rotate your stock so that you always have the freshest possible stock on hand!

    What else can you do? Well, there is plenty of advice out there for things to consider keeping on hand for emergencies: first aid kits, blankets, flashlights, generators, spare batteries, fuel, candles, warm clothing, a radio, some cash, a defensive firearm and ammunition if you are so disposed and it is legal for you to do so (be sure that you and all family members have received safety training and know how to use it!),  the list goes on and on. I am not a big fan of keeping gold or silver or jewelry as “emergency currency” – who will be able to “make change” for that gold coin when you go to spend it?  Personally, my tastes in “precious metals investments” run more to the “precious metals” brass and lead…

    So in closing, let me offer my prayers for you and for all of us that our planning and preparation for such difficult times is unnecessary. But I would rather take a razzing and be called a “survivalist” during the good times than have to watch my family, friends, and neighbors suffer should, Heaven forbid, some disaster strike us and I had not given my 2 cents worth of free advice. Besides – I like the old Boy Scouts motto: Be Prepared!

  • Another "Miracle" Product – Is It Real? A Scam? Both?

    Another “Miracle” Product – Is It Real? A Scam? Both?

     

    By Nurse Mark

     

    Our friend Ron is back safely from Iraq – welcome home Ron!

     

    Ron wrote us to ask about the latest “miracle product” that he has been reading about. Here is his note:

    Hey Doc. & Mark . Its Ron & I’m back from Iraq for a while.. I was home reading… [and] …any way I had someone talking to me about MMS  They said they used it and it is absolutely the greatest all natural gift from God. So I went to Ebay and looked some up. Most sellers have  free ebooks  that can be downloaded. It was some very very interesting reading. Just wanted your thoughts on it. I hope you are doing well and I look forward to your emails. Thanks Ron

    We’ll cut Ron some slack on this one – after all, he has been overseas for a while and probably did not catch our recent HealthBeatNews articles where we discussed MMS: see Is It Real, Or Just Another Sales-Pitch? Dr. Myatt Will Know! and Login problems, Comments, And MMS Feedback.

    Hopefully Ron will have a look at these two articles and get a pretty good idea of our thoughts on the subject.

    Here is the “short course” when it comes to sorting out the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to any of these products:

    • Does the product sales pitch refer to real, genuine, peer-reviewed studies and journal articles in support of it’s claims? Or are the claims based on nothing more than glowing “testimonials”? ‘Scuse me – my “Bogus Alarm” buzzer just went off…
    • Is the product presented as being “absolutely the greatest all natural gift from God”? This sort of claim has to really raise red flags – since the same could be claimed for Prozac or Lipitor or any number of other drugs… Claims like this really get my B.S. Detection Meter pointing ‘way up in the red zone…
    • Is this a product being sold via multi-level marketing, or on eBay, or by high-pressure pitchmen on television shopping channels? Oops – my Scam Alert warning lights are flashing…
    • Is there a “free e-book”  that you are supposed to read? Uh, I think that this “free” e-Book is actually a sales pitch – don’t you? Remember: TANSTAAFL – “There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch”! In this case the “free e-book” tells us all about how wonderful MMS is, and why we all need to have it, and even how we should use it to cure all illnesses known to man while achieving spiritual enlightenment, but it doesn’t tell us how to make the stuff, or exactly how to use it – that information is reserved for the other e-book; the one that is not free…

    So, our thoughts on MMS? It may well be useful – for it should certainly function as an antimicrobial, and possibly an antiviral – as does good ol’ chlorine, to which this is very closely related. It is not, however, “absolutely the greatest all natural gift from God” – there is nothing particularly natural about it, and it is not really a substance that our bodies need to be fed on a regular basis to maintain health. Try it for malaria – the anecdotal stories are plentiful for that and there is little else that works well. But if you don’t actually have an infectious disease that you are trying to treat, why would you take a chemical intended to kill infections? Just in case? Say… I just happen to be selling a bridge – in Brooklyn – and I’ll make you a great deal on it… And while you’re at it, Big Pharma would like for you to take Lipitor just in case you might ever be at risk for developing high cholesterol… “Just In Case”…

    Should anyone be using MMS in deference to, say, a good daily multiple vitamin vitamin supplement? Don’t be silly! Vitamins are required by your body for the maintenance of your good health – MMS is not!

    Folks, money is tight these days. Spend your hard-earned coin wisely – a good optimal-dose daily multiple vitamin (like Dr. Myatt’s Maxi Multi) is far better health insurance than oxygenated chlorine. If you have money to burn you might want to have some MMS on hand in case you get, say, malaria or tuberculosis or AIDS, – but a multiple vitamin is more likely to keep you healthy in the first place!

  • Have we ever heard of the "Asparagus Cure"?

    Have we ever heard of the “Asparagus Cure”?

    By Nurse Mark

    We receive helpful emails from folks daily, wanting to let us know about some “new development” or some “newly discovered” cure for this or that. Others just want to know what we think of the claims that arrive in their email inboxes.

    Such was the case for an email touting the “Asparagus Cure” that is enjoying yet another trip ’round  the internet as it has done many times over the last several years. In case you haven’t received this particular email at least once (lucky you!) it extols the wonders and virtues of asparagus as a cure for almost everything and offers instructions for making a rather unappetizing paste of this otherwise delicious vegetable, to be administered to a “patient” four times daily. Yuk!

    As you might have suspected, this is not a “cure” that we here would place much faith in.

    Here are some of the ways that you can tell an article in your mailbox is suspect:

    The “references” mentioned doesn’t exist or they refer to non-peer-reviewed studies or to “studies” performed by or for the company marketing the product or there are none mentioned at all. In the case of the “Asparagus for cancer” article, the “Cancer News Journal” cannot be found. A quick internet search of the term “Cancer News Journal, December 1979” produces just over 5000 results – and it looks like all of them refer to this one Asparagus email. None that I could find referred to any “real” journal or to any other article attributed to this journal. My guess: this is an imaginary article in a made-up “journal” – but it sure sounds impressive, doesn’t it!

    The original author or “researcher” mentioned in the article cannot be found. In this case the person mentioned in the “Asparagus” article cannot be found in any search except in relation to this emailed article. One might think that “Richard R. Vensal, D.D.S.” might have published something else or might be otherwise locatable – but there’s nothing – not not even an obituary or a claim to be in hiding from “those who are suppressing this miraculous cure”…

    The purported “biochemist” in this email also is not identified – odd, since says this is such an important work.

    “Proof” is offered in the form of testimonials or anecdotes. The “proof” of the effectiveness of asparagus in this email comes entirely from anecdotes – and those anecdotes are all of unidentified persons. That in itself might not be so alarming (in order to preserve patient confidentiality), but there is no way to contact any of the doctors mentioned for verification that they did indeed do the tests that are claimed to “prove” the miraculous curative effects of asparagus. The purported author – claiming to be a biochemist – offers his personal testimonial and claims to have lab results to back up his reports – but he fails to offer either his name or a look at his labs…

    Finally, there is the urging that this email be forwarded to “please spread the news” – or alternately “email this to 10 (or 50, or 100) of your friends”… folks, this makes this not only junk mail, but in my opinion a form of internet virus – that is being spread willingly by humans who are duped into choking the internet by sending this sort of thing off to everyone in their address book!

    Even a broken clock tells the right time twice a day…

    And for every scheme or outlandish protocol or bizarre cure that is out there you can find at least one person who will swear on a stack of bibles that this, and this alone, is responsible for curing his or her (or aunt Effie’s or grandpa Grump’s) illness. Never mind that we have no proof that there ever was an illness, or that if there was an illness that there might have been something else (or several things) responsible for the cure, or even that there might have been a spontaneous remission or cure.

    So:

    Is it possible that asparagus cured these people? Yes, it is.

    Is it possible that asparagus will cure whatever ails you? Yes, it is – and so might green apples or coral calcium or standing on your head.

    Does asparagus contain some valuable nutrients? Yes, of course it does.

    Is it likely that asparagus, and asparagus alone, is a miracle cure? Nope.

    Is there any scientific, verifiable evidence that asparagus possesses magical curative properties? Nope, none.

    Why am I so down on asparagus? I’m not! Asparagus is a wonderful, delightfully tasty treat that is high in several important nutrients. I enjoy asparagus every chance I get – lightly steamed with stems in boiling water, smothered in Hollandaise sauce or butter… Mmmm! But I don’t delude myself that it is a cure-all!

    Now, having said all that, here is the note that started all this:

    Hi Dr. Dana,
    What’s your take on this ? 
    be well,
    Bill

    Fwd: Fwd: Asparagus…..whether U believe it or not…

    Just take a few minutes and its worth reading…..whether U believe it or not…..

    Pls. read the contents below & pass to your friends

    [The email can be found at Snopes.com along with their take on it’s validity]

     

    And here is Dr. Myatt’s reply:

    Hi Bill:

    Here is an article that sums up asparagus: Are You a Deer In The Headlights?

    There must be 1,279 herbs and supplements that people tout as being a “cure for cancer.” The problem is that most of these “results” are not generally reproducible for most people. Asparagus doesn’t make my “top ten list” of well-proven substances for cancer.

    My ten cents worth, for free!

    In Health,
    Dr. Dana

  • For GERD: If Not An Acid Blocker Drug Then What?

    If You Don’t Want Me To Take An Acid Blocker Drug, Then What Drug Should I Take?

     

    By Nurse Mark

     

    Big Pharma sure has done a great job of brainwashing America (and much of the rest of the world): The Big Pharma spinmeisters have not only managed to convince people that their symptoms and complaints are somehow the fault of our frail, pitiful human bodies (rather than a direct result of lousy diet, toxic environment and unhealthy lifestyle) they have created an absolute, unwavering, even fervently religious belief that the mighty gods of Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline and the lesser deities of the smaller drug companies have the answer – the cure – the salvation – for whatever ails us in the form of some one or other of their patented concoctions.

    Even those who fancy themselves to be following a more “natural” path to health often fall prey to the “magic bullet” syndrome that has been insinuated, promoted, and perpetuated by Big Pharma for decades: the idea, the belief that somewhere and somehow there is one special thing – one magic bullet – in the form of a drug or a vitamin or an herb that will “do the trick”.

    If only it were so…

    While there is no doubt that Big Pharma has their lap-dogs at the FDA working overtime to suppress any knowledge of natural solutions that might lead to better health, and to eliminate any competition to their patented toxic potions by whatever heavy-handed means necessary (see our recent alerts: Vitamins To Be Outlawed! and Dietary Supplements In The Political Crosshairs Again! Action Alert! for action you must take if you want to preserve your right to vitamins, minerals, herbs, and other natural remedies!) we here at The Wellness Club will never try to tell you that there is any one simple, magic natural cure – it is just not that easy!

    In fact, that is the very definition of “Holistic Medicine” – at least as far as we are concerned: human health is a complicated subject, and must be approached in a comprehensive, all-inclusive way. There is rarely a simple, one-substance fix to any health concern!

    K recently wrote to ask:

    I read the article on acid blockers by Nurse Mark.  If not acid blockers, what do you recommend in their place?

     

    Nurse Mark answers:

    Hi K.

    I’m not sure which of our recent HealthBeat News articles you are referring to – but the bottom line is the same in all of them: no one suffers from GERD or heartburn because they are somehow lacking adequate amounts of acid-blocking drugs in their system. The cure for GERD is to correct the underlying problem, not to just shut off acid production. There is not any other drug that we would recommend in place of acid blocking drugs – not H2 antagonists, not proton pump inhibitors, not even simple pH modifiers like calcium carbonate, aluminum hydroxide, magnesium hydroxide, sodium, or bismuth subsalicylate: these are all drugs and substances intended and approved for short-term use only. Please re-read these two articles for some self-help ideas:

    Help – I’m Hooked On Acid Blocking Drugs!

     

    and

    There Is Relief For GERD – But Why Take Our Word For It?

     

    And if that doesn’t help, please read the article written by Dr. Myatt herself on the subject:

    What’s Burning You?

     

    For those who are absolutely unable to wean themselves away from acid-blocking drugs – and it can be a difficult chore for some – there are some protocols that involve gradual stepping-down of drugs combined with supportive natural supplements that are very effective. This does involve working with a knowledgeable holistic physician like Dr. Myatt though – so you might want to consider at least a Brief Phone Consultation with Dr. Myatt to discuss your options.

    I know that this is not the easy answer you were looking for – but I hope that re-reading these articles will give you some self-help ideas and that if you are still stuck that you will consider a consultation with Dr. Myatt.

    Cheers,
    Nurse Mark

  • Neurotransmitters – A Cry For Help

    Neurotransmitters – A Cry For Help

     

    By Nurse Mark

     

    Sometimes we get letters that just tug at the heartstrings – these are obviously from people who are at wit’s end in their search for help and health.

    Such was the case with this letter from Cindy – the subject line read simply “Help.”

    Hi I was on  a prescription drug for 8 month given to me by my

    doctor it was a benzo I have been off the drug for 3 years and suffer

    from a neurotransmitter depletion can you help me

     

    Yikes! Where to begin…

    There are neurotransmitters, and there are neurotransmitters, and there are neurotransmitters, and… which one are we talking about here?

    First, Cindy, please visit our webpages where we discuss Neurotransmitters, Neurotransmitter Imbalances, and Neurotransmitter Precursor Replenishment. When you have absorbed all that you will know as much about neurotransmitters as most doctors, and more than some. Certainly you will know more than the doctor that had you taking benzodiazepines – a drug indicated for short-term use only – for eight long months.

    Then, have a look at our Mood Disorders page where you will find some good, basic, and very effective support.

    Often, just improving basic health and nutrition status will go a long, long way toward sorting out neurotransmitter depletion and imbalances.

    You may also wish to consider Neurotransmitter Profile testing – this will help you to know which of the many neurotransmitters are in need of attention. The results of this test are very in-depth and can be complicated to understand – so you may want to also consider Physician Interpretation which will give you a written report of findings prepared by Dr. Myatt.

    If all these self-help measures don’t give you the health improvements you are looking for then please consider an Alternative Medicine Consultations with Dr. Myatt.

    In fact, you could save yourself a whole lot of time, effort, and expense by simply doing that first. Hope to hear from you soon, Cindy!