by Loraine Holden • July 19, 2008
Too many Americans think they can prevent osteoporosis just by taking calcium and vitamin D pills. Magnesium is a component of bone and is also involved in many intracellular enzymatic reactions. You need at least 400 mg magnesium along with 1200 mg of calcium for strong bones. Use a powdered Dolomite in liquid or chew mineral tablets well so they get absorbed. Don’t be afraid of magnesium just because a much greater amount is used in Milk of Magnesia to relieve constipation. Some studies show that 1000 mg magnesium can be used without getting loose stools.
Many chronic conditions from acid reflux to migraine headaches can be helped by daily magnesium. It has also relieved muscle cramps after exertion. Small amounts of magnesium are in green leafy vegetables and in some seeds or in some bottled hard mineral water. But this is one case where taking a pill is necessary for getting enough.
by Loraine Holden • May 9, 2008
A recent article reportd on Netscape says that 300-400 medical doctors commit suicide each year, with about equal numbers for men and women. This is higher than rates in the general population of 23 men per 100,000 adults and 6 women per 100,00 in the U.S.
Most suicides are the result of depression. Physicians can’t admit to being depressed. They do have access to anti-depresseant medicines but also easy access to lethal drugs to end their misery.
Depression often has a genetic predisposition, but certain drugs have been linked to later suicide. Some are used to change the chemicals in the brain. Person’s reactions can vary.
Another possibility is the use of statins, a group of drugs that are taken to lower the level of cholesterol in the blood. The doctors, Michael Eades and Mary Dan Eades, in their book “The Protein Power Life Plan” warn of the dangers of getting your cholesterol too low. They have a graph showing a steeply increasing death rate as blood cholesterol values get below 150.
Many of these are deaths by suicide following depression. Is it possible that even doctors are so afraid of death from heart disease that they try to get their cholesterol as low as possible? The Eades reject the myth promoted by the drug companies and the media that cholesterol causes heart disease.
Does it make sense that half of all adults should be on anti-cholesterol drugs to get their choldesterol below 200? A few decades ago, even insurance companies did not consider a cholesterol value of 300 to be a major risk factor. Now healthy non-smokers are scared into taking statin drugs if their cholesterol value is 240.
The brain is mostly composed of cholesterol. No wonder getting your cholesterol too low can lead to depression. Another danger of statins is they also block the liver from making co-enzyme Q10, important in the metabolism of all cells.
Drug company ads make you think that if you eat a low fat, low cholesterol diet and your blood cholesterol is still too high, you need their statin drug. Research that showed that high-fructose corn syrup causes your liver to make the so-called bad LDL cholesterol as well as making saturated fats and putting both into your blood stream has been ignored. The use of high-fructose corn syrup has increased dramatically in the last thirty years. Meanwhile heart disease has not gone down even as people quit smoking and ate no saturated fat and cholesterol.
Before taking any drug, change your diet. Avoid soft drinks and sweet manufactured foods.
Your body needs cholesterol and can handle dietary cholesterol and saturated fat as it has been programmed to do for hundreds of thousands of years. Eating 100 to 150 pounds of sugars per year, espcially high-fructose corn syrup, is foreign to our metabolism.
Vigorous exercise and eating saturated fat can both increase the good HDL cholesterol.
Exercise can also improve brain function, decrease depression and prevent one cause of suicide. Phycians could set this good example of more exercise and avoiding manufactured foods instead of taking more drugs.
by Loraine Holden • February 14, 2008
Drinking red wine with its resveretrol is not the only reason the French can eat butter and other saturated animal fats without getting heart attacks. They eat liver, heart, kidney and other organs all of which contain large amounts of co-enzyme Q10, an important anti-oxidant that also helps the mitochondria within your cells utilize the energy from food. Statins, drugs that prevent the liver from making cholesterol, also deplete Co-enzyme Q10 throughout the body. It must be replaced if not by a supplement then by eating foods that are rich in this vital substance.
Organ meats are also the biggest source of vitamin K2. This prevents clots in the arteries from forming and sticking to vessel walls to cause inflammation and deposits of cholesterol and calcium. You can avoid the expensive procedures that are used to treat cardiovascular disease by eating all parts of animals as our paleolithic ancestors did and the French and other cultures do today. Eating nothing but red muscle meat or a skinless chicken breast is like eating foods made with white flour instead of whole grains. Our bodies were not programmed over millennia to eat highly purified or manufactured foods. Plenty of fresh vegetables can supply fiber and vitmin K1 but not K2. However, if you’re a vegetarian, you have to get vital substances from (often expensive) supplements instead of from natural animal foods.
by Loraine Holden • July 26, 2007
The high cost of health care is being debated in California and elsewhere in the U.S. The best suggestion comes from Dr. Arnold Relman. He was a respected professor and one-time editor of the New England Journal of Medicine. His book “Second Opinion” explains how health care can’t be treated as just another business. Even in the 1970s a noted economist says it doesn’t correspond to economic principles.
However since that time insurance companies have taken over medical decisions. Doctors must spend more time treating their practice like a business instead of being concerned with healing.
He suggests a single payer, the government, to get the lowest administrative costs. Doctors could join together with both specialists and general practitions in voluntary non-profit groups. Patients could decide which group they wanted and could change if necessary. Doctors would be paid a salary and not by the “piece-work” formula that is driving up costs and not benefiting patients.
You have heard elsewhere that there are 47 million uninsured Americans. Most are the working poor or small business owners who just can’t afford the coverage.
Dr. Relman states that as a country we are spending twice what other advanced countries do per person and are ranked among poorer countries in some criteria like infant death rate.
He says one of the reasons doctors have lost their vocations as healers is because of a Supreme Court decision saying that legal and medical associations could not be exempt from fair trade rules. This has led away from internal regulation of their members and a wide open use of advertising and other business practices. In order to compete, even the most conscientious doctors or non-profit HMOs (Health Maintenance Organizations) have had to consider their practice like a business and cut corners in the name of profits.
Persons who say they don’t want some government bureucrat standing between them and their doctor seem to forget the many layers of employees in insurance companies or for-profit-HMOs. There are expensive lawyers, statisticians, claims adjusters, middle managers and secretarial staff, all dedicated to increasing profits. Stock holders also expect a profit on their investment and the CEO (Chief Executive Officer) thinks he deserves a salary of several million dollars just like a rock star or professional athlete.
Medicine should once more be a healing profession.
In California Governor Schwartzenegger says everone should be required to buy health insurance. The government would subsidize the poorer people. To me, this is like saying that everyone should buy bottled water instead of communities providing pure water for everyone. Mandating health insurance would drive up costs even more.
It would be like the boondoggle of the drug benefits of Medicare. The law was written for the benefit of the drug companies and if not changed will drive up the cost of Medicare and the taxes that support it.
Instead of making insurance companies and pharmaceutical giants even richer, we should change our attitude as suggested by Dr. Relman. More medical students are women. (I was only one of five in a class of 70) Women as well as many men want to be doctors in order to care for their patients not become businessmen.
If you’re in California you may have the chance to vote for Senator Sheila Kuehl’s bill of a single payer plan that some call “Medicare for all ages.” Like social security it would have a much lower administrative cost than that of for-profit HMOs or insurance companies. If vetoed by the governor, it could be one of the propositions put on the ballot next year.
Of course insurance companies will spend millions to keep their lucrative practices. If the government pays part of their bills for poorer people, they will make even more.
We need health care for all not health insurance for all.
by Loraine Holden • July 18, 2007
An article of July 18, Chicago AP describes the results of a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. It said a low fat diet loaded with many fruits and vegetables was not better than a standard healthy diet for breast cancer survivors.
First, it did not mention if the women used sugars. Dr. Bob Arnot tells his patients in his book , “Breast Cancer Prevention Diet” not to use sugar. Rapidly growing cells like new cancer cells are stimulated by sugar.
Now, most manufactured foods use high-fructose corn syrup instead of table sugar. This artificial product has been shown to increase blood fats and LDL-cholesterol. More experiments should be done on this before anyone should use it in any form. The biggest use is in soft drinks and many fruit flavored beverages.
Fat has gotten a bad name in the last thirty years. Finally, doctors and others realize that trans-fats from hydrogenated vegetable oils are harmful. However, they still say to avoid natural saturated fats. Studies showing a relation of animal fats to any type of cancer do not consider what these fats might contain. Unless the animal is raised on an organic farm, it will have insecticides and other toxins in its meat and milk. These are foreign to our genetic background and could well promote cancer.
Dr. Bob Arnot also tells his patients not to use most bottled vegetable oils. These contain too much omega-6 fatty acids.
Again, animals raised organically can contain the healthful omega-3 fatty acids as do wild salmon and other cold water fish. Excess omega-6 fatty acids are changed into too much arachidonic acid which is bad for your immune system.
I would like to see a study using adequate fat, including organic saturated fats and oils with omega-3 fatty acids. These with no sugar to very, very low sugars plus adequate fruits and vegetables should improve breast cancer survival.
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