Newsletter v1n2

"The biggest deception ever perpetrated upon the American people is the myth that improving our health with vitamins and natural living is somehow difficult or dangerous."

The DOCTOR YOURSELF NEWSLETTER Vol 1, #2

Nov. 24, 2000 "Free of charge, free of advertising, and free of the A.M.A."

Written by Andrew Saul, PhD. of http://www.doctoryourself.com , a free online library of more than 170 natural healing articles with over 2,200 scientific references.

Fluoride is so toxic that only one milligram constitutes a prescription dose. In spite of this, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) allows up to this amount in a single glass of drinking water.

Fact: Most European nations have stopped fluoridation.

Fact: Persons who have grown up with fluoridated water have, on the average, only 1/2 of one filling less per lifetime than people who did not drink fluoridated water (Chemical and Engineering News, May 8, 1989).

Fact: The National Parent-Teachers Association (PTA) withdrew its support for fluoridation on April 17, 1991.

Curiously, fluoridation of public water supplies is rarely seen as the rather imprecise supplementation... or mass medication... program that it is. Nutritionists who are repelled at the fact that now nearly half of all Americans take vitamin C supplements almost always endorse mass fluoridation of everyone's water.

There is absolutely no way to control the dose of fluoride once it is in the water supply, for different people and different ages drink radically different amounts of water each day.

Dr. Richard Foulkes, who had once urged water fluoridation for the entire province of British Columbia, is quoted saying that he was misled by "a powerful lobby." He adds, "Even before 1973 there was very clear evidence that not only is fluoride in water ineffective for dental care, but it is also highly toxic, even at one part per million." (Canadian Whig-Standard, Monday January 27, 1992)

The authoritative Physician's Desk Reference lists adverse reactions to fluoride as low as one-quarter part per million. The EPA allows up to 4 ppm in your drinking water.

Some communities, such as the one I live in (Brockport, NY) successfully resisted water fluoridation for generations... until the town's own water plant was taken over by the nearby fluoridating county of Monroe. Then, without any public hearings, all local water was announced as now fluoridated... a month after they started doing it. No hearings; no discussion; no vote.

In an age of fluoride toothpastes, fluoride mouthwashes and even fluoridated children's vitamins, it is very difficult to justify the very real danger of mandating still more fluoride in everyone's drinking water.

Fluoride (in vitamins or water) interferes with magnesium metabolism in the body according to Dr. John R. Marier, of the Division of Biological Sciences at the Canadian National Research Council, Ottawa, in a paper published in The Proceedings of the Finnish Dental Society, vol. 76, 1980, pages 82-102. This is significant because fluoride toxicity is increased when magnesium levels are low. Magnesium deficiency is widespread in the U.S., especially among children and teenagers, reaching the 99th percentile among young women.

A lengthy and remarkably unbiased review of the detrimental effects of "Fluoridation of Water" appeared in Chemical and Engineering News, Vol. 66, August 1, 1988, pp 26-42. This is the most important single reference on the fluoride controversy you will ever read, or not read, as the case may be.

Does your community fluoridate your water? Is that what you want? Whose decision was it?

MYTHS ABOUT VITAMINS: MYTH # 3 (in a series of hundreds!):

"If vitamins were so good as therapeutic agents, my doctor would know about it."

It is vastly easier to get an anti-vitamin study published than a pro-vitamin study. Not only that, when you expose an anti-vitamin study as flawed, strong forces are at work to keep your criticism from ever being published. Ask Oliver Stone's question from JFK: who stands to benefit most? The medical, dietetic, and pharmaceutical cartel, that's who.

Let me show you. Countless news shows, newspapers, and textbooks have proclaimed that vitamin C in megadoses does no good, and in fact does harm. Here is one of the most widely known, but completely false, "facts" about vitamin C.

Vitamin Myth #4: "Your body doesn't absorb extra vitamin C. All you get from taking vitamin supplements is expensive urine."

Urine is what is left over after your kidneys purify your blood. If your urine contains extra vitamin C, that vitamin C was in your blood. If the vitamin was in your blood, you absorbed it just fine. Think about that.

You can swallow a marble (but please don't) and find it in the toilet bowl a couple of days later. That is because your food tube, or alimentary canal, is essentially just a hollow 25-foot hose connecting your mouth to your anus. That swallowed marble is "in" your body geographically, but it is not in your body the way your blood is. If you stick your finger through the hole of a donut, you might say your finger is "inside" the donut, but it is not in the donut the way the flour and sugar are, right? We can turn you upside down and shake you, and you'll probably barf up your most recent meal, maybe even that marble. Your blood won't come out of you, though. If something is in your blood, it is really in you, fully and utterly absorbed. And If it is in your urine, it had to have been in your blood first.

Standing at the base of the Hoover Dam looking up, you cannot tell how much water is behind it. However, by observing the overflow spillway, you can tell: if the spillway is dry and dusty, full of tumbleweeds, and foxes are making their dens, there has been a drought for some time, and the water level in the dam must be low. If enough water is pouring down the spillway for white-water rafting, the dam must be full. Wasting indicates fullness, just as a cup overflowing is truly a full cup. Urine spillage of vitamin C indicates that you have some to waste, then and there. It does not indicate bodily saturation; bowel tolerance (loose stool) indicates saturation. One takes just enough C to stay just below that level.

It is the absence of water-soluble vitamins such as vitamin C in urine that indicates vitamin deficiency. If your body excretes vitamins in your urine, that is a sign that you are well nourished and have nutrients to spare. It is easier to put a twenty in the Salvation Army pot at Christmas time if you have a few grand to spend shopping. So many Americans are credit-card shoppers and deficit spenders. We are also deficit eaters, trying to obtain a ridiculously low US RDA of vitamins from a selection of nutritionally wimpy foods that cannot really meet any of our vitamin or mineral needs abundantly. Vitamin supplements are a solution, not a problem.

Reader' s Question: "Can vitamin E be a natural substitute for the blood-thinning drug Coumadin?"

At appropriate doses, vitamin E has virtually the same pharmacological properties as Coumadin. This means that appropriately high doses of E can indeed be substituted for Coumadin. There is an article at http://doctoryourself.com/drugalt.html describing one of the cases I have personal knowledge of.

Vitamin E is very different from the (other) fat-soluble vitamins. It is notoriously non-toxic (preemies have been safely given the adult dose equivalent of several thousand IU daily). Vitamin E is also largely destroyed in defending your bod against free radicals. Plentiful vitamin C and (a tiny bit of) selenium contribute to recycling some vitamin E, but we still need it in daily quantities of at least 200 IU and probably closer to 400 or even 800 IU. (Stampfer, M.J., Hennekens, C.H., Manson, J., Colditz, G.A., Rosner, B. and Willett, W.C. (1993) Vitamin E consumption and the risk of coronary disease in women. New England Journal of Medicine. 328:1444-1449.)

I recall that Coumadin, or sodium warfarin, is the same ingredient as used in D-Con rat poison. There are no fewer than six columns of cautions, contraindications and warnings about Coumadin in the PDR. There is much reason to prefer the vitamin; it is far safer, it is just as effective. I have never seen a vitamin E based rat poison.

MUST READ BOOK:

Vitamin C and Cancer: Discovery, Recovery, Controversy
by Abram Hoffer, MD, PhD, with Linus Pauling (1999: Quarry Press, Kingston, Ontario)

Certain politically powerful medical authorities have openly discouraged cancer patients from taking large doses of vitamin C. It is unethical for any doctor to deny therapy that might be of value to her patient. Still, the number of cancer patients who have ever had their doctor recommend a therapeutic trial of large quantities of vitamin C remains small. I predict that there will eventually be a class-action lawsuit brought against orthodox medicine by patients who were wrongly kept from supportive high-dose vitamin therapy.

The grounds for disparaging vitamin C usually center on three inaccurate claims: 1) vitamin C is ineffective against cancer; 2) vitamin C interferes with conventional cancer therapies; and 3) vitamin C is in itself harmful to the cancer patient. Dr. Hoffer refutes each of these fallacious views with the authority of 50 years of medical research and medical practice behind him.

A patient's therapeutic response is the highest of all guiding principles in medicine. If it works, do it. Remember: If there were a sure cure for cancer, you would have heard about it. There isn't. But this just makes it all the more important for patients to demand adjunctive vitamin therapy from their physicians. The number of conventionally-educated, hospital-based doctors that support vitamin C therapy is growing. Dr. Hoffer was among the first. Your oncologist could be next. Let her read your copy of Vitamin C and Cancer. (The full text of this review is posted at http://doctoryourself.com/hoffer_vitc_can.html )

(Note: I do not sell this book. Ask for it at you bookstore or library. If you have difficulty locating it, or any other book or research paper, click here for assistance: http://doctoryourself.com/libraryloan.html )

COMING IN THE NEXT ISSUE:

I sat next to the sickest kid in the school and lived. So what's the big deal with the germ theory?

"Vitamin C causes kidney stones." Baloney!

Readers ask about depression. Our answers will cheer you up.

To submit a question or suggest a topic for the newsletter, email me at doctoryourself.com/contact.html

Copyright c 2000 and prior years Andrew W. Saul Permission to reproduce single copies of this newsletter FOR NON-COMMERCIAL, PERSONAL USE ONLY is hereby granted providing no alteration of content is made and authorship credit is given.