Newsletter v1n6

"Some physicians would stand by and see their patients die rather than use ascorbic acid because in their finite minds it exists only as a vitamin. Vitamin C should be given to the patient while the doctors ponder the diagnosis." Frederick R. Klenner, M.D. (Dr. Klenner's dosage information posted at http://doctoryourself.com/klennerpaper.html )

The DOCTOR YOURSELF NEWSLETTER Vol 1, No 6 January 19, 2001 "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 180 natural healing articles with over 2,500 scientific references.

ULCERS? To give you an idea of the therapeutic power of something as simple as vegetable juice, consider the work of Garnett Cheney, M.D. He had 100 peptic ulcer patients drink four glasses of raw cabbage juice daily. The patients reported dramatically less pain, and X-ray examination confirmed faster healing time. There was no other change in their diet, and they did not have drug therapy. 81% of the patients were symptom-free within one week; over two-thirds were better in just four days. The average healing time for patients given standard hospital treatment was over a month. Cabbage juice worked well for other types of ulcers, also. (Cheney, G., "Vitamin U Therapy of Peptic Ulcer," California Medicine, Vol. 77, Number 4, October, 1952).

No, that was NOT a misprinted year up there. Yes, that date was 1952. A study does not have to be new to be valuable. Ulcers haven't changed any, and neither has cabbage.

VITAMIN MYTH #6: "You will get all the vitamins you need just from eating a balanced diet."

Oh yeah? Let's consider Vitamin E as an example. While cheerfully admitting that fresh olive oil contains natural beneficial cofactors, count the number of IU's of vitamin E in it. There are 26 mg of vitamin E in a CUP of olive oil. (A milligram is close to an IU.) The amount of E that is preventive of cardiovascular disease is at least 100 IU, probably 400 IU, possibly as much as 800 IU daily. And a CUP of olive oil contains less than 30 IU. http://doctoryourself.com/vitamin_e.html

You simply cannot (and should not) eat a sufficiently large quantity of oil to get ample vitamin E.

It is very difficult indeed to achieve even the lowly US RDA's of many important nutrients from your foods alone...unless you eat many portions... in which case you get fat! This exercise helps demonstrate this dilemma to my Nutrition students:

Let's try to create six "balanced" meals, using the food composition tables in any standard nutrition textbook. Do two breakfasts, two lunches, and two suppers. Specifically, attempt to achieve or exceed the US RDA for the following:

Vitamin E; Magnesium; Folic Acid; Pyridoxine (vitamin B-6); Fiber

You may achieve your objective using any foods listed in the food tables and any plausible number of portions of each food. The only limitation is that you must design meals that a person, such as yourself, would actually be willing to eat.

So try it! You may find it rather difficult. Tens of millions of Americans certainly don't manage very well. According to the American Heart Association, nine out of ten Americans do not meet the (rather pathetic) US RDA of five servings a day of fruit or veggie. And one-quarter of Americans do not eat even one single serving of a fruit or vegetable in a given day, according to the National Cancer Institute.

Now want to try this little exercise at McDonalds? http://www.doctoryourself.com/fastfood.html

READER'S QUESTION: "What's a good natural remedy for COUGHING?

One of the safest and most effective herbs to use is called COLTSFOOT (Tussilago farfara). The leaves and flowers of this plant made into a tea is the best cough medicine I know of. You can buy dried coltsfoot at any herb store and at many health food stores. It is not expensive and has few side effects. (Coltsfoot is not for pregnant or lactating women. Look it up and confirm to your own satisfaction that it is suitably safe for your.) Use a tablespoon or two of herb to each mug of hot water. For an adult, several mugs full can even help stop the cough of pneumonia. I know, because I've had pneumonia, and I too have been sick as a dog... a constantly coughing dog, that is. Prescription cough medicine WITH CODEINE did not touch it. Three mugs of coltsfoot tea eliminated coughing for hours. Since then, it has been the only cough remedy we need in our house.

Today's Reason to Become (More of) a Vegetarian: IN THE USA ALONE, 100,000 CATTLE ARE KILLED EVERY SINGLE DAY for food. (Source: ABC-TV PRIMETIME LIVE, Thursday, April 30, 1992)

IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN KNOWN FOR "NO MORE TEARS," but Johnson and Johnson's ad people have really gone one better. Their popular Baby Shampoo now says that it is "As Gentle To Eyes As Pure Water." I've been reading only the front of the label for too long, so I looked on the back to find, in addition to the usual detergents: polyquaternium-10, tetrasodium edta, quaternium-15, and D&C (drug and cosmetic) yellow #10 and D&C orange #4. I am not saying that this stuff is dangerous. In olden times I used it on my kids. I am surprised, though, that J&J would claim it is as gentle to the eyes as PURE water. It might have a pH of 7, but those other ingredients must make it just a tiny little bit different than H20, don't you think? Would you drink a nice glassful of those chemicals on a hot thirsty day? Would you squirt them into your dog or cat's eyes? Then why are they safe for our children's eyes?

Did you know that the US RDI for dietary fiber is set so ridiculously low that it can be met by eating eight Russell Stover Chocolate Fudge Truffle Eggs?

Did you know that Food Stamps can be used to buy "Froot Loops" and "Twinkies," but Food Stamps CAN NOT used to buy vitamins?

Did you know that the US RDA for vitamin C for humans is less than 5% of the government's vitamin C standards for Guinea pigs and monkeys?

Our Privacy Statement: We do not sell, and we do not share, our mailing list or your email address with anyone. You may notice that there is no advertising at http://doctoryourself.com and no advertising in this newsletter. We also do not sell vitamins or other health products, except for Dr. Saul's books, which help fund these free public services.

AMERICAN SACCHARIN SCIENCE IS THE BEST MONEY CAN BUY, and it has been bought off, all right. A substance that can cause cancer has no business being allowed, ever, in the food supply. The Delaney Amendment of the 1950's argued (based on the work of Harvey W. Wiley, M.D., the first head of the FDA) that there is no such thing as a truly safe dose of a harmful substance. If you question this, ask yourself: How many drops of rat urine would you accept in your next glass of lemonade? Twelve? Five? Two? Even half a drop of rat urine? Yet no case whatsoever can be made that rat urine causes cancer. Sanitation an issue, you say? OK, we'll boil the rat urine first. Now how many drops would you accept in your next glass of lemonade?

Where am I going with this? We accept a dose, albeit a small one, of a known carcinogen (saccharine) while we would not accept a small dose of sterilized rat urine. Maybe you are thinking, "But I don't even use saccharin." But maybe you do: read the ingredients list on your toothpaste: saccharine is almost always in there. "But I do not eat toothpaste!" you might say. Maybe you don't... but your kids do. CHILRDEN UNDER SIX INVOLUNTARILY SWALLOW AS MUCH AS A THIRD OF THEIR TOOTHPASTE. If they brush every day, that's 365 small doses of a carcinogen a year. Any dentist will tell you that saccharin chemically does nothing to prevent tooth decay. So it should be taken out.

Wish to be heard? Call the toothpaste manufacturers and tell them to take saccharin out of their products, or you will not buy them.

Start with the two biggest sellers: Colgate: 1-800-468-6502 and Crest: 1-800-492-7378 Additional phone numbers for other brands are welcomed.

Over 80% of all health care interventions and technologies have no scientific evidence of effectiveness. (Smith, R. "Where is the Wisdom: The Poverty of Medical Evidence," British Medical Journal, 303:798-799, 1991)

I MEET MY VERY FIRST HEALTH NUT Comedian Dick Gregory came to our college campus to speak against the Viet Nam war. The year was 1970, and the controversy was running high. At the time I was on the student activities lecture committee, and we knew full well we were bringing in a speaker who would be at least as inflammatory as he was funny. Anything else I knew of Mr. Gregory's politics came from reading Dick Gregory From the Back of the Bus a few years earlier.

I was to be surprised. Gregory had pledged not to eat until the war was over. He started his fast at 308 pounds and was down to 135. To save his life, his promise was amended to not eat any solids until the war was over. Viet Nam went on for years, so this was no wimp-out. He now lived on nothing but juice, fresh vegetable juice. In his lengthy speaking contract were written specifications about which and how many organically-grown vegetables we were to provide for him. So our lecture committee had gone shopping for Mr. Gregory, and presented him with two large brown paper bags of fresh food. He carried them right into the Student Union's now very-crowded press conference room, put the overflowing bags on the big dark-walnut table, and casually sat down.

I was four feet away from the man. The room was ablaze with the dazzlingly bright portable white lights of TV reporters. Cameras whirred and clicked and the questions flew. As he quietly answered, Mr. Gregory calmly commenced juicing. I don't quite remember where the juicer came from, but there it was, all right. Cup after cup of orange or green drinks went into the man. The questions from the press stayed on his anti-war views. I don't recall any questions about his diet. It was weird to watch. I thought Mr. Gregory was off his rocker.

Years later, now pressed into responsibility as Dad of two little children, I was re-reading Mr. Gregory. Only this time, it wasn't his politics I was interested in; it was that darn juice thing. In Dick Gregory's Natural Diet for Folks Who Eat: Cookin' with Mother Nature, Gregory asserted that his kids had hardly ever been sick. I doubted that. Moreover, he wrote, they had never been vaccinated and they had never had any of the common and seemingly inevitable diseases of childhood. This I flatly disbelieved. But, driven by parenthood, I couldn't avoid being curious how he thought he'd managed that. I mean, sure he was wrong, but what if he was right?

So I read his book.

It's most certainly not just about weight loss; it's about health. It's what Gregory found out in the fasting process that is most important. Gregory describes how his health problems went away and how much better he and his family now feel on "Mother Nature's" diet. His personal story is of course included, and it is witty and inspiring reading. Also included is the best 21-page introduction to human structure and function that can be found anywhere (Chapter Four: The Body Owner's Manual). The chapter on fasting is enough to get the reader to try it; it certainly worked with me. Here is a fine introduction to naturopathic medicine nicely disguised as a celebrity bestseller. Bibliography included. Dick Gregory's Natural Diet for Folks Who Eat: Cookin' With Mother Nature (1973: New York: Harper and Row, 164 pages, paper) (I do not sell this book. It will be easiest to locate through a used book search at your bookstore or on-line bookseller, and cheapest to locate through your public library. Ask for help at the Interlibrary Loan department.)

DoctorYourself Recommended WEBSITE OF THE MONTH: http://www.lileks.com/institute/gallery/ has a collection of oddball food advertisements. Did you know there was imitation SPAM? Isn't that an oxymoron?

EYE TWITCHES: A quartet of offbeat suggestions: Some people find that taking lecithin helps stop their twitches. Lecithin is quite rich in choline, which the body makes into the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. The other idea might be to try the homeopathic remedy Kali. Phos. in a health-food-store-available 6X potency. A third suggestion would be to practice a regular form of stress reduction. And really good advice is to knock off the caffeine. See your doctor if twitches persist.

COMING IN THE NEXT ISSUE: MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS ALTERNATIVES CALCIUM WITHOUT DAIRY DOCTOR YOURSELF "SALUTE" TO VALENTINE'S DAY And more, of course!

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Copyright c 2001 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.