Newsletter v1n9

"We're all ignorant, just on different subjects."(Will Rogers) The DOCTOR YOURSELF NEWSLETTER Vol 1, No 9 March 2, 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.

ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE ALTERNATIVES

Supplemental choline has already shown promise in treating Alzheimer's Disease. In Geriatrics, July 1979, lecithin was employed as a therapy to combat memory loss. Studies at MIT show increases in both choline and the vital neurotransmitter acetylcholine in the brains of animals after just ONE lecithin meal. (Today's Living, February, 1982) http://www.doctoryourself.com/nerves.html

It is important to use enough lecithin to have a reasonable hope of success. You can personally try taking a few tablespoons of lecithin granules (I take between 4 and 8 twice a week, for I want to remember all my great-grandchildren's middle names and sweater sizes someday). Notice anything? You can feel the almost a caffeine-like increase in your awareness. That is probably the effect of an acetylcholine boost. Think what this might do for an Alzheimer's patient. Lecithin is a very safe substance: it is difficult to hurt yourself with essential fatty acids and choline. Try lecithin granules in yogurt, in a fruit smoothie (write for free recipes) or, if you are really new to all this, on ice cream. http://doctoryourself.com/lecithin.html

"(Research) suggests to me that if everyone were to start on a good nutritional program supplemented with optimum doses of vitamins and minerals before age fifty and were to remain on it the incidence of Alzheimer's disease would drop precipitously." (Abram Hoffer, MD, PhD) http://www.doctoryourself.com/hoffer_psychosis.html

Hoffer A: A case of Alzheimer's treated with nutrients. J of Orthomolecular Medicine 8:43-44, 1993.

Hoffer, A: Alzheimer's - An Anecdote (letter) Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients, No.179, 107-109, 1998

I am completing an in-depth article on Alzheimer's disease that will be posted at http://doctoryourself.com later this month. If you cannot wait, email me ( doctoryourself.com/contact.html ) and I will send you an advance copy.

Reader's Question: "What natural approaches might help FIBROMYALGIA ?"

Radical decapitation, perhaps? How many times have folks been told that nagging pain and intense soreness "are all in your head?" As late as 1982, "fibromyalgia" is not even an entry in the doctor's standard clinical reference book, the Merck Manual. You can find "myalgia," though, which is described as "simple muscular pain." A lovely, predictable medical recommendation promptly follows: take aspirin for it! (p 1228)

The most effective therapy I know of is saturation of vitamin C along with the use of calcium/magnesium supplements. This is a "too easy" answer to a problem that so many have really suffered with, I know. Yet just ask anyone you know with fibromyalgia this single question: "Have you tried it yet?" If they still have the condition, I'll bet they haven't. Saturation of vitamin C is easily reached through frequent oral doses, and is fully described in these articles: http://doctoryourself.com/titration.html http://doctoryourself.com/vitaminc.html http://doctoryourself.com/vitaminc2.html http://doctoryourself.com/ortho_c.html http://doctoryourself.com/klenner_table.html

Media scare-stories to the contrary, the safety and the effectiveness of large amounts of vitamin C are well established. Large doses of vitamin C seem to have exceptional anti-inflammatory properties. Probably the main roadblock to widespread utilization of this all-too-simple technology is an equally widespread assumption that there simply must be unknown dangers to thousands or even tens of thousands of milligrams of C daily. Since the time megascorbate therapy was introduced in the late 1940's by Fred R. Klenner, MD, and up to today as used by Robert Cathcart, MD, there is a surprisingly safe track record. Vitamin C is FAR safer than aspirin. Do not be put off the very thing that can help the most until you have looked into it for yourself.

Calcium and magnesium supplementation, even around rather low RDA levels (about 1,000 mg calcium and about 400 mg magnesium daily, in divided doses) can make a big difference in muscle health and happiness. A deficiency of either mineral can cause tetany, or muscle spasm, among other symptoms. This I have mentioned at my website (search from the top of main page, first with the keyword "calcium" and then with "magnesium"). Dietary deficiency is the rule, rather than the exception, with both of these important minerals.

Gentle to moderate exercise can often help, too. Start light and gradually work up. Yoga stretches and walking are two good ways to go. Heavy working out may set you back, so take it easy.

My opinion for one more "secret weapon": Vegetable juicing! I have never felt so good, so energetic, so UN-SORE (is that a word?) as when I juice bigtime. Again, if you have not tried this utterly non-toxic approach to better health, why not today?

Or, you can just get some nice juicy hydrocortisone injections, to go along with the aspirin.

HOMEOPATHY MADE EASY (Learn one remedy a week and that's 50 you know after just a year, even allowing for vacation)

SILICEA, the Homeopathic Lancet (also known as Silica) I know of is no better home remedy for white pus forming conditions, simple boils, and the ever- popular sty on the eylid. An unusual case story is posted at http://www.doctoryourself.com/homeopathy.html I use the 6X potency, which is readily available in health food stores.

More information on this homeopathic "cell salt" and its s pecific health applications will be found in Dr. Schuessler's Biochemistry by J.B. Chapman, M.D. (London: New Era Labs, 1973). I do not sell this book, and expect it is out of print. Try a used book search at an online bookseller, check at some homeopathic websites, or ask your public librarian to get you a copy through interlibrary loan. The Biochemic Handbook (St. Louis: Formur) is another readily available paperback guide.

BOOK REVIEW: Stone, Irwin The Healing Factor: Vitamin C Against Disease (1972) New York: Grosset & Dunlap

It was Irwin Stone who first put Linus Pauling onto vitamin C. Stone thinks we humans have inherited a genetic trait to need but not manufacture the vitamin. More important to most readers, he tells how many, many diseases have responded very well to high-dose vitamin C treatment. This book contains hundreds (over fifty PAGES) of scientific references, making it required reading for you and your doctor. It is doubtful that many skeptics have been as thorough as Stone has in checking vitamin C literature. Most readers will want to begin on page 59, and learn about cures of infections, (bacterial and viral), allergies, asthma, eye diseases, ulcers, poisoning, and the effects of smoking. Vitamin C's role in treating cancer, heart disease, diabetes, fractures, shock, wounds and pregnancy complications is also included. The information on tetanus and glaucoma is especially interesting. This is a unique and incredibly valuable book. While well organized, it does lack an index. A glossary is provided. (258 pp, paper)

VITAMIN MYTH #8: "I can't swallow those big pills!"

If you can swallow food, you can swallow pills. The real problem with pills is that they are too SMALL, not too big. We are designed to eat and swallow a lot of food in a short time. Just watch a hungry dog eat its din-din, or watch your favorite teenager eat pizza. "Over the lips and through the gums, look out stomach, here it comes." On the other hand, we are designed to reject, gag, cough and spit out little things, like bugs and pebbles. That millions-of-years old reflex is alive and well, admittedly more so in some of us. Not to worry; try doing what my Dad and my son did: take your vitamins several at a time: it may actually be easier that way. If this still doesn't help, remember that you can take most vitamins as powders or liquid. Taste? Usually not so great. Another wonderful benefit of tablets and capsules. More hints posted at http://www.doctoryourself.com/tabtaking.html

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This Month's DoctorYourself STEALTH FOOD Award goes to: America's LARGEST TOBACCO COMPANY, Phillip Morris

(You did know that KRAFT FOODS, INC is owned by Philip Morris, didn't you?)

February 7, 2001: Harris Poll Confirms Active Support for Boycott of Philip Morris: Public is Rejecting Image Makeover by Kraft's Parent Company (Thanks to Suren Moodliar and Patti Lynn for writing this article.)

BOSTON-According to a poll released today by Harris Interactive and the Reputation Institute, Philip Morris' $100 million-plus image advertising campaign has not only failed to boost the tobacco giant's reputation, it may even be fueling a growing boycott targeting its Kraft Foods division.

Sixteen percent of respondents familiar with Philip Morris said they had boycotted its products over the past year. The corporate accountability organization Infact, whose NestlÈ and General Electric Boycotts secured major changes in the behavior of those corporations, is behind the current Kraft Boycott-pressuring Philip Morris to stop promoting tobacco to youth with tactics like the Marlboro Man, and to stop interfering in public health policy. "The Harris poll numbers fire a sharp warning to Philip Morris. Such a high level of active involvement in a consumer boycott is groundbreaking, and demonstrates massive potential for expanding the pressure on Philip Morris to end abuses such as the Marlboro Man-arguably the world's largest source of youth tobacco addiction," says Infact Executive Director Kathryn Mulvey

Philip Morris took a gamble by highlighting its ownership of Kraft, and has inspired widespread consumer revolt," says Ray Rogers, Director of Corporate Campaign and an expert on consumer boycotts. Internal corporate documents released through litigation show that Philip Morris knew from its own polling that linking the corporate names would benefit Philip Morris, but harm Kraft. Caleb Shulman, a respondent in the Harris poll, said that having seen the image ads, "Now I refuse to buy any more Kraft or Miller products. Whenever I see the ads, I cringe. They're only running the ads to try to gain credibility."

Cesar Chavez, a past leader of the United Farm Workers, found that boycotts work when they enjoy 5% support. "With the Marlboro cowboy, Philip Morris pushes its cigarettes as an emblem of American ideals," says Mulvey. "But growing numbers of people in the US are actively resisting the expansion of this preventable epidemic, through the Kraft Boycott."

More than 200 organizations and prominent individuals have endorsed the Kraft Boycott. For more information about INFACT, you can visit www.infact.org.

Thanks to Professor Stanton A. Glantz, University of California at San Francisco, for forwarding this article to us. For much more information, go to http://smokescreen.org or email tobacco-info@library.ucsf.edu

Joseph W. Cherner, President of the all-volunteer SmokeFree Educational Services, Inc. has an excellent anti-tobacco website at http://www.SmokefreeAir.org . You can be subscribed to his free anti-tobacco newsletter by writing him at SmokefreeAmerica@usa.net

Today's Reason to Become (More of) a Vegetarian: This Lovely Poem! Dunderbeck, oh Dunderbeck Oh how could you be so mean To ever have invented The sausage-meat machine.

Now all the rats And puddy-cats Will never more be seen;

For they'll all be ground To sausage meat In Dunderbeck's machine.

(Author unknown. I learned this, and other splendid fireside songs, as a seven-year-old YMCA camper. Some things just seem to stay with you.)

YUMMY! THE OTHER WHITE MEAT Just the pig population in North Carolina produces as much sewage as the entire human population of New York City. (TBS Network Earth, February 4, 1996)

DoctorYourself WEBSITE OF THE MONTH: Iowa State University Entomology Club's "Tasty Insect Recipes" were featured on "The Tonight Show." In case you missed it, don't miss this: http://www.ent.iastate.edu/misc/insectsasfood.html Recipes include Banana Worm Bread, Rootworm Beetle Dip, Cheese Dip with Candied Crickets, Mealworm Fried Rice, and, of course, Chocolate-Covered Grasshoppers. The fact that nutrition information is also posted, along with "Where to Buy Insects," really speaks to me.

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COMING IN THE NEXT ISSUE: DIABETES Cheap Fresh Food from Your INDOOR GARDEN A Great Self-Help Article from Barry Sultanoff, M.D. Reader's Questions AND MORE, OF COURSE!

AN IMPORTANT NOTE: This newsletter is not in any way offered as prescription, diagnosis nor treatment for any disease, illness, infirmity or physical condition. Any form of self-treatment or alternative health program necessarily must involve an individual's acceptance of some risk, and no one should assume otherwise. Persons needing medical care should obtain it from a physician. Consult your doctor before making any health decision.

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