Newsletter v3n14

"We're all ignorant, just on different subjects." (Will Rogers)

The DOCTOR YOURSELF NEWSLETTER (Vol. 3, No 14) June 5, 2003

"Free of charge, free of advertising, and free of the A.M.A." Written and copyright 2003 by Andrew Saul, PhD, of http://www.doctoryourself.com , a free online library of over 350 natural healing articles with nearly 4,000 scientific references.

MALAISE "I'm all right now, but you should have seen me last week." (Rodney Dangerfield)

You can feel it coming: the blahs, the dull headache, the achy body, the achy-breaky heart, the weakness, the get up and go that got up and went. Maybe you feel a chill or sneeze a few times. It is often called "the malaise" of approaching, encroaching illness. When you detect it, it is time to do three things:

First, you can thank your body for working correctly. Symptoms are hardly an unmitigated delight, but they are as valuable as stop signs or pain receptors. Just as we need to know when we are sitting on a hot stove, we also need to know when our resistance is down and sickness is imminent. Pay attention. It is advance notice and should be heeded.

Second, the moment you feel the malaise, you should take a teaspoon or two of vitamin C powder. It is easily buffered with a meal, snack or calcium-magnesium tablet. Even unbuffered, a good strong solution of ascorbic acid is no more acidic than Coca Cola. http://www.doctoryourself.com/tabtaking.html

A good rule of thumb: "Vitamin C should be given while the doctor ponders the diagnosis." (Frederick R. Klenner, M.D., F.C.C.P.)

Third, get out your juicer and use it. Begin a juice fast (along with vitamin C saturation) and you may see malaise's taillights quickly departing down the track. http://www.doctoryourself.com/juicefast.html http://www.doctoryourself.com/juicing_2.html

LAW OF CURE Constantine Hering (1800-1880) formulated a Law of Cure which states that all healing begins from the head down, from within out, and in the reverse order that symptoms originally appeared. This concept, originally a homeopathic one, has several practical applications:

1) Feeling better is a most important step in getting better. That is not as thin a statement as it may first seem. You can very often see recovery in a patient's face and attitude long before tests and technology confirm it. A healing state of mind is as least as important as juicing, eating right and taking vitamins, and those three are extraordinarily important. When I juice fast during sickness, I "feel" great even though I know I am sick. That's an odd thought, but then, why NOT feel good why you are sick? And when, at the first blush of physiological trouble, I take a ton of vitamin C, I feel great immediately and the sickness does not even get a chance to start.

http://www.doctoryourself.com/ortho_c.html http://www.doctoryourself.com/klenner_table.html http://www.doctoryourself.com/titration.html

2) With well-established chronic diseases, one cannot expect a wham-bam overnight cure. In chronic illness, cure tends to be more of a process than an event. "Healing from within out" is a rough guideline that means that deeper symptoms may clear up before all externally obvious symptoms go away. You might feel better before you look better. But feeling good (sleeping well, pain relief, mental disposition) for me remains a primary goal (See Number 1, above). Many naturopaths feel that outwardly-directed symptoms such as skin outbreaks, temporary diarrhea, and mucus expectoration are evidence of beneficial body cleansing, and therefore good signs of recovery. For example, "productive" coughs are positively welcome in long-term smokers who have finally kicked the habit. (More on smoking further below, and at http://www.doctoryourself.com/tobacco.html )

3) Hering's "reverse order" healing postulate is like employment seniority at a layoff-happy factory: last hired, first fired. Oldest health problems take the longest time for resolution. That is logical. Patients get impatient. That is inevitable. What to do? Face facts: if you have a lifetime of lousy eating and years of bad health habits behind you, what do you expect? Doesn't it figure that it may take some months to tidy (or is the word "excavate"?) the mess in your own personally cluttered anatomical attic? http://www.doctoryourself.com/nature.html

The way out is to change your life. http://www.doctoryourself.com/advice.html

Do not chase symptoms. During instrument pilot training, I was taught "don't chase the needle." If you do, you will fly your airplane all over the place. Same with an obsession over symptoms. If you wander about after every symptom, you will likely spend your life lost in the pharmaceutical aisles. (These are not to be confused with the Pharmaceutical Isles, which are believed by some to be located somewhere in the South Pacific.)

Respect symptoms, yes indeed. See them for what they are: lifestyle indicators. But in the end, the way to eliminate symptoms is to end their fundamental, underlying cause: change what's wrong in your life. Drop your bad habits, and drop your excuses for keeping them. http://www.doctoryourself.com/badhabits.html Instead, eat right, exercise, juice vegetables, and take your vitamins. http://www.doctoryourself.com/healthhint.html http://www.doctoryourself.com/eatright.html

The rest is just a matter of details. Even the most conservative medical and dietetic professionals will admit that at least two- thirds of all illness is caused by poor health behaviors. I think it is far higher. http://www.doctoryourself.com/faq.html

Most people who write to me are understandably but narrowly focused on the particular symptoms of "their illness." They commonly want to know "what vitamin should I take" for this or for that. It doesn't work like that, all-purpose megadoses of vitamin C notwithstanding. http://www.doctoryourself.com/vitaminc.html http://www.doctoryourself.com/klennerpaper.html

The way out is to overhaul your way of life.

If you are not interested in doing that, you are subscribing to the wrong Newsletter.

Only living bodies have symptoms. Where there are symptoms, there is life. While there is life, there is hope. And something you can do about it. http://www.doctoryourself.com/terminal.html http://www.doctoryourself.com/longevity.html http://www.doctoryourself.com/lifespan.html

Life may be work, but consider the alternative.

READERS ASK: "Can I use V-8 along with fresh juices? I really love it and it's so convenient."

In order for them to have any shelf life at all, canned or jarred food products are necessarily processed with heat, and their food value is proportionally diminished. Fresh and raw is best, but as prepacked supermarket choices, V-8 is clearly the leader of the juice pack. (Did you get that?) No-salt or low-salt varieties would be preferable, but even regular V-8 is quite nutritious and admittedly very handy, especially for travelling. If you are spending a weekend with your outlaws, er, inlaws, canned or bottled 100% veggie juice is a practical compromise. (Nutritionally speaking, "V-8 Splash" is a waste of money.) If you are spending a week with your relatives, take your juicer. If you are spending more than a week, eat a lot of cashews and take your niacin. http://www.doctoryourself.com/prozac.html http://www.doctoryourself.com/niacin.html

MOTOR NEURON DISEASES The good news is towards the end of this article. But first, a moment for some initial familiarization. . . and in this subject area, there are quite a few initials to become familiar with. According to the Motor Neuron Disease Association ( http://www.mndassociation.org ), "In most cases of MND, degeneration of both the upper and lower motor neurons occurs. This condition is called Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). . . (W)hen the muscles involved in speech and swallowing are solely affected, (it is called) Progressive Bulbar Palsy (PBP). There are also less common forms in which a more selective degeneration of either the upper motor neurons (such as Primary Lateral Sclerosis, PLS) or lower motor neurons (such as Progressive Muscular Atrophy, PMA) is observed."

The conventional-therapy outlook is not good. According to the Association, "In most cases MND is steadily progressive and an average course is two to five years. However, the progression of the disease is variable and a small number of people with MND have lived for ten years or more. . . The cause of MND is not yet known."

I am neither a neurologist nor am I a physician. I am, however, a firm believer in the words of vitamin pioneer Roger J. Williams, PhD:

"When in doubt, try nutrition first."

No know cause and no known cure? Try nutrition. Makes sense to me. And the prospects for the MND patient fairly soar upon learning that Frederick R. Klenner, M.D., quoted earlier in this newsletter, had successfully employed megavitamin therapy for multiple sclerosis, Myasthenia Gravis, and, more specifically on topic, AMS.

Here is a summary of his treatment.

Vitamin B-1 (Thiamin) 1,500 to 4,000 milligrams (mg) per day, orally and by injection. Vitamin B-2 (Riboflavin) 250 to 1,000 mg/day Vitamin B-3 (Niacin) 500 mg up to many thousands of milligrams daily, enough to cause repeated, warm-feeling vasodilation ("flushing"). Vitamin B-6 (Pyridoxine) 300 to 800 mg/day. Vitamin B-12 (Cobalamin) 1,000 micrograms (mcg) three times a week by injection. Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) 10,000 - 20,000 mg/day Vitamin E (d-alpha tocopherol) 800 to 1,600 International Units (IU) per day (All the above doses need to be divided up throughout the day.) Dr. Klenner also prescribed a number of other nutrients, including: Choline, 1,000 to 2,000 mg/day, Magnesium, 300 to 1,200 milligrams/day in divided doses Zinc, 60 mg/day Calcium, lecithin, folic acid, linoleic and linolenic acids, and a daily multivitamin-multimineral tablet supplement are also recommended. Why such a large variety of nutrients? Because there is no such thing as monotherapy with nutrition. "One drug, one disease" is a failed legend of the drug doctor. All vitamins are important. Which wheel on your car can you do without? Which wing on an airplane can you afford to leave behind? Why large quantities of nutrients? Because that's what does the job. You don't take the amount that you think should work; you take the amount that gets results. The first rule of building a brick wall is that you have got to have enough bricks. A sick body has exaggeratedly high needs for many vitamins. You can either meet that need, or fret about why you didn't. And what if someone has MS, or MG, or MND, or ALS, or PBP, or PLS, or PMA? I am not suggesting that they are all the same illness, but I submit that they all have a common basis: unacknowledged, untreated long-term vitamin dependency. Therefore, they all may benefit from Klenner's approach.

The doctor's treatment protocol is fully described on pages 42- 53 of "Clinical Guide to the Use of Vitamin C," edited by Lendon Smith, M.D.. This remarkably short (68 page) booklet may be difficult to find; try an Internet search or an interlibrary loan.

Smith, Lendon H. Clinical Guide to the Use of Vitamin C: The Clinical Experiences of Frederick R. Klenner, M.D. Forward written by Linus Pauling. Portland, OR: Life Sciences Press, 1988. ISBN 0-943685-01-X. Reprinted 1991, ISBN 0-943685- 13-3

SAFETY OF MEGADOSE VITAMIN C THERAPY "Harmful effects have been mistakenly attributed to vitamin C, including hypoglycemia, rebound scurvy, infertility, mutagenesis, and destruction of vitamin B(12). Health professionals should recognize that vitamin C does not produce these effects." [M. Levine, et al, JAMA, April 21, 1999. Vol 281, No 15, p 1419]

AND NOW, A PHARMACOLOGICAL PHABLE "All drug doctors are quacks." (Benjamin Franklin)

ONCE UPON A TIME there was a young couple with two children in diapers. Across the hall from their ground-floor apartment lived a pharmaceutical salesman. He was a nice young fellow, quiet and easy to talk to. Since he was obviously single, the couple asked him over for some home-cooked meals now and again, and they all became good acquaintances.

The pharmaceutical salesman, also called a "detail man" in the profession, was on the road a lot, and not home to receive the many shipments that his employer sent him. Most of these were cases of drug samples to give away to physicians to promote the latest and greatest medicine of the month. Large trailer trucks would somehow negotiate their way through the narrow apartment complex access roads, twist their way around cars in the parking lot, and back up to the apartment building. Up went the back of the truck and off came boxes and boxes of drug samples, addressed to the man who was rarely home. Did the truckers go away with the cargo undelivered? Not likely, when there was a stay-at-home mother with two toddlers next door. Again and again they would knock on her door, explain that the delivery was for 5-B across the hall, and ask her to sign for the shipment. She figured, why not? and in good faith, she signed for handtrucks loaded with cases of prescription chemicals. Sometimes they left them in the unlocked apartment hall closet outside her door. Sometimes it was full, so they left the big cartons stacked in her living room, as the kids toddled around.

Ah, you are way ahead of me. This is no fable; it's a true story from when I was young and (more) foolish and, well, much more trusting.

You know, if some military supplies mail-order warehouse delivered a few crates of guns and ammunition like this, there would be a public outcry fed by impassioned "60 Minutes" reports. The legal drug pushers get away with it.

"Oh, lighten up, mate!" you may be thinking, or, at this point, typing into your Outlook Express window. "Don't be so hard on the pharmaceutical people. Be sure to mention all the good they've done."

Why? Precisely where is my moral obligation to do so, in a world dominated by a medical-industrial complex holding a trillion dollar monopoly that by financial comparison makes Microsoft look like a lemonade stand?

There are a couple of hundred thousand drugs on the market, yet the World Health Organization itself admits that about two hundred would be enough to cover all the bases. The extra tens of thousands are money-makers, pure and simple. You will find very few negative effects from vitamins in the Physicians' Desk Reference, but you will see column after column and page after page of side effects, contraindications and warnings for drugs.

It needs to be said: The medical emperor is stark naked.

It needs to be said: There is a safer, nutritional alternative for most drugs, and the research work has already been done.

For my most frequently recommended books (complete with short reviews): http://www.doctoryourself.com/bestbooks.html http://www.doctoryourself.com/morebooks.html

(Note: I do not carry these nor any other books for sale. I also do not provide recommendations as to where you may obtain them. That is what http://www.google.com searches are for.)

For especially valuable scientific papers and additional book references: http://www.doctoryourself.com/bibliography.html , or if you are in a hurry, start with http://www.doctoryourself.com/vithall.html

WATER FLUORIDATION DOES NOT DECREASE CHILDHOOD CAVITIES

"It may...be that fluoridation of drinking water does not have a strong protective effect against early childhood caries," reports dentist Howard Pollick, University of California, and colleagues, in the Winter 2003 Journal of Public Health Dentistry (1).

The dental profession promises steep cavity declines in populations who drink water with fluoride added, especially in poor children who risk decayed baby teeth. But, Pollick, a staunch fluoridation proponent and co-chariman of the California Fluoridation Task Force, found that poor children had the most cavities regardless of fluoridation status.

A majority of Asian-American children that Pollick and his research team studied lived in areas with fluoridated water; yet they suffered with the highest prevalence and the greatest amount of cavities.

Pollick's team studied 2,520 California preschool children as part of the California Oral Health Needs Assessment of Children Study which convinced California legislators to mandate fluoridation statewide in 1995 (2). "Our analysis did not appear to be affected by whether or not children lived in an area with fluoridated water," they reported.

A study of 1,230 Head Start children aged 3-5 years in Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas found that, when the data were looked at separately in rural and non- rural children, there was no difference in cavity rates between optimally and non-fluoridated areas, reports Pollick and colleagues.

Low-income children consume the poorest diets, and are generally deficient in nutrients, such as tooth-essential calcium (3). Another study shows calcium, not fluoride, supplements reduce cavities (4). Federal surveys identify low calcium intake as a public health concern; 53% of 2-5 year-olds consume inadequate calcium (5).

"Tooth decay is another symptom of low-income and/or poor diet, and is not a fluoride deficiency," says attorney Paul Beeber, President, New York State Coalition Opposed to Fluoridation. "Tooth decay is a disease of poverty. Feed these children; don't fluoridate them," says Beeber.

SOURCE: NYS Coalition Opposed to Fluoridation, Inc., PO Box 263, Old Bethpage, NY 11804 http://www.orgsites.com/ny/nyscof Email address: nyscof@aol.com Also: http://tinyurl.com/ad9k Fluoride Action Network http://www.fluoridealert.org

References: (1) "The Association of Early Childhood Caries and Race/Ethnicity among California Preschool Children," Shiboski, Gansky, Ramos-Gomez, Ngo, Isman, Pollick, Journal of Public Health Dentistry, Winter 2003, pages 38-46. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&d b=PubMed&list_uids=12597584&dopt=Abstract

(2) http://www.nofluoride.com/needs_assessment.htm

(3) http://www.centeronhunger.org/pubs/obesity.html

(4) http://www.fluoride.org.uk/papers/teotia.htm

(5) http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/foodreview/jan1996/frjan9 6c.pdf

(If the links do not all come through on your email, please try typing them in manually, or go to the site's main page without the extension and search from there.)

TOBACCO SMOKE IS THE WORLD'S MOST LETHAL WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION The greatest cause of disease and death in every developed country and most developing countries is tobacco addiction. The World Health Organization estimates that tobacco addiction kills 5 million people worldwide each year, including more than 400,000 Americans.

In effort to combat this worldwide plague, the World Health Organization (made up of 192 member countries) voted unanimously last week to urge countries to eliminate tobacco advertising, establish bigger/stronger warning labels, raise cigarette prices, and adopt smokefree workplace laws.

France recently announced that it is raising cigarette prices by 25% and will continue to do so until prices reach 7 euros ($8.40) per pack. Currently, cigarettes cost about 4 euros ($4.80) per pack. The last price hike resulted in a 10% decline in youth smoking. In addition, new cigarette warning labels have gone into effect in Europe covering 1/3 of both the front and back of a pack of cigarettes. Canada and Brazil have strong picture based warning labels.

In the U.S., four entire states-- CA, DE, NY, and CT-- have gone totally smokefree (including restaurants, bars, and casinos). Hundreds of cities have also gone totally smokefree, including four of the most popular tourist destinations-- New York, Los Angeles, Boston, and San Francisco.

Although there is much to be done, it is obvious that the world is taking action to prevent another generation of tobacco addiction and disease. Five million deaths a year are simply too much to ignore.

Joseph W. Cherner SmokeFree Educational Services, Inc.

(If you would like to help prevent another generation of tobacco addiction and disease, go to www.SmokefreeAir.org and send a smokefree EZ-letter to a key decision maker. SmokeFree is an all-volunteer organization.)

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