Newsletter v3n22

"Any nation that expects to be ignorant and free expects what never was, and never will be." (Thomas Jefferson)

The DOCTOR YOURSELF NEWSLETTER (Vol. 3, No 22) October 5, 2003 "Free of charge, free of advertising, and free of the A.M.A."

IGNORANCE AND EDUCATION Thomas Jefferson's famous quote atop this newsletter might well be applied to healthcare as, "Any person that expects to be ignorant and healthy expects what never was, and never will be." I never cease to be amazed at how many suffering people still do not know that huge doses of vitamin C can safely be used as an antitoxin, antibiotic, antiviral, and antihistamine. (http://www.doctoryourself.com/titration.html ; http://www.doctoryourself.com/ortho_c.html ; http://www.doctoryourself.com/klenner_table.html ; http://www.doctoryourself.com/klennerpaper.html) Most surprising is the level of clinical nutrition misinformation among doctors, who ought to read their own journals but apparently don't. Busy physicians tend to over rely on the advertisements and salesforce (or "detail men" (http://www.doctoryourself.com/drugalt.html) from pharmaceutical houses the way TV viewers rely on news anchorpersons: just give us the summary. Patent drug companies make money from patented drugs, not generic vitamins. There is much more money to be made with Prednisone than with pyridoxine (B-6). Doctors' prescriptions generate patent drug sales without the doctor having to pay a penny. This well entrenched and profitable system favors itself politically and in the mass media. The medical- pharmaceutical lobby is the most powerful in the land. Whether nutrition disinterest results from a lack of financial interest, a lack of political clout, or a lack of inclination, the end product is the same: patients are the losers.

If scientific authority and media access have adequate power, they can accomplish remarkable feats of repression. For example, it took 112 years after James Lind discovered the citrus fruit cure for scurvy for the British Board of Trade to require lime juice on their merchant ships. Scurvy is a fatal disease, and countless thousands of sailors died in the meantime. Linus Pauling appeared before a U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Health back in 1975. He gave a carefully referenced and crystal-clear presentation on the life-saving benefits of large doses of vitamins, especially vitamin C. That same Subcommittee, predictably, did nothing with that information.

Nutrition can cure us, and ignoring nutritional research can and has hurt us.

Surgeon James Lind was right about citrus, and Professor Pauling was right about supplemental vitamin C. Each of these men published, and was promptly put on the back burner of the scientific stove. Their work endures because of its soundness and because it helps people. It is a big kitchen, however, and louder, larger and shinier pots and pans have gotten the public's attention, the professions' attention, and the attention of the press. The first task, therefore, is to show people that they do in fact have the choice to use natural healing methods. Since there are so very many choices in life, it is easy to have missed Dr. Lind's 1753 Treatise on Scurvy and almost as easy to not have read Dr. Pauling's book, How to Live Longer and Feel Better (1986) (http://www.doctoryourself.com/bestbooks.html). As a civilization, we've spoken rather a lot and said rather little; we've written a lot and buried some of what's most useful under the heap. (Many, many really useful references are posted at http://www.doctoryourself.com/bibliography.html).

EDUCATION AND MOTIVATION By strip-mining libraries, we can produce some very motivating evidence of successful nutritional cures. (http://www.doctoryourself.com/libraryloan.html) Since such an endeavor itself requires motivation, there is a need to stimulate an individual to action. After years of shamelessly coercing patients, students, and practicing physicians to hit the books and see for themselves, I can confidently report that once started, this educational process is self-sustaining. Thorough knowledge of mega-vitamin nutrition mixed with our own keen need for personal health improvement is such a combustible mixture that a single, well placed spark can start a good fire.

We think in terms of the difficulty of educating and motivating someone else to do something when the really tough task is to do it ourselves. Dr. Albert Schweitzer said that not only is example the best way to teach, it is the only way. The issue of motivation comes back to each of us: we may talk the talk, but can we walk the walk? First, we need to work on ourselves. An old saying is that the teacher teaches best what she most needs to know.

Veterans of World War I learned that war does not end all wars. Many of us have lived long enough to be considered veterans of other wars. The War on Poverty resulted in a demeaning welfare system and miserable low-paying jobs. The War on Drugs has resulted in more Americans in prison than any Westernized country. The War on Cancer has resulted in more hospitals, yet cancer still kills close to half a million Americans annually. A War on Germs is lost before it is begun, since germs are everywhere but not all people are sick. (http://www.doctoryourself.com/germs.html)

VITAMINS AGAINST DISEASE Most of what we do to our bodies, for better of worse, we do every day by the nutritional and other lifestyle choices we make. Even the effects of Down Syndrome, often seen as a prime example of an utterly and exclusively genetic affliction, can to a surprisingly large extent be overcome with huge doses of supplements (http://www.doctoryourself.com/learning.html)

Failed disease-care systems pale and fade when examined under the light of nutrition research and clinical proof. We do not need "further study" on mineral and vitamin therapy. The work has already been done, the results are in print, and the public is cheerfully but unhealthfully ignorant. How did we miss it?

If there is one truth about clinical nutrition research, it is that it is certainly not self evident. Frederick Robert Klenner (1949, 1971), William J. McCormick (1946, 1947, 1952, 1953, 1954, 1957, 1962), Irwin Stone (1972), and later Linus Pauling (1976, 1986) all reviewed the literature on vitamin C, came to the same conclusions about its importance as a therapeutic agent, and were summarily ignored. (All references are posted at http://www.doctoryourself.com/bibliography.html) I have often said to both practitioners and students that if established medical and nutritional authority won't listen to their own, they certainly won't jump to hear you. Considering the paucity of interest (and funding) from the medical establishment, it is quite remarkable how much good nutrition research has been done, and how almost all of it points to three embarrassingly simple conclusions:

1. The average American's diet is truly awful, being superabundant in chemicals, calories and protein and very deficient in fiber and diverse vitamins and minerals.

2. Even modest dietary revision, plus increases in vitamin and mineral intake, regularly result in both disease prevention and clinical cure.

3. Most citizens, and their doctors, are vaguely aware of item 1, dispute item 2, and are not concerned enough to act on either.

Don't be one of them. Check into your options. Research and read for yourself. The Internet is our personal portal into world's archives. It is mostly a matter of putting in the time, and from what I've seen of this fall's TV schedule, you should have plenty of that.

Books were Johannes Gutenberg's Internet. (http://prodigi.bl.uk/gutenbg/file1.htm#theman) When the Latin of the medieval scholars was finally translated into the language of the people, and then mass marketed, everyone with the desire to do so could crack a book and decide matters for themselves. This is true today. I've always told my students that the toughest part of any homework assignment is the act of actually sitting down and opening the textbook. For you it's even easier. For there you are, already sitting down at your computer, and it's already on and all fired up, as you should be.

Question authority. See for yourself. Change your life today!

DOCTORYOURSELF.COM TO BE FEATURED ON NATIONAL RADIO BROADCAST I am scheduled to be interviewed on the Ken Hamblin syndicated radio show (out of Denver, CO http://www.hamblin.com) on Wednesday, September 17, 2003 at 3:30 PM Eastern Daylight time. This broadcast will likely go coast to coast and the times will vary with your location. Should be fun. Tune in!

If you would like me to do a call-in interview with your local radio station, please feel free to give them my contact information (at the very bottom of this newsletter, and also posted at my website) or send me their email address.

DOCTOR YOURSELF: THE BOOK has gone to press and will be released in a just a few weeks. If you can't wait, here's an overview and a look at the cover: http://www.letsliveonline.com/BasicHealth/doctorYourself.ht ml

I have a very few copies of my previous book, PAPERBACK CLINIC still available. Please email me at doctoryourself.com/contact.html for ordering information and to reserve your copy.

PRESSING MATTERS It's incredible how much fruit you can get from a single fruit tree. This season, I have picked about 10 bushels of apples from just one medium-sized apple tree. That sounds like an exaggeration, but it is, if anything, an underestimate. Being unsprayed, the apples are not dollar-a-pound showroom quality lookers, but, I have learned, they are eminently suitable for making cider.

The trick to making cider is to realize that whole apples cannot be pressed; you must grind them up first. I do this with a masticating ("chewing") type of juicer (such as a Champion), which for this purpose I operate with all parts in place except for the juice strainer. This enables me to quickly run a large quantity of apples through it. I first cut the apples into quarters, both to check for critters and also so the apples will fit through the juicer's intake.

The coleslaw-consistency apple mash that the juicer produces is placed onto a good-sized cloth. I use old but scrupulously clean fabric salvaged from my worn-out rugby shirts, folded over into a nice, soggy, apple-y football shape and placed in my cider press.

Given the source of my straining cloth, by now you know full well that I was not about to spend any money on a cider press. My press cost me exactly nothing. I use a 5-gallon, plastic, well-scrubbed, empty drywall compound bucket. I cut a piece of solid 1 x 12 pine plank scraps into two discs, which fit loosely inside the bucket. The bottom one has a couple of dozen quarter-inch holes drilled in it. The top disc is solid. The cloth-wrapped apple mash goes between the boards, and I put a couple of cement blocks on top for weight. Gravity does the rest.

To prevent such applied weight from jamming the lower wood disk into the bucket, I first place three stout plastic beverage tumblers, upside down, inside the bucket. The lower perforated wood disk sits on top of them. The cider collects in the chamber formed below.

Do not use plywood or composition wood for your pressing discs. In addition to containing some rather unpleasant chemicals in the glue used to make them, plywood and chipcore products soak up liquid and will swell, distort, and quickly become unusable.

I've found that I can put about a half a bushel's worth of apples into this press at one time, if I prepare two large individual cloths of apple mash. I then get about a gallon and a third of cider per pressing. That's better than 2 1/2 gallons per bushel. (Times ten bushels: we are practically swimming in cider, and from only one apple tree!) You can let your pressing sit overnight, or you can perch yourself on top of those cement blocks, read your favorite natural health newsletter, and finish pressing in 15 minutes. Kids love everything about making cider. If you are any kind of a Tom Sawyer at all, you can get them to literally line up to volunteer to be the ones sitting on top of the press.

When pressing is complete, remove the cement block weights carefully and set them aside. Then take out the now- flattened (and much drier) apple parcels out of the press slowly: it is important that they do not open up, or your cider will instantaneously be transformed into extra-chunky applesauce. You see, as you lift them and lighten the load on the bottom wood disk, the disk will tend to float up on the inverted tumblers and sharply tilt to one side. Watch for it and you'll have no surprises.

Using a large funnel, pour your cider into storage jugs and refrigerate. Well, that's what I OFFICIALLY say you should do with it. You might, just possibly, er, ah, FORGET to refrigerate your cider for, say, a few days to a week. Should your memory happen to suddenly lapse to such an extent, join in the following refrain and have your designated driver handy:

"Here's to thee, old apple tree, Here's to thee, old apple tree! Give us a crop of good apples ripe Red and well rounded, the good juicy type! Hats full, caps full, Good bushel sacks full, Our pockets, too: Hurrah, wassail!"

(Old English carol, author unknown)

SCREEN TEST Apples you press; vegetables you juice. When you juice vegetables, and your juicer filters with a metal screen, sooner or later that metal screen will become clogged. Prompt and thorough rinsing under the tap gets rid of most of the residue on a day-to-day basis, but over time a hardened material starts to build up in the screen and reduces output and efficiency. I have tried a variety of methods to combat this, including mild solvents such as "DL" hand cleaner, "Goo Gone," lime and rust removers such as "CLR," brushing, soaking, and even poking out the crud with a needle, spot by spot. Let me save you a whole lot of experimentation: use bleach. Soak the juicing strainer in chlorine bleach overnight to as much as 12 hours and you will find the bottom of the soaking dish full of little dots that have eroded and fallen out of the strainer. Admittedly, you have to be something of a juicing fanatic to care about all this, but then you are a reader of this newsletter, so if the shoe fits . . .

My brief comments on different types of juicers will be found within my article at http://www.doctoryourself.com/juicefast.html I have no financial connection whatsoever with any juicer manufacturer, distributor or retailer. And, I do not provide opinions on what kind of juicer you should buy, or where you might buy one.

More on juicing: http://www.doctoryourself.com/juicing_2.html http://www.doctoryourself.com/gersonspeech.html http://www.doctoryourself.com/colitis.html http://www.doctoryourself.com/dieting.html

THANK YOU TO ALL for so frequently recommending DoctorYourself.com to your family, patients and friends. We are now welcoming some 500,000 visitors per year to the http://www.doctoryourself.com website.

TOMATOES are good for you. No need to juice them; no need to cook them. But cooked or raw, they are the number one food source of the powerful nutrient antioxidant, lycopene. Studies in Italy (of course!) have shown that eating lots of tomatoes significantly reduces cancer risk. Ringraziarlo, gli scienziati di nutrizione italiani!

La Vecchia C. Tomatoes, lycopene intake, and digestive tract and female hormone-related neoplasms. Exp Biol Med (Maywood). 2002 Nov; 227(10):860-3.

La Vecchia C. Mediterranean epidemiological evidence on tomatoes and the prevention of digestive-tract cancers. Proc Soc Exp Biol Med. 1998 Jun; 218(2):125-8.

Franceschi S, Bidoli E, La Vecchia C, Talamini R, D'Avanzo B, Negri E. Tomatoes and risk of digestive-tract cancers. Int J Cancer. 1994 Oct 15;59(2):181-4.

Franceschi S, Bidoli E, Baron AE, Barra S, Talamini R, Serraino D, La Vecchia C. Nutrition and cancer of the oral cavity and pharynx in north-east Italy. Int J Cancer. 1991 Jan 2;47(1):20-5.

COMBINING FRUITS AND VEGETABLES AT THE SAME MEAL is quite all right. Humans and mostly vegetarian animals do it all the time, and most do not know the difference anyway. The fruit of a plant is essentially a seed- containing structure, proceeding from a flower, that can be picked without killing the plant. Hmm. This means that tomatoes, pumpkins, peppers, cucumbers, squash and even green beans are all fruits. That's true. Think of the fun you will have this Thanksgiving dinner when you ask Aunt Xanthippe to "Please pass the fruits" when the only foods near her are cooked squash and a dish of green beans. If you are worried about food combining, here's my advice: chew. The majority of digestive problems disappear when you simply chew your food really well. Also: Avoid sugar, fried food and processed meats. Fruits and vegetables are not your problem. Wolfing down junk food is.

BART SIMPSON WAS RIGHT: BEANS ARE NEITHER FRUITS NOR MUSICAL Pinto beans, navy beans, and kidney beans and their lentil, pea and peanut cousins help prevent cancer. High in fiber and L-lysine, beans are cheap, versatile and the perfect meat substitute. Lysine and all-important gas-free cooking advice (and I'm not talking stoves) is posted for your edification at http://www.doctoryourself.com/herpes.html .

Hispanic women on average eat three times as many servings of beans as Caucasian women do. Black women also more eat beans than whites do. But the big story isn't color; it's cancer. "Breast cancer incidence is significantly lower in Hispanic and black women than in non-Hispanic white women (which may) be a reflection of protective agents present in greater amounts in the diets of Hispanics (beans) and blacks (fruits and vegetables) than of whites. (Zang EA, Barrett NO, Cohen LA. Differences in nutritional risk factors for breast cancer among New York City white, Hispanic, and black college students. Ethn Dis. 1994 Winter; 4(1):28-40.)

"(T)he Hispanic population's dietary fiber intake is higher than that for other groups, and this may help explain the lower incidence of breast cancer among some Hispanic populations." (Jones LA, Gonzalez R, Pillow PC, Gomez- Garza SA, Foreman CJ, Chilton JA, Linares A, Yick J, Badrei M, Hajek RA. Dietary fiber, Hispanics, and breast cancer risk? Ann N Y Acad Sci. 1997 Dec 26;837:524-36.)

And don't forget peanuts. (A couple of good recipes are at http://www.doctoryourself.com/news/v3n9.txt)

"(Research) suggests a protective role of phytosterols (PS), especially beta-sitosterol, from colon, prostate, and breast cancer. Asians and vegetarians consume higher amounts of PS than Western societies. The latter societies have a higher incidence of these cancers than Asians and vegetarians. . . (P)eanuts and its products, such as peanut oil, peanut butter, and peanut flour, are good sources of PS." (Awad AB, Chan KC, Downie AC, Fink CS. Peanuts as a source of beta-sitosterol, a sterol with anticancer properties. Nutr Cancer. 2000;36(2):238-41.)

"Pulses (peas, beans, lentils) contain a rich variety of compounds which, if consumed in sufficient quantities, may help to reduce tumour risk." (Mathers JC. Pulses and carcinogenesis: potential for the prevention of colon, breast and other cancers. Br J Nutr. 2002 Dec; 88 Suppl 3:S273-9.)

Bottom line? Forget the meat and eat more beans today. In future years, you'll be very glad you did.

THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK: "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana." (Groucho Marx)

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