Newsletter v4n6

"No illness which can be treated by diet should be treated by any other means." (Moses Maimonides, 12th century physician)

The DOCTOR YOURSELF NEWSLETTER (Vol. 4, No. 6 February 20, 2004) "Free of charge, free of advertising, and free of the A.M.A."

Written and copyright 2004 by Andrew Saul, PhD, of http://www.doctoryourself.com , which welcomes nearly a million visitors annually. Commercial use of the website or the contents of this Newsletter is strictly prohibited.

HEALTH UN-SURANCE

Sure, health insurance should cover preventive and therapeutic megadoses of vitamins. It doesn't. Now think this one over: Viagra "is covered by most health plans," says its manufacturer, Pfizer Inc., in its 2003 ad campaign. Of course Viagra, admits Pfizer, may cause "heart attack, stroke, irregular heart beats, and death" in some persons, even those without preexisting heart conditions.

Face that off with the fact that high-dose vitamin E and C supplements prevent heart attack and stroke, and reduce cardiovascular deaths by up to 50%. (http://www.doctoryourself.com/forgotten.html)

And still, substantially any use of vitamins is not covered by most "health" plans. I'll bet your own health "un-surance" won't even cover a daily multiple vitamin. But it is much more likely to cover Grandpa's access to a better sex life than to pay for vitamins for his grandchildren.

As for the poor, Food Stamps cannot be used to buy vitamins, either. Some skeptical people I've talked to think this is tantamount to conspiracy. Whether or not that is the case does not matter nearly as much as this does: Take charge of, and responsibility for, your family's health. My mother always said, "You can only spend your money in one place." Use it wisely: invest in wellness. It is cheaper in the long run.

My children were raised all the way into college without even one dose of any antibiotic. When we had insurance (which was rarely), it did not help us at all. Our kids had their physicals at school, and economically thus vetted, played outdoors, ate right, and, by golly, took their vitamins. Insurance did not pay for any of the vitamins or the good food that kept them well.

But as for erectile dysfunction, well now, just sign here!

COST OF KIDS' VITAMINS BUGGING YOU?

Oh, please. The average baby goes through between 6,000 and 7,000 diapers before completing toilet training. You might just as well have a healthy baby as a dry baby.

Just raising one kid to age 18 can cost a quarter of a million dollars, according to the US Department of Agriculture. (Lino M. Expenditures on Children by Families, 2002. USDA Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion. Washington, DC, May 2003. Miscellaneous Publication Number 1528-2002. http://www.usda.gov/cnpp/Crc/crc2002.pdf ) Do it on a health homesteader's budget, like I did, and it's still a hundred grand, easy.

By any standard of comparison, you can afford supplements. Adjusted for 2004 dollars, we personally spent about 25 cents a day per child on preventive megadoses of vitamins. That's under a hundred bucks a year per kid. When they were sick, up went the C and out came the vegetable juicer. But, aside from physicals, there were no doctor visits. (I mean NONE; my son and daughter never even met their pediatricians.) No office call fees; no waiting- room scream-a-thons; no co-pays; no medicines, prescription or otherwise. Such savings certainly covered the cost of carrots and extra vitamin C.

For more information on child's health, please do a search for "children" from the search box near the top of the main page at http://www.doctoryourself.com .

(Reader reminder: I do not endorse any supplement brand, and do not provide recommendations as to which one you might want to use. That is what Google searches and health food stores are for.)

NEW REVIEW OF "DOCTOR YOURSELF: Natural Healing that Works" (http://www.doctoryourself.com/saulbooks.html):

Hugh D. Riordan, M.D., writes:

"What a superb book Doctor Yourself is for both the health professions and anyone interested in maintaining a better level of health. I applaud the work, especially its forthright manner of presentation. It should be of enormous value to a vast number of people."

My book "Doctor Yourself: Natural Healing that Works" is now available through booksellers everywhere. If you'd like an autographed copy, please go to http://www.doctoryourself.com/order.html and I'll get out my Sharpie and sign one for you.

WATER

I'm for it.

Your body is mostly water. Vegetable juice is mostly water. Food is mostly water. Even wood from your local lumber yard is 25% water.

Drink a lot of water and you will feel better immediately. Try it and see. Headaches vanish; stuffiness clears up pronto; your "plumbing" will like work a dream (less constipation; risk of kidney stones drops to near zero); it will even help you lose a bit of weight (especially in combination with vegetable juicing, further below).

Do not take this as an excuse or an endorsement to spend money on water products, with the possible exception of an inexpensive device to clean up your drinking water if you live in an area where tap water is a bit dicey.

Sipping from a cute little bottled-water container, while at least a small step in the right direction, is not the same as drinking water by the glassful. Unless there is a clear medical requirement that you limit your fluids, then don't. Open the hatch and gulp it down! It is remarkably difficult to over-hydrate yourself, but it is amazingly easy to get dehydrated. Though everyone knows that hot weather activity causes water loss, you need as much or more to replace water lost in cold weather activity. It is not just exercising (I'm for that, too) that causes water loss. Talking uses water: classroom teachers need an extra liter or two a day just for that. Airline travel dehydrates you, and there you just sit. In many ways, the old-time hydropathists were right: Water can be good for what ails you. Certainly the value is great, the safety high, and the price is right.

LOWERING CHIOLESTEROL AND TRIGLYCERIDES

Sean writes:

"I was having a very difficult time with cholesterol and triglycerides. My triglycerides were over 700 and cholesterol was 256. About two months ago, in one of your newsletters, you suggested that if we eat meat and fried foods, that we should be taking lecithin. I went on a regimen of powdered lecithin, and in two months, my cholesterol was reduced to 180 and triglycerides were reduced from over 700 to 350. Then, I started taking 1,500 mg of niacin for the triglycerides and raised it to 3,000 mg/day.

"I suspected that my future lipid tests would continue to show dramatic improvement, and they did. Three months later, cholesterol: 149; triglycerides: 250.

"I am 62 years old, and the doctor said that he was jealous of my blood pressure and cholesterol count. Thank you!"

Most kind of you to write. Your letter will be a great encouragement to many. Thanks are rightly due to Dr. Jacobus Rinse, who turned me on to lecithin decades ago. (For more information on lecithin and Dr. Rinse's therapy, please do a search for "lecithin" from the search box near the top of the main page at http://www.doctoryourself.com .)

MULTIPLE CHEMICAL SENSITIVITY I am preparing an article on multiple chemical sensitivity. I'd be interested in knowing what has helped you (and also what hasn't) if you have MCS. No product endorsements, please. If you want to share your story, please email doctoryourself.com/contact.html .

DEPRESSION R. T. writes:

"I have struggled with chronic depression and anxiety for years. I read your website articles about vitamin B-3 (niacin) and schizophrenia, and the other info about B vitamins and how important they are. So, I thought I would give the idea a shot and went and purchased a powerful B-complex supplement. It worked! I notice a magnificent improvement just over the past few months. Previously, I was taking Zoloft. But the B-complex has done much more than the Zoloft did. Amazing how mankind tries to complicate things when it is actually very simple. I am amazed!"

Good for you. For even better results, you can take your B- complex vitamin, divide the dose, and take it all throughout the day, say with each meal. I'd be sure to add vitamin C as well.

WEIGHT LOSS

"Does taking vitamins make you fat?"

No, taking vitamins makes you healthy. Obtaining vitamins goes with eating right. Underweight people who eat right and take vitamins will gain weight; heavy people who eat right and take vitamins will lose weight. Not overnight, but given time. Look for a 3 to five pound loss per month. That is the kind of gradual but sustainable weight loss you want to see.

Vitamin pills contain no calories. The foods most people eat contain calories and no vitamins. I think a lot of people overeat because their bodies are understandably craving vitamins and also craving the good part of fats, their essential fatty acids (linolenic and linoleic acids). You can meet both cravings without blimping out.

Here's how:

Eat a tablespoon of lecithin (granulated, stirred into in milk or juice) about half an hour before every meal. Lecithin in quantity is a very good diet aid: it kills your appetite while giving your body those two essential fatty acids (above) it is really looking for.

Also, take a good multiple vitamin pill twice daily. Most people's regular mega-calorie fare is already vitamin-poor. For most people, dieting just makes bad food-based vitamin intakes even worse.

WEIGHT LOSS AND APPETITE

"Thank you honestly for all the valuable information you presented on your website regarding weight loss and, most importantly, how to keep it off through simple rules for changing life style, not just an item or two of diet.

"One of the most fruitful solutions you presented to lose weight was to juice fast. I tried fasting before and it was easy after day 2 or 3. I'm thinking of juice fasting again, but those first two hungry days are amazingly hard as much as the days that follow them are amazingly great. Do you have advice to share on this?"

Sure do. The first thing to remember is that fasting is a choice; starving is a sentence. We instinctively fear hunger, and with reason. I've gone hungry a few times in my life and there is nothing ennobling about it. Let's start by banishing the fear: You'll be fine.

That brings us to appetite, the real problem. Like dogs and teenagers, we are always hungry. But for what? If you have a hankering for salty, sugary, greasy "foods," then I say you are not really hungry. Appetite is partly physiological but largely learned. While the normal human body can go days or even weeks without food, your appetite is not about to let you without putting up a fight.

Appetite is linked to low blood sugar, a desire to chew, and an empty stomach.

We can fix them all.

First, the blood sugar. Water-only fasting tends to crash your blood sugar and fruit-juice-only fasting tends to make it (and you) hyper. Vegetable juice is in smack in the middle, containing a natural mix of some but not too many complex and simple carbohydrates. If you are pooped out, drink more juice. For a picker-upper, have some fruit juice after you FIRST have two glasses of plain water. If you are buzzing and putting a new addition on the house at 3 AM, try drinking more plain water. Otherwise, drink fresh made vegetable juices. Low-salt V-8 is good for taking to work and travelling.

Now for the chewing part: Simply snack on raw vegetables, any kind, any time, day or night. Chew them very, very well. Is this cheating? How can it be, if you were going to put those same vegetables through the juicer anyway? Relax! This is about good health, not distracting technicalities and legalities. I won't call the Food Police if you won't, OK? If you need to, then munch. Just munch on the right things. (More on this further below.)

As far as having an empty stomach goes, well, don't. If you have an empty stomach you are doing it all wrong. When you are hungry, drink juice. No limit. All you want; any kind, any amount; any time. There is absolutely no need to have an empty stomach. Juice it up!

In summary: If you can eat it raw, you can juice it. If you can juice it, you can eat it raw. If you are hungry, immediately do one or the other.

Now here is the part you've REALLY been waiting for:

EAT AND GROW THINNER

"Oh, yeah, like I haven't heard that one before!" you say.

Let me let you in on a secret. The real trick to successful dieting truly is to never be hungry. If you are hungry or otherwise uncomfortable, you are doing it wrong. Plenty of people needlessly suffer when they diet. I think most dieters are either down and dehydrated, crazy carnivores, or angry martyrs.

Diet Mistake Number One: DOWN AND DEHYDRATED

1) Don't dry up and wither away: Drink lots of water, as we've discussed above. And the colder the better. (http://www.doctoryourself.com/dieting.html) It will cut your appetite. It will relieve most headaches. It will help fill your tummy with zero calories. And it costs nothing.

And while you have that water glass in your hand, take some vitamin C with it.

One big reason people eat is to improve their mood. Vitamin C, a natural antidepressant, also helps improve mood. High doses of vitamin C promote the formation of epinephrine, or adrenaline. In fact, the human body's primary reserves of vitamin C are found in the adrenal glands, and vitamin C is a specific treatment for adrenal exhaustion. You take more C and you feel peppier. Sounds trite, but just you try it.

Take substantial vitamin C doses regularly throughout the day and see how well it works as an appetite suppressant. I am not making this up. Researchers of the Department of Psychiatry, Duke University Medical Center, found that, in persons "using an ascorbic acid aerosol as a sensory substitute" for tobacco, "hunger for food was significantly lower." (Levin ED, Behm F, Carnahan E, LeClair R, Shipley R, Rose JE. Clinical trials using ascorbic acid aerosol to aid smoking cessation. Drug Alcohol Depend. 1993 Oct;33(3):211-23.) How to make your own vitamin C spray has been discussed in previous Newsletters, and a search for "vitamin C spray" from the search box near the top of the main page at http://www.doctoryourself.com will find it for you.)

Diet Mistake Number 2: CRAZY CARNIVORISM

2) Most meats contain a big slug of fat. Even lean meat is made up of 10% to 20% fat, and has no fiber. Yes, yes: you need protein. But you do not necessarily need to kill a critter to get protein in your diet. Eat nuts instead.

Yes, nuts. You will hear people say the opposite, but the truth is that nuts are very good diet foods. They are satisfying, crunchy, high in magnesium, and have excellent mouth feel. Nuts are incredibly filling if you eat them slowly and chew them up well. Buy the good ones at the health food store: nothing stale, no salt, no oil, no tooth-rotting so-called "honey roasting." Eating nuts will help you have the willpower to leave the meats and many another "fat-food" alone. Nuts are high in the amino acid tryptophan, which your body makes into mood-elevating serotonin. For people who "eat for the wrong reasons," who eat out of loneliness, despondency or despair, nuts are a perfect answer. Peanuts and cashews are especially rich in tryptophan. (http://www.doctoryourself.com/prozac.html)

Diet Mistake Number 3: ANGRY MARTYRDOM

3) It's not what you eat but what you eat a lot of that matters in the end, such as a pants-stretching rear end. Tasteless diet joke. Sorry. But don't have a tasteless diet! Look, here's the plan: eat all the salads you want and eat all the fruit you want, and I mean ALL you want. Raw-food vegetarians eat themselves slim. Want to cook the vegetables? Go ahead, although it seems like a lot of extra work to me. Cooking does not increase the calories in a food, but it does compact the food such that you eat more of it. A really big bowl of greens will cook down into a very small portion. Still, it's better for you than the meat-mad, fat-frenzied, carbo- crazy way most people eat. Raw vegetarian foods are fat-free, low cal and delicious, and you can eat until you are FULL at every meal. Now that's a diet plan! (http://www.doctoryourself.com/weight_loss.html)

If you do not want to go for the "full monty" of a raw food vegetarian diet, that just do a regular no-junk-food, meatless diet and load up on foods that really do need cooking: the legumes. Peas, beans and lentils are high in fiber, cheap and filling. They are also high in the dieter's friend, tryptophan, the feel-good amino acid mentioned above.

Be sure to eat your squash, too. People who complain that vegetarian eating does not satisfy their hunger are doing it wrong. Follow the ways of the native Americans and always invite all of the Three Sisters to your dinner table: grain, legumes and squash. If you eat a lot of just one or two parts of this triad, you will likely still have the after-dinner munchies. When you have roughly equal servings of grain, beans, and squash at each meal, you prepare yourself for entry into a whole different between-meal world: a world in which you are happy and the cravings are gone.

If you do not agree with this, it is because you have not tried it yet. Why not? What have you got to lose?

READERS SAY Patricia, aged 93, writes:

"Back in 1970 my hubby had the killer kind of heart attack. He was alive but a sick man with serious heart troubles a year later. We learned about the Drs. Shute's therapy with vitamin E. Dr. Wilfrid Shute called Coumadin "poison," took him off it, and within weeks (it seemed) had him heart healthy. My husband took only our current vitamins, plus he'd worked up to 1,600 IU's of vitamin E. This took him to age 90 without health problems."

Way to go! A search for "Shute" or for "Vitamin E" at http://www.doctoryourself.com will give you much more to read about this approach.

WHY FDA MEANS "FOOLISH DRUG ADVOCATES" The U.S. Senate, the U. S. House of Representatives and the FDA (in close cooperation with the international pharmaceutical cartel) are attempting to restrict vitamin potency with a "dosage must be restricted to insure safety" argument. Consider this: tincture of iodine, a deadly poison, is sold over the counter without even being in a child-resistant bottle. There is a screw loose here somewhere, and it may be more than just the iodine bottle cap. Previous recent issues of this Newsletter discussing this problem are posted at http://www.doctoryourself.com/backissues.html . Look for the latest ones in Volume 4. The search engine on my main page will save you time: just type in "CODEX" or "supplement restriction."

You can find VACCINATION EXEMPTION LAW, STATE BY STATE, at http://www.access1.net/via/STATES/allstates.htm , which says "All States have a Medical Exemption. In addition, all States have a Religious Exemption except Mississippi and West Virginia." Interesting, that, since the First Amendment of the U. S. Constitution applies (or should apply) in EVERY state, don't you think?

For more information on vaccination alternatives and how to do them, please search the http://www.doctoryourself.com website with the keyword "vaccination." There are many excellent anti- vaccination websites to be found on my "Links" page.

YOUR FEEDBACK WANTED Have you ever been denied a natural therapy by a doctor or hospital? Tell your story! Email your experience to me at doctoryourself.com/contact.html

WEBSITE RESOURCE Does your state have laws protecting your right to demand natural health care? Does it protect your doctor from persecution if he or she provides drugless care to you? All this and more will be found at http://www.healthlobby.com/statelaw.html .

WHEN I WAS AN "IN-BETWEEN-AGER" I was just minding my own business one day when my father said this to me, without a preface of any kind: "As of today, I've been married longer than I've been single. Remember that." I have. I have also learned that a relationship is one of the few things that takes two people to make it work, but only one person to wreck it. Certainly your total health care requires a consideration of the health of your relationships. I am pleased to present some wise words by SUNY Professor Emeritus John I. Mosher, Ph.D. Four of Dr. Mosher's practical, down-to-earth articles are posted at http://www.doctoryourself.com/relationship.html http://www.doctoryourself.com/mosher2.html http://www.doctoryourself.com/mosher_neuro.html http://www.doctoryourself.com/mosher3.html

STOP TOBACCO DEATHS Tobacco is the number one cause of preventable death. Lung cancer kills far more women than breast cancer. Tobacco smoke contains hundreds of toxic chemicals. For more information on putting an end to smoking, you can look at the website of one of my favorite, all-volunteer organizations: http://www.SmokefreeAir.org .

POPULARITY CONTEST According to http://www.ranking.com , http://www.doctoryourself.com is now approximately the 109,000th most visited website on earth. That's not of just health websites; that's of all websites.

The word is getting out, and you are the reason. Keep reading!

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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.

Copyright c 2004 and prior years Andrew W. Saul doctoryourself.com/contact.html . 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.