Newsletter v5n13

“I came to live out loud.” (Emile Zola)

The DOCTOR YOURSELF NEWSLETTER (Vol. 5, No. 13 for October, 2005)

Free of charge, free of advertising, and free of the A.M.A.

Copyright 2005 by Andrew W. Saul of http://www.doctoryourself.com , which welcomes over 1.5 million visitors annually. Commercial use of the website or the contents of this Newsletter is strictly prohibited.

IN THIS ISSUE:

1) HOW TO DESTROY CONFIDENCE IN VITAMINS

2) HIGH DOSE VITAMIN C FIGHTS CANCER

3) FLU VACCINATION AND TREATMENT FALL FAR SHORT

4) DR. SAUL’S NEW BOOK: FIRE YOUR DOCTOR!

5) MUSCULAR DYSTROPHY

6) POISON IVY

7) CAFFEINE BLUES Book Review

8) Dr. Roger Williams’ SUPERNUTRITION to Control Disease

HOW TO DESTROY CONFIDENCE IN VITAMINS WHEN YOU DO NOT HAVE THE FACTS

by Andrew W. Saul

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to this year's annual meeting of the World Headquarters of Pharmaceutical Politicians, Educators, and Reporters (WHOPPER).

Let us get right to the point. Many of our members and affiliates have complained about what is, for us, an alarming and dangerous segment of health care: so-called orthomolecular medicine. We want to assure you that, although this therapeutic approach is, unfortunately, very effective in preventing and treating disease, that we will make sure the public will never learn of it.

We can say this with considerable confidence, since for over 50 years we have managed to keep virtually all psychiatrists from using niacin to treat schizophrenia; we have kept cardiologists from prescribing vitamin E; and we have kept general practitioners from prescribing vitamin C for viral illnesses.

Yes, it's really been a triumphant half-century. How did we do it, you may ask. It is really quite easy. Here is a summary for those of you that may have missed the last WHOPPER meeting.

Our guiding principle is, keep the public afraid. Any fear will do, but we have been especially pleased with, and therefore recommend instilling, the fear of new strains of flu viruses; the fear of vaccine shortages; and most especially, the fear of vitamin toxicity. Our success with this last one has been nothing short of spectacular.

Of course, you know that decades of poison control center statistics show that there have been virtually no deaths from vitamins. You also know that properly prescribed drugs, taken as directed, kill at least 100,000 Americans annually. Clearly, the last thing we want is for the public to actually figure out that vitamin therapy is tens of thousands of times safer than drug therapy.

Therefore, we endorse the following tactics:

1) Always demand 100% safety and 100% efficacy from nutritional therapy. This is particularly effective when you, at the very same time, continually remind the public that they have to expect and accept a reasonable amount of dangerous, even fatal, side effects with drug therapy. And, if one drug does not work, there is always another, still more expensive drug that might.

2) Always give priority to publishing research that shows that vitamins are ineffective, or outright harmful. Select the low-dose vitamin study; ignore the high-dose study. Pick the one negative vitamin study; ignore the hundreds of positive vitamin studies. If a positive megavitamin study is submitted to your department, medical society or journal, reject it on a technicality, and take a year or two to do so. Better still, make the authors publish in the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine. After all, whatever is published there will not be indexed by the National Library of Medicine. Therefore, the public's annual 700 million MEDLINE searches will utterly fail to find it. You cannot read what cannot be located.

3) Obfuscation works. Cloud and confuse the issue. Never let the truth stand in the way of a good press release. This we learned from the tobacco industry: If you cannot wow 'em with wisdom, baffle them with baloney. Remember, with vitamins, always highlight the negative; ignore the positive.

4) Never let the facts get in the way of as good argument. A good argument is one that you win. It's about politics, not health. Remember that, ladies and gentlemen. Don't worry about accuracy. Here is a perfect model for you: “Dietary supplements cannot make up for poor food choices. They have not been proven to boost energy or prevent or cure diseases.” (The American Dietetic Association. Dietary Supplements: Do You Know All the Facts? March 24, 2004. http://www.eatright.org/Public/NutritionInformation/index_19201.cfm

Take heed of what behaviorist B.F. Skinner said: Education is a very large number of very small steps. The secret is to keep plugging away, every chance we get. Every time we tell a WHOPPER in the news media, it is one additional, accumulative step towards washing the public's mind clean as a whistle, and stamping out nutritional medicine for good.

Remember, half of America takes vitamins, but fewer than 1% of physicians practice orthomolecular medicine. How hard can it be to shut the rest of them up? After all, look what we did to Linus Pauling. When he spoke out for vitamin C, we got the entire medical world to openly snicker at the only person in history to win two unshared Nobel prizes. Talk about a WHOPPER!

Now go back to your word-processors and get to work. Wade through those nutrition studies and latch onto the negative ones. The news media are waiting to hear from you.

OK: my story of WHOPPER may be (slightly) fictitious, but the problem is real enough: Negative stories about vitamins indeed have been front-page leads, yet vitamin cures have rarely made the evening news.

This is changing rapidly. The media are now regularly hearing from orthomolecular medicine. One way is through the Orthomolecular Medicine News Service (OMNS), a project of particular interest to the late, great Dr. High Riordan. OMNS began full operation on March 23, 2005; today, OMNS press releases go out to over 3,000 media outlets, including newspapers, radio and TV stations worldwide.

OMNS asserts and reasserts the positive messages:

1) Orthomolecular medicine saves lives.

2) The number one side effect of vitamins is failure to take enough of them.

3) Vitamins are not the problem; they are the solution.

Additionally, OMNS press releases are peer reviewed. The editorial board consists of Abram Hoffer, M.D., Ph.D.; Harold Foster, Ph.D.; Bradford Weeks, M.D.; Eric Paterson, M.D., Carolyn Dean, M.D., N.D.; and Thomas Levy, M.D., J.D.

Dr. Hugh Riordan wanted to promote “an awareness of orthomolecular,” saying often that he wanted orthomolecular medicine to be a household word. OMNS intends to accomplish precisely that. Today.

RECEIVE OMNS FOR FREE

If you would like to receive this wire-service style email newsfeed without charge, please go to http://www.orthomolecular.org/subscribe.html .

Submissions and suggestions are welcomed at omns@orthomolecular.org

To read all previous OMNS releases, please go to http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/index.shtml

And now, in fairness, let’s point out some really important mega-nutrition news that the news media DID finally pick up:

HIGH DOSES OF INTRAVENOUS VITAMIN C FIGHT CANCER

Kathleen Doheny, The New York Times, Tues, Sept.13, 2005

“High doses of vitamin C administered intravenously can fight cancer -- at least in the laboratory, researchers report.

“(The study) examined the body's absorption of the nutrient and found that while oral intake does reach a saturation point, when you give doses intravenously they go through the roof in the blood and then they are cleared, said lead researcher Dr. Mark Levine (chief of the molecular and clinical nutrition section and senior staff physician, National Institute of Diabetes & Digestive & Kidney Diseases). According to Levine, a 10 gram dose (10,000 milligrams) of vitamin C given intravenously produces bloodstream concentrations more than 25-fold higher than concentrations achieved from the same oral dose. “Some antibiotics are poorly absorbed when given orally but fight infections effectively when given intravenously, and Levine and his team thought that might be the case with vitamin C and cancer. Working with cell lines in the laboratory, they used high doses of vitamin C that could only be achieved by IV administration.

“” At the highest concentration of ascorbic acid, if given intravenously, they don't touch normal cells and they kill lots of cancer cells. We don't know why, Levine said.”

(Editor’s note: Yes, this is certainly good news, although it is not really “news” to most Doctor Yourself Newsletter readers. It is rather an official confirmation, one that has, finally, gotten the attention of the media. Even FOX news picked it up. As Gomer Pyle said, “Goll-y!”)

WHY THE DELAY?

Commentary by Bill Sardi

“With a growing body of evidence mounting, National Institutes of Health (NIH) researchers recently conceded that intravenous vitamin C may be an effective treatment for cancer. Last year the same researchers reported a similar study but the news media failed to publish it.

“The latest study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, confirms the work of Nobel-Prize winner Linus Pauling who conducted cancer research in the 1970s with vitamin C. Dr. Pauling's studies were discredited at the time by poorly conducted research studies at the Mayo Clinic.

“NIH researchers made no mention of their earlier study in 2004 which showed that oral-dose vitamin C can achieve three times greater blood concentration than previously thought possible, a fact which negates the current Recommended Dietary Allowance for vitamin C. NIH researchers refuse to issue a retraction of their earlier flawed research which mistakenly claimed humans cannot benefit from high-dose oral vitamin C supplements.”

More at http://www.knowledgeofhealth.com/ Also see: http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2005/09/13/cancer_intravenous_vitamin_c_effective_treatment.htm

Full citation: Qi Chen, Michael Graham Espey , Murali C. Krishna, James B. Mitchell, Christopher P. Corpe, Garry R. Buettner, Emily Shacter, and Mark Levine. Pharmacologic ascorbic acid concentrations selectively kill cancer cells: Action as a pro-drug to deliver hydrogen peroxide to tissues. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 10.1073/pnas.0506390102

“Extracellular but not intracellular ascorbate mediated cell death, which occurred by apoptosis and pyknosis/necrosis . . . (T)hese data indicate that ascorbate at concentrations achieved only by i.v. administration may be a pro-drug for formation of H2O2, and that blood can be a delivery system of the pro-drug to tissues. These findings give plausibility to i.v. ascorbic acid in cancer treatment...” FLU VACCINATION AND TREATMENT FALL FAR SHORT

Excerpted from the article by Elisabeth Rosenthal, International Herald Tribune, September 22, 2005

“Two new surprising Lancet research papers have found flu treatments are far less effective than previously thought. . . In one paper, international researchers analyzed all the data from patient studies on the flu vaccine performed worldwide in the last 37 years and discovered that vaccines showed at best a "modest" ability to prevent influenza or its complications in elderly people.

"”The runaway 100 percent effectiveness that's touted by proponents was nowhere to be seen," said Dr. Tom Jefferson, a researcher in Rome with the Cochrane Vaccine Fields project, an international consortium of scientists who perform systematic reviews of research data. "There is a wild overestimation of the impact of these vaccines in the community," he said.

“In the second paper, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta found “a dramatic increase in drug resistance in circulating human influenza viruses in recent years," said Dr. Rick Bright of the disease control centers."

“The research demonstrates how quickly and unexpectedly flu viruses can become impervious to medicines once they are put into common use, as they would be in the case of a pandemic. Also, at their best, antiviral medicines do not cure influenza.”

"”What you see is that marketing rules the response to influenza, and scientific evidence comes fourth or fifth," Dr. Jefferson said. "Vaccines may have a role, but they appear to have a modest effect. The best strategy to prevent the illness is to wash your hands."”

(Editor’s note: I like clean hands as much as the next person, but there is SO much more you can do to fight flu: http://www.doctoryourself.com/colds.html and http://www.doctoryourself.com/klennerpaper.html will get you started.)

WANT TO KNOW MORE about vitamin C as an anti-viral? For free?

Dr. Klenner's “Clinical Guide to the Use of Vitamin C” is now posted in its entirety at http://www.seanet.com/~alexs/ascorbate/198x/smith-lh-clinical_guide_1988.htm The complete text of Irwin Stone's book “The Healing Factor” is now posted for free reading at http://vitamincfoundation.org/stone/

READERS SAY:

MUSCULAR DYSTROPHY

Frank Rosenberger writes:

“I was diagnosed with the FSHD form of muscular dystrophy some years ago and given the typical there is no known cure comment from the muscle specialist, neurosurgeon and my personal doctor. I accepted the situation, but continued to hope for some development in the disease. I was doing a search on the internet one day and came across the Doctor Yourself website, and read the article on M.D (http://www.doctoryourself.com/dystrophy.html ). For the first time in years I felt encouraged and began to try a combination of the items listed in the article. That was approximately two months ago. I noticed an immediate increase in my energy level, which felt good in itself, but the amazing happened just recently when both my wife and I noticed a increase in the size of my left leg's calf muscle (this is without exercising). It was very obvious. I am continuing with the vitamins and supplements with an eager, though cautious one day at a time , expectation of further results. “I just wanted to say THANK YOU for being bold enough to have a website that is not afraid to stand against conventional medicine, and to give both hope and results to someone looking for such.”

POISON IVY

Robert McClain writes:

“Corvus, our 6 year old, unknowingly played in a poison ivy patch, along with a friend of his. Once I knew what I was dealing with, I mixed a paste of calcium ascorbate, then gently rubbed it onto the rash and made him rest for 15 minutes with the paste in full contact. I then slowly dissolved the paste onto his skin by misting him with distilled water. After that, I misted his skin with a solution of calcium ascorbate several times a day, while making him eat 2 grams an hour, to bowel tolerance.

“He was free of any evidence of poison ivy in less than three days. His buddy David was a mess for almost two weeks and has the scars to prove it. David also took some kind of steroid which didn't help him too much. David's Mom would not heed my advice, because I'm the “vitamin quack” in our circle of friends. Needless to say, Corvus now has a poster with 18 pictures of poison ivy so that he knows what to look for, and a Dad who knows just what to do if he grabs the wrong vegetation in the woods.

“I would never have believed it if I hadn't tried it myself.”

HOLLYWOOD LOVES A SEQUEL, SO WHY NOT?

Announcing a NEW BOOK by “Doctor Yourself” author Andrew W. Saul

Saul’s upcoming book, “FIRE YOUR DOCTOR! : How to Be Independently Healthy” will be released by Basic Health Publications early this December. If you wish, you can see the book’s cover now at

http://www.airlift.co.uk/perl/showbook.pl?stockcode=FIYODOCTP

FIRE YOUR DOCTOR! will have 256 large, double-columned pages and will sell for US $19.95 (plus shipping and handling). ISBN: 1591201381

CAFFEINE BLUES

by Stephen Cherniske (Warner Books, 1998. 464 pages. ISBN: 0446673919.)

A review by Doctor Yourself volunteer Vivian Unger

Did you know that:

* The lift you get from a cup of coffee is caused by the release of stress hormones?

* Caffeine promotes the loss of calcium and other vitamins and minerals through the urine?

* Caffeine can disrupt sleep patterns, even if you only drink it in the morning?

* It can take up to 12 hours for the body to detoxify a single cup of coffee?

* Many over-the-counter drugs contain caffeine, a fact which is not disclosed on the labels?

This is just a sampling of the information Stephen Cherniske reveals in Caffeine Blues. When I first came across this book, I had only just figured out why I kept getting headaches that started on Saturday morning and lasted until Sunday evening, spoiling my whole weekend. This phenomenon had me mystified for some time, until I discovered that a cup of coffee would banish the headache, as if by magic. Mystery solved. I was clearly physically addicted to coffee, and experiencing withdrawal. The puzzling thing was that I kept hearing that coffee was not physically addictive, merely “habit-forming.”

Cherniske debunks this myth and others, including the notion that caffeine boosts mental performance (it actually lowers it). The book lists a startling array of conditions caused or exacerbated by caffeine: allergies, asthma, diabetes, fibromyalgia, osteoporosis... the list goes on. Many people have accused Cherniske of being overzealous in his attack on the drug, but no one can deny he has done his homework. Every single claim he makes is backed up by medical studies listed in forty pages of endnotes.

The chapter on women's health discloses that women are more sensitive to caffeine than men. Caffeine can cause breast lumps, lower fertility, and harm the fetus if taken during pregnancy. I appreciate that Cherniske devotes a separate chapter to women's issues. Since most studies are done on men, this subject is often overlooked. Cherniske also touches on issues that are not normally mentioned in conjunction with coffee and caffeine, such as pesticides and deforestation. He notes that coffee often contains a raft of pesticide residues and other contaminants, and that some of them, such as DDT, are outlawed in North America. He also connects coffee cultivation with the loss of rain forest. Coffee was once grown in shade, allowing forest canopies to be left in place. Then in the 80's, a new hybrid coffee was introduced that grew in full sun, leading to an increase in yields, and a decrease in rain forest.

In addition to careful, thorough research, this helpful book provides a test you can take to determine your degree of addiction, and a program for getting off the bean. The latter includes a list of supplements that boost your energy levels until your body heals from the damage done to it by caffeine. Having quit coffee myself, with the help of this book, I can testify to the fact that it's no picnic. It took a month before I started to feel normal again. When you go off coffee after using it for years, you need all the help you can get.

As if all this isn't enough, Cherniske throws in 50 proven stress reducers, a list of resources, and Your Off-the-Bean Journal that readers can use to chart their progress and compare the state of their health before and after quitting. Indeed, if you are anything like me, you will be surprised at just how many symptoms you didn't even connect to caffeine will disappear once you get through the detoxification process.

The only thing I can find to criticize in Caffeine Blues is Cherniske's assertion that of all the thousands of research papers that have been published on caffeine, none have concluded that caffeine is good for you. In fact, I have seen references in newspapers and magazines to studies that purport to have found health benefits. Perhaps these studies came out after the book. In any case, this is a minor flaw. As Cherniske makes clear, the damage caused by caffeine outweighs any supposed health benefits. Caffeine Blues has so much to offer, that I doubt there is a better buy out there for anyone who is tired of being a slave to their morning cup of coffee.

(Editor’s note: Thanks to Doctor Yourself reader Vivian Unger for this very fine book review. If you would have a favorite health book that you would like to tell other Doctor Yourself Newsletter readers about, please drop me a line a doctoryourself.com/contact.html.)

DOCTOR YOURSELF Website of the Month:

http://www.healthsentinel.com/graphs.php

“Much of the information presented provides quotes directly from well-respected medical and other peer review journals. Actually quoting the information from these sources provides for several things. First, it allows you to see that the information presented is not just opinion, but information based on scientific and other studies. Second, it provides you the basis for doing your own verification of the material and further study on any particular issue. This allows you to empower your life to make decisions based on facts and not just on opinions. . . All the information is presented free of charge as a public service so there are no fees or charges of any type.”

SUPERNUTRITION as a Strategy for the Control of Disease

by Roger J. Williams, PhD.[1]

Summary and comments by Doctor Yourself volunteer Robert Sarver

Aside from the frank starvation there are three levels of nutrition that human beings have experienced: Poor, fair and good. “Supernutrition” (total nutrition in the most sophisticated sense) is above and beyond all these. It is concerned with the quality of nutrition, and is antithetical to caloric overnutrition.

“Poor nutrition” brings about in human populations severe underdevelopment of the young as well as deficiency diseases: beriberi, scurvy, pellagra, rickets, kwashiorkor and all the ill-defined combinations and variations of these afflictions.

“Fair nutrition” is good enough to prevent the well-recognized deficiency diseases but is not good enough to promote positive health and excellent development. Mediocre nutrition is unfortunately the kind that medical practitioners have generally been taught to regard as satisfactory. Many nutritionists have tended to accept the same doctrine: if everyone gets the government’s suggested but minimal daily requirements of certain specified nutrients, and are free from overt deficiency diseases, the major aims of nutrition have been achieved.

“Good nutrition” is best exemplified by what we often give our cats and dogs, as well as chickens and pigs being raised for the market. Such nutrition provides the animals not only with energy, but with an abundance of protein of high quality, as well as a good assortment of minerals and vitamins well above the danger line. Good nutrition is experienced by no more than a minority of the population such as ours in the United States; for many are satisfied if their nutrition is fair and the physicians, who are typically ill-trained in this area, too often concur.

“Supernutrition” is a strategy for promoting health and preventing disease. It is a valid concept because there are many loopholes even in good nutrition. If all individuals had perfect digestive systems and about average needs in every respect, then the loopholes would be minimal; but such individuals are probably so rare that they need not be considered. Supernutrition is based on two biological observations which can hardly be challenged: First, living cells, in our bodies and everywhere, practically never encounter perfect optimal environmental conditions; second, living cells when furnished with wholly satisfactory environments, including the absence of pathogenic organisms, will respond with health and vigor. If any link in the cells’ environment is weak or missing, then the cells cannot remain healthy. The weak link may be something well recognized like oxygen, tryptophan, thiamine or iron or it may be something more obscure like molybdenum, folic acid or selenium. The result is the same: an impoverished environment which leads to functional impairment.

COMMENTS:

How does the above article, written 34 years ago, apply to what we know today about nutrition? The nutritional situation has changed little in that time and may even be worse for the average person. Americans consume too many processed foods, too much sugar and too little nutrition. Poor nutrition is the state of the most Americans’ diets. Typical of this nutritional level are diets high in foods containing added sugar, processed foods, and might contain one or two servings of fresh fruit and vegetables a day. This diet contains no vitamin or mineral supplements.

Fair nutrition is the level of nutrition for those who make some minimal effort for a better diet. This diet includes some restrictions of highly processed foods and foods with added sugar, might contain three or four servings of fresh fruit and vegetables a day, and includes a low-potency multivitamin/multi-mineral supplement.

Good nutrition includes at least seven servings (each serving is half a cup) of unprocessed fruits and vegetables each day, 400 IU of vitamin E, 3,000 mg of vitamin C taken in divided doses during the day, and a high potency multivitamin/multi-mineral.

Supernutrition includes those items for good nutrition and the supplements recommended at http://www.doctoryourself.com/news/v2n7.txt. Supernutrition also includes added nutrients for preexisting conditions or those predisposed to medical conditions as indicated by familial medical history. A link to the common diseases, supplements and nutrition are on the left side of the screen at www.doctoryourself.com.

The supplements recommended at Doctoryourself.com are safe, available without a prescription and can be purchased over the Internet or at a discount store. (Doctor Yourself does not have any financial connection with any company, brand or manufacturer. We also decline to recommend sources or suppliers to any reader.)

Can you afford supernutrition? The real question is: can you afford not to have supernutrition? Visits to the doctor’s office, hospitalization, prescription drugs, pain and suffering, time lost from work and away from loved ones are all reasons to give your body supernutrition. Supernutrition will help you live a healthier, happier, more productive and longer life.

TO LEARN MORE:

You can read three dozen full text nutrition articles by Dr. Williams online and free of charge by going to http://www.doctoryourself.com/rjwilliams.html

[1] Williams RJ. 'Supernutrition' as a strategy for the control of disease," J. Orthomolecular Psychiatry, 1, 98-103 (1972). This paper was originally presented at the National Academy of Sciences, October, 1971.

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