Wellness Info and Facts

1)Lipitor for lowering cholesterol   2)Singulair for long-term asthma treatment   3)Lexapro anti-depressant 4)Nexium for acid reflux 5)Synthroid for thryoid 6)Plavix to prevent blood clots after recent heart attack or stroke 7)Toprol XL for hypertension 8)Prevacid to treat acid reflux 9)Vytorin to lower cholesterol 10)Advair Diskus for long-term asthma treatment....Source - RXList

32 million Americans take three or more medications daily...Source - American Heart Association

Statistics & information below from Beating Cancer with Nutrition (revised edition 2005) by Patrick Quillin PhD, RD, CNS...this book is a must-read for those faced with a diagnosis of cancer:

HEALTH STATE OF THE UNION

• US #1 World Health Expenses $2 trillion/year


• US #37 Health care system, according to World Health Org.


• Heart Disease: 50% of deaths, more ER, RX, disability


• Cancer: #1 cause death in US from 3% of deaths in 1900 to 24% in 1999; 42% of Americans will develop cancer in lifetime, 8 mil treated, another 7 mil “in remission, 250%^ br. Ca. 1950


• Diabetes: 20 million in US, 120 mil around world.


• Mind Drugs: 131 mil RX psychoactive 1988 to 233 mil 1998


• Medication: 3^rd- 5^th cause of death US, 140,000/yr. 9.6 mil rxn/yr (latest data indicates this is now HIGHER on the list)
  


• Obesity: 60% US, 300%^morbid OB since 1980, 90% type 2 DB


• Aspirin: 55 billion per year in US


• Alzheimer’s: 4 mil US, 14 mil 2050, 4^th leading cause of death US


• Hypertension: 60 million in US, RX increases risk for heart att.


• Infections: from obscure to 3^rd cause of death, drug resistant strains.

The most popular grocery items in America…

1. Marlboro cigarettes


2. Coke Classic


3. Pepsi Cola


4. Kraft processed cheese


5. Diet Coke


6. Campbell’s soup


7. Budweiser beer


8. Tide detergent


9. Folger’s coffee


10. Winston cigarettes

From “1992 Top Ten Almanac” by Michael Robbins

Top 3 Veggies in America: Catsup, French Fries and Onion Rings

Immune System Reduced by:

• Toxic Metals: Cd, Pb, Hg


• VOC: PCB, benzene


• Sugar: glycemic index


• Omega3:6 ratio, 1:1; 1:16


• Stress, depression

Immune System Enhanced by:

• Vitamins: A, C, E, B-6


• Minerals: ZN, Cr, Se


• Quasi-vit: CoQ, EPA, GLA


• Amino Acids: arg, gluta


• Herbals: Astragalus, Cat’s Claw, Pau D’Arco


• Foods: yogurt, cartilage, garlic, enzymes, green leafy, shark oil, colostrum


• Positive emotions: Love
• 
  

Makes you want to eat your spinach, doesn't it?!

Longevity and well-being do not come from medical doctors & prescription drugs - they are products of the CHOICES WE MAKE.

Excerpts from  the article "Science and the Human Energy Field" by James L. Oschman, Ph.D. author of "Energy Medicine" & William Lee Rand.

...Controversial or not, energy medicine based on the use of medical equipment is alive and well in hospitals, clinics and medical research centers. Reiki and other forms of hands-on healing are another form of energy medicine based on scientifically measurable energy fields emitted from the healers's hands.

In a few decades scientists went from a conviction that there is no such thing as an energy field around the human body to a certainty that such fields exist and are medically important. Now doctors are making treatment decisions on the basis of these biofield measurements.

The first human energy field to be well-documented was the field of the heart.  This research led to the electrocardiogram and was done a century ago by Einthoven, who received a Nobel prize for his accomplishments in 1924. About a quarter of a center later, Berger measured the electrical fields of the brain, resulting in the medical field of electroencephalography.

The research of Einthoven, Berger and others established that organs such as the heart and brain produce bioelectric fields that travel through the tissues of the body and that can be recorded with electrodes on the body surface. The electrocardiogram, for example, can be picked up with electrodes placed anywhere on the body, even on the feet.

There is a fundamental law in physics., Ampere's Law, that says that when currents flow through conducters such as wires or living tissues, magnetic fields must be produced in the surrounding space.

Since living tissues are conductors of electricity, the well established laws of physics require that currents set up by the heart and other muscles, and the brain and peripheral nerves, will produce fields in the space around the body. These are called biomagnetic fields.

...Much credit is due to the late C. Andrew L. Bassett and his colleagues at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York for their persistence in overcoming entrenched skepticism and daunting regulatory hurdles to bring pulsing electromagnetic field therapy (PEMF) for bone healing into the mainstream of medicine. The research showed that certain magnetic fields can jump-start the healing process in fractures that have failed to heal, even for as long as forty years. Bassett and his colleagues at Columbia also researched the use of PEMFs on other musculoskeletal problems, and had considerable success. These problems include osteoarthritis, osteonecrosis, osteochrondritis dessecans, osteogenesis imperfecta and osteoporosis.

The first FDA approval for magnetic field therapy was obtained in 1979. Subsequent work showed that healing in other tissues can be jump-started with fields pulsing at differing frequencies..

The important frequencies for stimulating tissue repair are all in the biologically important extremely low frequency (ELF) range. Two cycles per second Hz is optimal for bone growth, ten Hz is used for ligaments and somewhat higher frequencies work for skin and capillaries....

What is important about all of this is evidence that practitioners of various hands-on and hands-off therapies such as Reiki, acupressure, aura balancing, Bowen, canialsacral, Structural Integration (Rolfing), healing touch, Polarity Therapy, massage and Zero Balancing can emit ELF signals from their hands. This was discovered in a valuable study by Dr. John Zimmerman....He found that this pulsing field is produced by the hands of practitioners of therapeutic touch and healing touch, but non-practitioners do not produce such signals.

Zimmerman found that the pulsing field produced by the hands of practitioners is not steady in frequency, but varies from moment to moment. The frequency sweeps up and down through the very same range of frequencies in the ELF band that medical researchers have identified as being effective for jump starting the healing process in various tissues they have investigated.

Hence we have uncovered a major synergy between clinical biomedicine and complementary medicine. It seems likely that one effect of the various hands-on and non-contact energy therapies is to introduce into tissues the same healing frequencies that medical researchers have identified as key to tissue healing....Moreover, careful medical research on the mechanism by which these signals affect cells applies equally to conventional and complementary therapies.

The basic physics of induction is important because it helps explain some of the effects of Reiki, laying on of hands, and other hands-on and hands-off therapies.

For the complete article please refer to Reiki News Magazine, Vol. One, Issue Three, Winter 2002

 Excerpts from "Hands of Life" by Julie Motz - Surgery Room Healer

As time has gone on, more and more surgical nurses, anesthesiologists and surgeons have expressed an interest in learning to do what I do, (hands-on healing / empathetic healing during surgical procedures).  This, I hope will be the wave of the future.  Everyone who goes into medicine does so with the intent to heal the whole person and, unwittingly, to heal the broken parts of himself.  Since nurturing is still considered  “women’s work”, and therefore given low esteem in our society, this impulse is ignored or suppressed in medical education.  When we begin to understand that neither mental function nor physical function is separable from emotional function, this will change.

When I hear about plans for “health care reform,” something inside me groans.  What is really being discussed are ways to make being sick more affordable, not really to make people more healthy.  But so long as we have violent parenting and a violent society, we will have violent, expensive, and reactive medicine.  They complement each other and our current style of combating violence with yet more violence.

If physicians were trained to go inside their own bodies and examine their patients empathetically as well as objectively, they would get a great deal more information on both a physical and psychological level.  Moreover, it is unscientific to ignore the psychological information about a patient when it is so clear that, through the workings of the hypothalamus, thought and feeling are directly translated into physical chemistry, which affects the whole body through the endocrine system, the nervous system, and the immune system.

Excerpts from "Vibrational Medicine"  by Richard Gerber, M.D.  HIGHLY Recommended for the Healer in Training

In 1979, Krieger wrote a book entitled The Therapeutic Touch: How to Use Your Hands to Help or to Heal.  The book was based on the experiences and feedback of many nurses who had taken her course at NYU.  In the book, Krieger states that as of 1979, almost 350 professional nurses had taken “Frontiers in Nursing” as part of their curriculum for either the M.A. or Ph D. degree.  In addition, she had taught another 4,000 professionals in the health field via continuing education programs at various universities in the United States and Canada.  A number of Krieger’s nursing students have gone on to teach Therapeutic Touch to health-care practitioners and lay people throughout the country.

Many unique applications have come from the use of this healing art in the hospital setting.  In one “premie unit” in New York, nurses began to use Therapeutic Touch on premature infants as part of their medical care.  The medical staff began to note such tremendous strides in infant progress and weight gain that they sheepishly asked the nurses what they were doing that was different from the usual regimen.  Eventually, all the doctors and nurses in the neonatal unit were taught to use Therapeutic Touch on the infants, including many inquisitive parents who wished to give their children every possible chance for a healthy survival.  In another hospital in New York, doctors and nurses in the Emergency Room began to use Therapeutic Touch to ease and quiet many of their patients coming in with psychedelic drug overdoses.  Utilization of this technique has met with interesting success, as demonstrated by patients’ reduced need for sedation.  There are indications of the medical community’s increasing interest in Therapeutic Touch, as evidenced by recent funding for studies within this area by government-funded health agencies such as the National Institutes of Health, (NIH).

NOTE: Dolores Krieger created the term "Therapeutic Touch" to appeal to medical professionals. She felt any reference to the term 'psychic' or 'metaphysical' would discourage nurses and doctors from learning the technique. Through Dolores' hard work and dedication, healing touch in all forms, including 'Reiki' is becoming more popular in clinical medical settings. 

Excerpts from "Peace, Love and Healing" by Bernie Siegel, M.D.

Studies have been shown that relaxation training and related techniques can be helpful in combating the negative effects of prolonged stress on the immune system components.  A dysregulated immune system can affect everything from your susceptibility to colds to your ability to kill cancer cells or AIDS viruses, and may also be a factor in asthma, allergies, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, and other autoimmune diseases in which the body attacks itself.

Psychotherapy and other techniques that bring repressed emotional material into consciousness can also heal, both psychologically and physically, by helping us to achieve peace of mind.  One interesting series of studies by psychologist James Pennebaker at Southern Methodist University showed that people who confided traumatic experiences to a diary showed better immune function than those who didn’t.

Surgeon David Cheek has been studying the phenomenon of awareness under anesthesia (“unconscious perception”) for several decades.  In a review of the professional literature on the subject, he cites such studies as the one in which an anesthetist delivered a customized message something like the following to each of 1500 patients as they neared the end of their operations:  “Mr. Smith, your gallbladder has now been successfully removed.  No serious disease was found.  You will have no pain in the area of your operation.  The tube in your nose is there so that you will not be sick.  Therefore you will not be sick, and the tube in your nose will not bother you.”

Fully half the patients who received these messages required no postoperative medication for pain.  Similar studies on smaller groups of people showed even better results.  Other studies have shown the effectiveness of suggesting to anesthetized patients that they will not bleed during surgery, or that they will relax their pelvic muscles after surgery and have no difficulty voiding.  A recent article in The Lancet shows that positive suggestions in the operating room lead not only to less discomfort after surgery but to earlier discharge as well.  Anesthetists have begun to observe the value of making similar suggestions to patients in a preoperative visit, too, preferably the day before the procedure, then reinforcing them during the operation.

Excerpts from "Homeopathy in Epidemic Diseases"  by Dr. Dorothy Shepherd

There are rumors of epidemics on the Continent, diphtheria is increasing in spite, or is it because of immunization?  Germany is the most highly immunized country in the world and yet the death rate of diphtheria is rising fast.

Epidemic diseases treated and nursed at home raise the problem of prophylaxis or prevention.  And here again Homeopathy offers the best solution.  Believe me, it has been shown again and again that our medicines, (homeopathy), given intelligently and according to our law that “like cures like” do not only cure infectious diseases speedily and easily without the development of any complications, but they also prevent the same diseases.  This is of great importance, particularly in the case of infants who have not enough stamina to stand up to an onslaught of whooping cough or measles or diphtheria or infantile paralysis, the latest bugbear of the press.

Some impartial medical observers in Australia have found that the incidence of poliomyelitis, the modern infantile paralysis, has vastly increased since whooping cough and diphtheria inoculations have become more popular, and that the incubation period of infantile paralysis corresponds closely to, and follows exactly on the correct day after the inoculation has been made.  It might have been coincidence, if it had only happened in one or two cases, but unfortunately it has happened in more than 50 percent of the cases.

Protection against measles is usually found in Pulsatilla 6 or 30, nightly from the third or seventh day after contact, until after the danger of infection is past; that is on the fifteenth or sixteenth day.  I have found this to answer extremely well in various nursery schools where we had to deal with toddlers under the age of five, the most susceptible and dangerous age.  Before the use of this prophylactic, the rate of attendance in the first three months of the year used to drop to below ten in each of the three schools I was responsible for.  After the Pulsatilla was given almost as a routine, we have had the full quota of attendance, with only occasional absentees.

Doubt has been expressed, whether Dipthernium or any Homeopathic medication can truly prevent diphtheria.  Records have been published by Dr. Paterson of Glasgow of the results obtained at the Mount Vernon Hospital for Children (Homeopathic).  Diphtherinum in the 200^th potency produced definite immunity, as shown by the Schick test.  All the cases done in this way gave a Schick negative result within nine weeks, and some as early as three weeks afterwards.

Dr. Bodman said that at the Bristol Homeopathic Hospital some thirty to forty nurses were immunized by the orthodox method.  It was noticed hereafter that an enormous amount of sickness followed immediately after the immunization.  It temporarily reduced resistance to any infection and they went down with influenza, German measles, whooping cough and the sickness rate among the nurses was higher during the six months following diphtheria immunization than in any period in the history of the hospital

Regarding: TRUVIA brand sweetener. By Angela Welch, Certified Naturopath

Comment on reply - I still want to know exactly what their compound is and why it is needed to enhance the flavor?

Anyhow...back to my research...I paid $3.68 at Wal-Mart for 40 packets of this stuff. Each packet is equivalent to the sweetness of 2 teaspoons of sugar. For me, this will sweeten about 80 cups of coffee or tea.

Now, I have a 1.3 oz. bottle of  KAL brand "Pure Stevia Organic Extract" that I purchased last year and I've used it on a daily basis. YES - bought it last year - perhaps June/July of 2008 and use it on a daily basis for coffee, tea, etc. On average I use about 1/4 of a scoop to sweeten because it is that potent; I might add that I enjoy herbal teas and drink several cups daily so I may use the equivalent of 2 scoops daily of this product. The cost of this 1.3 oz. bottle of pure, organic Stevia extract cost me $13.99 at Healthy Alternatives Health Food Store on Harbor-Petoskey Rd. So let's do the math...Let's say on the conservative side that I've sweetened 730 cups of tea/coffee thus far & I have 1/3 of the bottle left so that gives me about 1095 cups of sweetened beverage from this small 1.3 oz. bottle. Now with the Truvia I get 80 cups of sweetened beverage for $3.68 - in comparison I would need 13.7 boxes of Truvia to sweeten 1095 cups of beverage. So let's multiply 13.7 boxes times $3.68 cost per box = $50.42.

Looks like good 'ole health food store Stevia wins on many levels. It is organic, non-gmo and does not contain any mystery ingredients.

Also - buyer beware with products labeled as "truvia-sweetened" because I just purchased "Blue Bunny" brand fudgsicles from Wal-Mart and read the label when I got home. The second ingredient is "malitol" (sweetener) - this causes bloating, gas and discomfort in some people. In other words, Truvia is not the ONLY sweetening agent in the fudgsicles. Quite misleading but that's why I am a LABEL READER.  I ate 2 of the bars today, (they are tasty), and my stomach is boating and upset.

Hope you find this information helpful. Please see the article below regarding "erythritol".

Information below from foodnavigator.com

Future sugar substitute under revision
06-Jul-2001
Related topics: Science & Nutrition

The next generation of low-calorie sugar substitute could be a linear four-carbon sugar alcohol called erythritol, Nutrition Science News reports this month.
The sugar substitute is intended for use in beverage and bakery products, candy, and chewing gum.
According to a recent issue of Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, toxicology studies show erythritol to be safe, as does a comprehensive review by William Berndt, Ph.D., of the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, published in Food and Chemical Toxicology.
Most studies on erythritol were animal feeding experiments in which up to 20 per cent of the diet consisted of erythritol. Long-term feeding studies were used to determine carcinogenicity, and two-generation studies explored reproductive effects. Embryo, teratagenic, and mutgenic studies all examined different areas of concern. Every animal study found that erythritol was harmless. The only side effects occurred at very high doses and consisted of a slight laxative effect, decreased weight gain, increased water consumption, and increased urination.
Human studies also found erythritol to be well tolerated and safe. Erythritol is well absorbed and is excreted unchanged in the urine, 90 per cent within 24 hours.
Developed by Cerestar USA , erythritol occurs naturally in alcoholic beverages, soy sauce, some fruits, and is also found in small amounts in human plasma.
It is 60-80 per cent sweeter than sucrose and it is produced from corn or wheat starch by enzymatic hydrolysis yielding glucose, which is fermented by osmophilic yeast. Once erythritol is separated from the fermentation broth, it is purified to a crystalline product that is more than 99 per cent pure.
In the near future Erythritol may become an effective sugar substitute for diabetics and for those who wish to control their weight.One entire issue of Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology was devoted to 15 different studies evaluating the safety of erythritol. In his review, Berndt refers to these studies and others. Most were animal feeding experiments in which up to 20 percent of the diet consisted of erythritol. Long-term feeding studies were used to determine carcinogenicity, and two-generation studies explored reproductive effects. Embryo, teratagenic, and mutgenic studies all examined different areas of concern. Every animal study found that erythritol was harmless. The only side effects occurred at very high doses and consisted of a slight laxative effect, decreased weight gain, increased water consumption, and increased urination.
In the near future Erythritol may be become an effective sugar substitute for diabetics and for those who wish to control their weight, the journal concludes.