Zebras

When I was a student in chiropractic school, we were taught to be efficient but thorough. We were taught to perform our physical examinations of the patient ordering the fewest exams and the least costly. The purpose for the exams was to confirm what we suspected to be the problem, and were not to be used in an exploratory fashion hoping the exam would diagnose for us. We were taught that exam findings should never surprise us and that we should look for the obvious. In case the obvious eluded us, then we were to dig deeper and bring out the, "big guns". Occasionally there would be some students that would perform every exam procedure in the book, and order the biggest lab studies for patients that had simple problems. We used to say that these students were looking for, "Zebras". Diagnostic over kill. I run into the same problem in daily practice, only from the patients side of things. Too many patients are demanding, "the big guns", for simple things from muscle strains and joint sprains to headaches and low back pain. There is no need for x-ray, MRI, Nerve conduction studies and the like when the problem is simple and has a simple fix. Sometimes I think patients like the big diagnosis, it gives them a sense of grandure, purpose and maybe of legitimacy where their spouse is concerned. Most of what I see in practice requires a hand full of visits with some deep tissue massage, chiropractic manipulation and ultrasound, and patients do just fine. There are some patients who don't have a big problem, only slow healing times, and this prompts them to seek bigger treatments that in the end did not serve them. All the patient needs is simply more patience...

A Shot in The Dark....

Last week, parents were told a British researcher's 1998 report linking the MMR shot to autism was fraudulent -- that this debate about vaccines and autism is now over, and parents should no longer worry about giving their children six vaccines at a single pediatric appointment or 36 by the time they are five years old.

Is that the whole story? Dr. Andrew Wakefield's study of 12 children with autism actually looked at bowel disease, not vaccines. The study's conclusion stated, "We did not prove an association between measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and the syndrome described [autism]."

Dr. Wakefield did something I wish all doctors would do: he listened to parents and reported what they said. His paper also said that, "Onset of behavioral symptoms was associated, by the parents, with measles, mumps and rubella vaccination in 8 of the 12 children," and that, "further investigations are needed to examine this syndrome [autism with gut disease] and its possible relation to this vaccine."

Since when is repeating the words of parents and recommending further investigation a crime? As I've learned, the answer is whenever someone questions the safety of any vaccines.

For some reason, parents aren't being told that this "new" information about Dr. Wakefield isn't a medical report, but merely the allegations of a single British journalist named Brian Deer. Why does one journalist's accusations against Dr. Wakefield now mean the vaccine-autism debate is over?

One of the actual parents from the study, who talked to Generation Rescue, wondered the same thing:

"How could the BMJ [British Medical Journal, publisher of Brian Deer's article] scrutinize what Brian Deer has said without looking at our children's medical notes which they are not allowed to have? This needs to be challenged".

"To hear that my son's gastrointestinal condition has been extensively refuted, by unqualified and ill-informed individuals who have never laid eyes on him, looking at and mis-interpreting scanty medical notes without the courtesy to ask for our version of our son's early childhood, flies in the face of everything that the medical community and its professional bodies seek to represent. This is especially curious as gastrointestinal issues in autism are well recognized and documented and are included in the UK government's own best practice guidelines for early investigation and treatment"

American media, why aren't we hearing from these parents? If Brian Deer's allegations are actually false, if the Lancet 12 parents stand with Dr. Wakefield, then what exactly are moms and dads supposed to think about last week's media circus?

I know children regress after vaccination because it happened to my own son. Why aren't there any tests out there on the safety of how vaccines are administered in the real world, six at a time? Why have only 2 of the 36 shots our kids receive been looked at for their relationship to autism? Why hasn't anyone ever studied completely non-vaccinated children to understand their autism rate?

These missing safety studies are causing many parents to approach vaccines with moderation. Why do other first world countries give children so many fewer vaccines than we do? What if a parent used the vaccine schedule of Denmark, Norway, Japan or Finland -- countries that give one-third the shots we do (12 shots vs. 36 in the U.S.)? Vaccines save lives, but might be harming some children -- is moderation such a terrible idea?

Bone Up

As women reach menopause they are told to begin treatment with medications that will prevent osteoporosis, with good reason. As they reach the magical age when they begin the transformation back from the brink of monthly emotional insanity, the are made acutely aware of the next big thing that can take them down...literally, brittle bones and hip fractures. So, they go to the doctor and he or she tells them they need to be on some sort of drug that prevents bone decay. Drugs like Fosamax, Boniva, and others are Biphosphanate drugs the work on very specific areas of bone.

The powers that be have taught us that post-menopausal bones need to be thick in order to prevent fractures as we age, that the medications will do that for us, and that we nust take them religiously...It's all smoke and mirrors. Firstly, there are many disease processes that produce thick bones. Bone thickness has never been a quality of bone strength, in fact, most thicker bones fracture more easily !!

Here's the deception...Biphosphanates work on the bone tissue cells called Osteoclasts. They are the bone cells whose job it is to destroy old and diseased bone...the bone that is already weak, and they are driven be the hormone ESTROGEN. Like every cell type in our bodies, bone cells have a life span and when it is reached, the cell dies and needs to be removed in order to make room for the new bone that will replace it. So, preventing older bone from being removed from the system gives the bone the appearance of nice thicker bones on X-rays, but it is weaker bone...dead bone. Another bone cell type is called an Osteoblast, these are the cells that make new bone. During menopause, Osteoblasts works less hard because they are primarily driven by the hormone PROGESTERONE.. Are you getting it yet ??

As both hormones drop during menopause both cell types activities drop, but Progesterone drops a bit more that Estrogen. Because of this imbalance Osteoclasts are more active than Osteoblasts...more bone is lost than bone is built. Amazing huh...What is needed more than meds, is an increase in BioIdentical Progesterone, a regular exercise routine that stresses the bones and Calcium and Vitamine D supplements. Simple....and no deception

Rose Colored Glasses

It has been some time since my last post, 5 months actually. Not that I have had few thoughts since then or that any of them have not been worthy of web life but more that life has taken to moving too fast and taken time with it...But I'm back.

This blog was started for the purpose of informing you about what REALLY happens in the medical/health world and how it affects us all. How misinformation messes us all up...and how to REALLY take responsibility for your own health...cause no one else can.

While listening to a news story about the shortage of oil in the world, I found myself falling for the spin that oil is in short supply, and that the monolith of BIG oil is just too big for the world to change its need for it...All of this is a bunch of dinosaur crap...Do you really believe that all the worlds oil came from a limited amout of decaying dino mass??? BP was drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, in more than 5 miles depth of water, then another mile below the sea floor. Are you really going to buy the notion that some dinosaur was buried that deep eons ago...

What you need to know is that there is plenty of oil...all over the world. That doesn't mean we should mess up our environment in burning it for fuel, but lets face it, too many things we use in our daily lives require oil for their manufacture...Like plastics. Plastics come from OIL and I'll bet you didn't know that plastics can be reverse engineered to get back the oil that made them in the first place, and it's not very hard at all. WE can get gas, kerosine, diesel fuel and lamp oil from de-processing plastic.

We could kill 2 birds with one huge stone, clean up out environment of non-decaying plastic and reducing our need for more and more oil. There is a man from Japan that actually made a machine that turns plastic into oil...his machine separates the resultant liquids into gasoline, kerosine, diesel, and oil....COOL HUH.

The purpose of all this is to get you to see that things are rarely as they seem and hardly ever as we are told they are...Even more so in the area of your health... more later.

High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS)

Scientists have proved for the first time that fructose, a cheap form of sugar used in thousands of food products and soft drinks, can damage human metabolism and is fueling the obesity crisis.

Fructose, a sweetener usually derived from corn, can cause dangerous growths of fat cells around vital organs and is able to trigger the early stages of diabetes and heart disease.

Over 10 weeks, 16 volunteers on a controlled diet including high levels of fructose produced new fat cells around their heart, liver and other digestive organs. They also showed signs of food-processing abnormalities linked to diabetes and heart disease. Another group of volunteers on the same diet, but with glucose sugar replacing fructose, did not have these problems.

A Calorie is Not a Calorie

Glucose is the form of energy you were designed to run on. Every cell in your body, every bacterium -- and in fact, every living thing on the Earth--uses glucose for energy.

If you received your fructose only from vegetables and fruits (where it originates) as most people did a century ago, you’d consume about 15 grams per day -- a far cry from the 73 grams per day the typical adolescent gets from sweetened drinks. In vegetables and fruits, it’s mixed in with fiber, vitamins, minerals, enzymes, and beneficial phytonutrients, all which moderate any negative metabolic effects.

It isn’t that fructose itself is bad -- it is the MASSIVE DOSES you’re exposed to that make it dangerous.

There are two reasons fructose is so damaging:

1.

Your body metabolizes fructose in a much different way than glucose. The entire burden of metabolizing fructose falls on your liver.
2.

People are consuming fructose in enormous quantities, which has made the negative effects much more profound.

Today, 55 percent of sweeteners used in food and beverage manufacturing are made from corn, and the number one source of calories in America is soda, in the form of HFCS.

Food and beverage manufacturers began switching their sweeteners from sucrose (table sugar) to corn syrup in the 1970s when they discovered that HFCS was not only far cheaper to make, it’s about 20% sweeter than table sugar.

HFCS is either 42% or 55% fructose, and sucrose is 50% fructose, so it's really a wash in terms of sweetness.
Still, this switch drastically altered the average American diet.

By USDA estimates, about one-quarter of the calories consumed by the average American is in the form of added sugars, and most of that is HFCS. The average Westerner consumes a staggering 142 pounds a year of sugar! And the very products most people rely on to lose weight -- the low-fat diet foods -- are often the ones highest in fructose.

Making matters worse, all of the fiber has been removed from these processed foods, so there is essentially no nutritive value at all.

All That is Sweet

Americans eat more sugar than any other group of people in the world. We now have more children under the age of 12 that are Type 2 Diabetic than any other country in the world. What is worse, is that this disease just a few years ago was called ADULT onset diabetes. What's happening to us and our kids ?? SUGAR and more SUGAR, that's what's happening.
No matter your nutritional type, sugar is not good for you. Certainly you can tolerate small amounts if you are healthy and the majority of your diet is healthy, but let’s face it the average American is consuming over 150 pounds a year of sugar or nearly half a pound a day. Ideally your annual consumption should be well under ten pounds per YEAR. Sugar increases your insulin and leptin levels and decreases receptor sensitivity of both these hormones. This means that your body can't get insulin to work properly no matter what type of medication you might be on. This may prompt your doctor to increase your dose and spiraling you into other problems. This can lead to a wide range of health problems, including weight gain, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, premature aging, and heart disease.
Sugar suppresses your immune system, causing problems with allergies and digestive disorders. It can even bring on depression.
Stay tuned as we bring you more information, probably more than you wish you had, on the effects of sugar, the types of sugar and how you can heal Diabetes 2 if you or someone you know has it.

Get a Backbone

For quite some time now I have been noticing that just about every adolescent has some sort of orthodonture, be it full on braces, or retainers. These things aren't cheap. At 2500-3000 dollars a set, they can set a family back a little. There used to be headgear when I was growing up, then railroad trax, then single trax, now invisible bracing. With each new technology for mass and ease of production, you would think that these things would become less expensive, but no. If you have more than one child in need, you must put up your house !

With all the boomers trying to stave off ageing, I now see braces on people in their 40's and 50's. Mostly because they are on their 2nd or 3rd marriage and want to LOOK their best. I call it, "the peacock syndrome". Anything for vanity....People put so much effort into what can be seen, but so little in what lies underneath, at their core. I asked a patient the other day why they spent so much money on braces, and their response was, "because I want healthy teeth"...wow, bracing makes your teeth healthy ? That is great marketing. I thought brushing and flossing made your teeth healthy...my bad. She then said, "It's what people see",. and there it was. The answer to why people don't take the same care of their spines. People don't see them, they are not visible. If you can't see it, it must not be real, or at least important. Kind of blows a hole in atheism. If we wore our spines on our outside I bet that all of us would be at the chiropractor regularly making sure it was straight and strong, all aligned, just like our teeth. Everyone would have backbone. Pay more attention to what is never seen and it will never let you down. Don't let your health fall like Rome. We tune our cars, regular oil changes, maintain our homes, and our appearances. So, get a backbone and take care of yours.