host posted on February 05, 2008 12:37
Article by Doug Kaufmann
I want you to read every article in this newsletter because each of us has taken time to write them and all will educate and help you. Each contributor is very special to me, but one joining us this month is priceless. On his maiden writing voyage, this issue introduces my grown up son, Evan, who talks of the difficulties of making nutrition decisions in his earlier years and then shares what those years have taught him. I’m certain that some of us in our 50’s, 60’s and 70’s are experiencing the exact difficulties that Evan refers to as a young man.
So many of you have asked if I see any scientific trends developing in the past 10 years that might lean toward nutrition and away from medication taking. It’s a great question, and I do both indirectly and directly. Indirectly, the one trend that we’ve probably all witnessed has been that of pharmaceutical companies simply doing what they do best; trying to convince us that the health problems we have today are directly linked to our parents - or their parents - and are therefore not your fault. Of course, we’ll need their medications to get us better! In fact, medication might be what caused our ill health to begin with! Poisonous fungal metabolites, called mycotoxins, are documented throughout the scientific literature as causing human DNA damage and severe human illness. To the end that fragmented or broken DNA strands are involved in diseases, I’d say their observation is 50% correct in that broken DNA can be seen in diseased patients' cells. But could they also be 50% responsible? Since the most prescribed drugs (antibiotics), are themselves mycotoxins, my guess would be that sometimes drugs that we need might be doing more harm in the long run than good. Begin studying beta-glucan, olive leaf extract, oregano and other natural nutritional approaches to germ extermination, but if an antibiotic is truly needed, please take it. ALWAYS ask your doctor to allow you probiotics along with the antibiotics.
Recently, I’ve witnessed another dangerous trend in medicine, this time a direct trend concluding that we’d all benefit from knowing more about how food prevents diseases, as though our lives depended upon it. FDA approved drugs are coming under scrutiny, but not, as logic might dictate, from the FDA. Unbelievably the information is coming from the media. One former FDA drug reviewer stated that doctors tend to believe that antidepressants are safe and reliable, yet according to his own testimony antidepressants are only about 40-50% effective. Remember, a “coin flip” is 50% effective in turning up “heads!” Knowing this, would you allow your loved one to take such a chance with antidepressants? Apparently the negative studies were never published, which begs so many questions surrounding the integrity of medicine, from the doctors who did the studies, the hushing of these negative studies by the drug companies and the FDA’s involvement in this seemingly nefarious activity.
One week after the Wall Street Journal article (by the way, good for the WSJ in reporting this information!), another large reporting service wrote this headline; “Value of Drugs for Pre-osteoporosis Exaggerated Experts Warn.” Forgive me for not understanding this, but what is “pre-osteoporosis?” Is this now a medical condition requiring drugs? Be still my pre-heartbeat! The opening sentence tells the whole story: “A series of recent scientific publications have exaggerated the benefits and underplayed the harms of drugs to treat pre-osteoporosis or “osteopenia,” potentially encouraging treatment in millions of low risk women, warned experts in the British Medical Journal.” Amazingly, this isn’t reported in American medical journals! Did we call this cheating and lying when we were children? Would our parents have rightfully spanked us for this dishonesty?
What is the take-home message of this newsletter? From Kyle Drew to Dr. Jennings and Mark Russo, to Evan and Doug Kaufmann, it is our hope that we begin realizing that decisions we make always have consequences, and medical decisions often carry the most serious consequences. I’ll never tell you not to take a flu shot, but I’ll always encourage you to study both sides of every medical decision you make…especially when those who are assigned to protect “we the people,” clearly are not.