A recent study in the US has found if you take the equivalent of 6 nurofen a day over a prolonged period (years) you are 66% more likely to get dementia, and 57% more likely to get Alzheimer’s.
However, before you blame pain killers for any relatives brain problems keep this in mind:
One of the modern theories for the prevalence of diseases such as arthritis, cancer, heart disease, cancer and dementia in the West is that they are all caused by the same thing – inflammation secondary to poor lifestyle choices. So it may be these people where going to get dementia anyway, its just that they had pain full inflammation before they got the brain inflammation.
This is all irrelevant however as if you’re in pain you should of course see a chiropractor, go on an anti-inflammatory diet, exercise correctly and improve your lifestyle so you get out of pain and decrease your chances of dementia, Alzheimer’s etc. etc.
More details of the study: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/701813
More about ways to beat dementia and Alzheimer's: www.thepainreliefcentres.co.uk
Monday, November 30, 2009
New Hope for MS Sufferers
It seems some clever noggin, Dr Paolo Zamboni, has re-examined the evidence of what causes Multiple Sclerosis and has come up with a new theory, a new treatment, and initial studies are going well.
So far in a group of 65 patients a new procedure has been carried out that has been 70%-80% successful.
Dr Zamboni, a vascular specialist was forced to learn all he could about MS when his wife was struck down with it. His own research discovered that 90% of MS sufferers have blocked or damaged veins that drain the head and simply developed a procedure to repair this problem. Since his wife had the operation 3 years ago she has had no symptoms. The research has also shown the brain is repairing itself in many cases once the blood drainage is restored.
This new finding clearly demonstrates one of the principles of cellular medicine I teach in my practice:
In order to be healthy a cell (or to make it more clear – your body) will stay healthy providing it has enough raw materials, it suffers no injury, and its waste is taken away.
As part of Dr Zamboni's theory is that the damage is caused by the heavy metal iron, it is also possible that other heavy metals may be involved - such as mercury, lead and cobalt. These metals can be at least partially removed by simply taking a pill known as a chealtion agent. Ask me for more details as there are a few available and they are fairly cheap, and safe to - I'm just rying a course at the moment.
Dr Zamboni’s vascular theory also explains why some people with MS find relief with regular chiropractic care.
More information: http://tinyurl.com/yj697fj
So far in a group of 65 patients a new procedure has been carried out that has been 70%-80% successful.
Dr Zamboni, a vascular specialist was forced to learn all he could about MS when his wife was struck down with it. His own research discovered that 90% of MS sufferers have blocked or damaged veins that drain the head and simply developed a procedure to repair this problem. Since his wife had the operation 3 years ago she has had no symptoms. The research has also shown the brain is repairing itself in many cases once the blood drainage is restored.
This new finding clearly demonstrates one of the principles of cellular medicine I teach in my practice:
In order to be healthy a cell (or to make it more clear – your body) will stay healthy providing it has enough raw materials, it suffers no injury, and its waste is taken away.
As part of Dr Zamboni's theory is that the damage is caused by the heavy metal iron, it is also possible that other heavy metals may be involved - such as mercury, lead and cobalt. These metals can be at least partially removed by simply taking a pill known as a chealtion agent. Ask me for more details as there are a few available and they are fairly cheap, and safe to - I'm just rying a course at the moment.
Dr Zamboni’s vascular theory also explains why some people with MS find relief with regular chiropractic care.
More information: http://tinyurl.com/yj697fj
Vaccine Miscarriage
Once again, the safety of vaccines, in particular the H1N1 swine flu vaccine is being questioned.
The first thing you must know about the swine flu vaccine is that it is so safe that in the US the drug companies have given them immunity from being sued if it does kill anyone! This is probably as the drug companies are used to being sued and they new that there was no way on earth they could do all the proper testing if they where going to cash in on this (possibly manufactured) epidemic. Of course the US government really helped push this through quickly – so was probably quite happy to grant the vaccine makers immunity from prosecution.
Second, it is safe for pregnant women and unborn children. Except that’s not what it says on the label, and it’s also not safe for children under 6 months (according to the manufacturers). So how it can be safe for the unborn, then unsafe for the first 6 months of life is a modern miracle.
Third, the miscarriages that have happened just after getting the vaccine are just coincidences.
You can read about them here: http://tinyurl.com/yeofg68
If anyone has had the flu after getting the vaccine, I would like to here about it – and you should report it to your GP. In the interest of science though, I would also like to know if you used to get the flu before the vaccine, but don’t anymore.
I think I may have to do a proper survey - stay tuned.
There are some more articles on beating the flu naturally in the download section of our website: www.thepainreliefcentres.co.uk
The first thing you must know about the swine flu vaccine is that it is so safe that in the US the drug companies have given them immunity from being sued if it does kill anyone! This is probably as the drug companies are used to being sued and they new that there was no way on earth they could do all the proper testing if they where going to cash in on this (possibly manufactured) epidemic. Of course the US government really helped push this through quickly – so was probably quite happy to grant the vaccine makers immunity from prosecution.
Second, it is safe for pregnant women and unborn children. Except that’s not what it says on the label, and it’s also not safe for children under 6 months (according to the manufacturers). So how it can be safe for the unborn, then unsafe for the first 6 months of life is a modern miracle.
Third, the miscarriages that have happened just after getting the vaccine are just coincidences.
You can read about them here: http://tinyurl.com/yeofg68
If anyone has had the flu after getting the vaccine, I would like to here about it – and you should report it to your GP. In the interest of science though, I would also like to know if you used to get the flu before the vaccine, but don’t anymore.
I think I may have to do a proper survey - stay tuned.
There are some more articles on beating the flu naturally in the download section of our website: www.thepainreliefcentres.co.uk
Monday, November 23, 2009
Stress, Insulin, Cholesterol, Hormones and Your Brain.
The purpose of this little essay is to give you a quick crash course in human physiology so you can get the big picture of how stress causes disease and why so many people in the West get heart disease, diabetes and dementia.
Everybody knows that “stress” is bad for them, but most have no idea just how bad. Also most people don’t realize the continual stress they are under. Let me start by saying almost everyone you know, including yourself, is chronically stressed, and that it is slowly killing you. Cheery today aren’t I. But try not to panic, help is at hand.
So what is stress, in a scientific sense?
Stress is the physiological response of the body to real or perceived threat. This is important to realize as your body chemistry will react the same to a real tiger jumping at you, or just imagining one (very vividly, in the dark, just after watching a horror movie!). Threats today come to us from work, food, the air, our own minds and lifestyle.
When your body senses a potential threat – physical, chemical or mental – it responds by activating part of your nervous system called your Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS for short). The SNS then sends messages to your adrenal glands and your brain. The short term effects are to release immediate energy reserves and heighten your senses, to get you ready to fight or run. This means blood is diverted from your vital organs to your muscles, muscle tension increases, blood sugar and blood pressure increase.
Now this is all very well for short term survival, but if stress continues it becomes very harmful.
First of all we need to make more hormones such as insulin to keep getting the extra blood sugar into out muscles. All of your major hormones (testosterone, oestrogen, insulin etc.) are made from ….cholesterol. So your liver makes more cholesterol under chronic stress and pumps it into the blood to be taken to the organs. If you run out of cholesterol you can’t make hormones and other systems start to fail – the brain for instance needs plenty of cholesterol to regulate mood, memory, and make brain cells.
In today’s society our bodies are now under constant stress from the food we eat (processed fat and sugar, covered in man made chemicals), the air we breathe (smoke and fumes from cars and factories) and the way we live (no exercise, lots of TV). Even sitting down is an unnatural position that stresses the body. This makes sitting down watching the news (normally a very negative mental/emotional experience) one of the worst habits you can have on a daily basis.
Chronic, repeated stress produces a set of responses, that however necessary at the time, ultimately impair our health and wellbeing. Medical research over the past 20 years has clarified how stress can produce illness, and it is known that heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, obesity, depression, anxiety and most cancers are all preventable and lifestyle related.
Regular chiropractic care can be a part of a general stress reduction plan, and thus help prevent problems, while at the same time fine tuning your body.
Chiropractic helps reduce stress by improving spinal movement, which in turn stimulates the part of the brain that turns of stress.
An exciting small study has shown that chiropractic actually affects a type of enzyme that protects your DNA from aging - http://www.jvsr.com/abstracts/index.asp?id=243. And the longer you receive regular chiropractic care, the better the results!
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Quackbusting the Quackbusters part 2
Or “Are medical doctors ignorant, to busy to think, or just poorly trained?”
Its time to get on my soap box again after hearing 2 stories this morning from a couple of patients.
So I’d like to share these anecdotes with you, and back it up with some science ( a study you can guarantee will not make it onto the so-called ‘quackwatch’ sites, and will be ignored by such people as Simon ‘keep libel laws out of science, so I don’t have to be objective’ Singh ).
First up, I’m treating a young guy for chronic back pain that has utterly failed to respond to normal medical care. After a few sessions of chiropractic, he’s had his best week ever, but then he gets the dreaded swine flu. His doctor tells him to stay in so as not to spread it (sensible advice if swine flu where A) a pandemic, and B) particularly virulent) to others. Also given tamiflu. Then, and this is the stupid bit, he gets an appointment with a back specialist to do a steroid injection – which the idiot doctor then goes ahead and does despite the fact that steroid compromise the immune system. The result – patient is worse and gets more aches and pains!
Then, another patient, on really heavy drugs for her severe pain, goes to doctor complaining of lack of energy, and forgetting things – such as how to drive whilst actually driving! Doctor says no its not side effects to drugs, so she goes home, looks up the drug effects and there it is – her symptoms ARE a known side effect.
Now at this point you may think it’s just a coincidence that I had 2 patients in one morning who had doctors unaware of how the drugs they used were working. But oh no… the truth is pretty awful…
The University of Arizona College of Pharmacy, mailed a questionnaire to 12,500 US prescribers. Recipients were asked to classify 14 drug pairs in to three categories:
* contraindicated (dangerous to use together)
* may be used together but with monitoring
* no interaction
Only 42.7% got it right! And worse – most only identified 25% of the dangerous interactions. The leader of the research, Dr. Malone, unsurprisingly, stated that the research indicates that health professional training programmes are not doing enough to teach students about potential drug-drug interactions.
It’s no wonder medicine in the US is the leading preventable cause of death.
Lucky for us though there is a website I have long been using – www.drugs.com – that lists all the drugs on the market, all their effects and interactions. All you have to do is type in the name and then choose what you want to read – the simple guide, the professional, the medical or the technical! Drugs.com also has an area you can save the list of all the medication you’re on, so if you get a new one and add it - it checks for all the interactions for you. Really sounds like something all doctors and hospitals should be using doesn’t it, and not just concerned chiropractors and their patients.
The link to the interactions checker -
http://www.drugs.com/drug_interactions.php
Its time to get on my soap box again after hearing 2 stories this morning from a couple of patients.
So I’d like to share these anecdotes with you, and back it up with some science ( a study you can guarantee will not make it onto the so-called ‘quackwatch’ sites, and will be ignored by such people as Simon ‘keep libel laws out of science, so I don’t have to be objective’ Singh ).
First up, I’m treating a young guy for chronic back pain that has utterly failed to respond to normal medical care. After a few sessions of chiropractic, he’s had his best week ever, but then he gets the dreaded swine flu. His doctor tells him to stay in so as not to spread it (sensible advice if swine flu where A) a pandemic, and B) particularly virulent) to others. Also given tamiflu. Then, and this is the stupid bit, he gets an appointment with a back specialist to do a steroid injection – which the idiot doctor then goes ahead and does despite the fact that steroid compromise the immune system. The result – patient is worse and gets more aches and pains!
Then, another patient, on really heavy drugs for her severe pain, goes to doctor complaining of lack of energy, and forgetting things – such as how to drive whilst actually driving! Doctor says no its not side effects to drugs, so she goes home, looks up the drug effects and there it is – her symptoms ARE a known side effect.
Now at this point you may think it’s just a coincidence that I had 2 patients in one morning who had doctors unaware of how the drugs they used were working. But oh no… the truth is pretty awful…
The University of Arizona College of Pharmacy, mailed a questionnaire to 12,500 US prescribers. Recipients were asked to classify 14 drug pairs in to three categories:
* contraindicated (dangerous to use together)
* may be used together but with monitoring
* no interaction
Only 42.7% got it right! And worse – most only identified 25% of the dangerous interactions. The leader of the research, Dr. Malone, unsurprisingly, stated that the research indicates that health professional training programmes are not doing enough to teach students about potential drug-drug interactions.
It’s no wonder medicine in the US is the leading preventable cause of death.
Lucky for us though there is a website I have long been using – www.drugs.com – that lists all the drugs on the market, all their effects and interactions. All you have to do is type in the name and then choose what you want to read – the simple guide, the professional, the medical or the technical! Drugs.com also has an area you can save the list of all the medication you’re on, so if you get a new one and add it - it checks for all the interactions for you. Really sounds like something all doctors and hospitals should be using doesn’t it, and not just concerned chiropractors and their patients.
The link to the interactions checker -
http://www.drugs.com/drug_interactions.php
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Chilli and Chocolate and Green Tea
Strangely, chilli and chocolate go well together with a cup of green tea, but that’s more a matter of taste than science. What science has been revealing though is how useful these are for health.
First of, chilli, in the form of a cream or lotion is useful in pain relief, has recently been used in lab conditions (on mice) to reduce the severity of heart attacks by up to 85%. The theory is that it should help in humans if the cream is applied to the chest at the first sign of an attack.
Chocolate can also help prevent a heart attack (dark chocolate that is) by lowering levels of inflammation in the body (measured by C reactive protein). 15g of dark chocolate a day also helps chronic fatigue syndrome, lower blood pressure, and even seems to be good for insulin too!
Another of my favourite daily health boosters is green tea. Plenty of high level scientific investigation is going on about green tea at the moment. Not only has it been shown to reduce the risk of heart disease and high blood pressure, it also protects against osteoporosis and diabetes. A study of 200 moderately overweight people found 2 cups of green tea a day helped reduce belly fat. Another study found green tea protecting teeth and gums from disease. Most recently green tea is being investigated as treatment for chronic lymphocytic leukaemia of which there is no current cure.
More on chocolate can be found here:
http://www.thepainreliefcentres.co.uk/General_Download_Area.asp
article number 19
First of, chilli, in the form of a cream or lotion is useful in pain relief, has recently been used in lab conditions (on mice) to reduce the severity of heart attacks by up to 85%. The theory is that it should help in humans if the cream is applied to the chest at the first sign of an attack.
Chocolate can also help prevent a heart attack (dark chocolate that is) by lowering levels of inflammation in the body (measured by C reactive protein). 15g of dark chocolate a day also helps chronic fatigue syndrome, lower blood pressure, and even seems to be good for insulin too!
Another of my favourite daily health boosters is green tea. Plenty of high level scientific investigation is going on about green tea at the moment. Not only has it been shown to reduce the risk of heart disease and high blood pressure, it also protects against osteoporosis and diabetes. A study of 200 moderately overweight people found 2 cups of green tea a day helped reduce belly fat. Another study found green tea protecting teeth and gums from disease. Most recently green tea is being investigated as treatment for chronic lymphocytic leukaemia of which there is no current cure.
More on chocolate can be found here:
http://www.thepainreliefcentres.co.uk/General_Download_Area.asp
article number 19
Trust me, I’ve only been sued 132,000 times!
If there were an industry that had over 132,000 lawsuits brought against it, and had paid out over one trillion dollars in fines, would you expect it to be in the newspapers?
This industry has been convicted of price fixing, fraud, felony and intent to harm just for starters.
Last month alone this industry paid out amounts that would pay the entire healthcare, education and military budgets of some smaller countries. First up, AstraZeneca was fined $160 million for ripping off Alabama, just after being fined $215 million for ripping of Kentucky; Eli Lilly has been fined $1.4 billion, and Pfizer trumped that with a fine of $2.3 billion for illegally marketing several drugs. Yet not one of these was in the news, not one of them is complaining to the government about feeling the squeeze or the recession, and not one of them said sorry!
Does this sound like the sort of people you can trust? Trust with your health?
And yet this is exactly what medical doctors, with all their education are doing every day, and in turn you do, when you take what they give you without questioning it, trusting the most untrustworthy business (going by legal actions) in the world.
Here’s a link to a full 402 page list of lawsuits paid out – I suggest you let your doctor see a copy - http://www.garynull.com/articles/BigPharma102009Final.pdf
People complain about the NHS, or NICE with-holding funds for “much needed drugs” yet they are doing the best they can. In most cases the “much needed drugs” are only a fraction of a percentage better than what already exists, but often several, or even hundreds of times more expensive. It is the drugs companies that are very often to blame for hyping a drug, finding a victim of the disease and holding them up as someone who is a victim of the NHS budget cutters instead! While it may be true that this expensive new drug may improve this one person’s quality of life, it means cuts somewhere else have to be made, and someone else looses out (or more likely, a whole group of people lose out).
Remember, next time you see a headline in the newspapers about the NICE or NHS denying a drug because of its cost, don’t blame them, and try and figure out who really profits when the drug is allowed, and who might loose in the long run.
This industry has been convicted of price fixing, fraud, felony and intent to harm just for starters.
Last month alone this industry paid out amounts that would pay the entire healthcare, education and military budgets of some smaller countries. First up, AstraZeneca was fined $160 million for ripping off Alabama, just after being fined $215 million for ripping of Kentucky; Eli Lilly has been fined $1.4 billion, and Pfizer trumped that with a fine of $2.3 billion for illegally marketing several drugs. Yet not one of these was in the news, not one of them is complaining to the government about feeling the squeeze or the recession, and not one of them said sorry!
Does this sound like the sort of people you can trust? Trust with your health?
And yet this is exactly what medical doctors, with all their education are doing every day, and in turn you do, when you take what they give you without questioning it, trusting the most untrustworthy business (going by legal actions) in the world.
Here’s a link to a full 402 page list of lawsuits paid out – I suggest you let your doctor see a copy - http://www.garynull.com/articles/BigPharma102009Final.pdf
People complain about the NHS, or NICE with-holding funds for “much needed drugs” yet they are doing the best they can. In most cases the “much needed drugs” are only a fraction of a percentage better than what already exists, but often several, or even hundreds of times more expensive. It is the drugs companies that are very often to blame for hyping a drug, finding a victim of the disease and holding them up as someone who is a victim of the NHS budget cutters instead! While it may be true that this expensive new drug may improve this one person’s quality of life, it means cuts somewhere else have to be made, and someone else looses out (or more likely, a whole group of people lose out).
Remember, next time you see a headline in the newspapers about the NICE or NHS denying a drug because of its cost, don’t blame them, and try and figure out who really profits when the drug is allowed, and who might loose in the long run.
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