Dead Sea Herbs

December 26, 2011|By Cory Franklin

Chicago tribune

Big business

The tragic tale of Flight 447 should not only be a case study in aviation but also in medicine. Medicine is becoming less of a hands-on science and more dependent on sophisticated tests and high-tech scans. As in aviation, there is an overall benefit; diagnosis and treatment are better than ever. But the same problem bedevils medicine, perhaps more commonly — in difficult situations, inexperienced doctors are often uncertain of how to interpret sophisticated information presented to them, resulting in incorrect diagnoses or inappropriate treatment.

An example of this was recently demonstrated by Dr. James Andrews, one of the country’s leading orthopedic surgeons, who has operated on many of the country’s top professional athletes. He and some colleagues believe the MRI, a staple of orthopedic evaluation, is becoming overused. The test is extremely sensitive and sometimes indicates abnormalities that are not actually a source of problems.

Andrews proceeded to obtain MRIs on 31 professional baseball pitchers, none of whom was injured or had pain. The MRIs showed abnormal shoulder cartilage in 90 percent and abnormal rotator cuff tendons in 87 percent. Andrews’ blunt conclusion, “If you want an excuse to operate on a pitcher’s throwing shoulder, just get an MRI.”

In the context of experience and technology, prominent surgeons like Atul Gawande have promoted operating-room checklists and better communication to assure medical personnel adhere to certain standards, paralleling the experience in aviation. Without question, this process-oriented approach is a positive development that eliminates mistakes and saves lives.

However, the analogy is simplistic and does not extend to every facet of medicine, since medicine involves far more human judgment. In general, aviation operates according to certain predictable rules of engineering and physics. The limited number of variables in a routine flight can generally be anticipated. In contrast, medicine operates according to many poorly understood and less predictable rules of biology and physiology. Where pilots can sometimes elect to cancel a flight or avoid dangerous weather, doctors cannot avoid many unpredictable emergencies in sick patients.

Dr. Richard Karl, the former health chair of surgery at the University of South Florida and a licensed pilot for more than four decades, has long advocated medicine adopt routine safety techniques, training, evaluation and continuing education from the aviation industry to enhance physician experience and minimize the chances of catastrophic disasters. But he candidly acknowledges, “Without intending to diminish either glorious profession, as a pilot type-rated in the Boeing 737 and as a surgical oncologist, I can say unequivocally that surgery is much harder than flying.”

The takeaway is the essential value of human experience — we can never have too many Capt. Sullenbergers, in aviation or medicine. Dr. Cory Franklin lives in Wilmette.

Communication and diagnostics.

It used to be the doctor would start the diagnostic process by talking to the patient, discussing lifestyle, habits and symptoms and manually checking the patient. In many cases that was enough for correct diagnose.

“Nicely explained the relationship between aviation and medicine. Your comment is truer in Western nations where doctors do not have adequate clinical knowledge, as they totally depend on the sophisticated tests for diagnosis, unlike in developing countries, where doctors has to depend on clinical knowledge.”  Health guy…

My mom was brought to the hospital with the pain in the spine. Young “doctors” obviously trained in technology started with multiple tests, sticking tubes and needles all over. My mom was 89 years old. Why did these “doctors” did the test? I don’t know. I wonder if the new. My mom passed away next day. I still think because of all the tests.

It is time for doctors to become doctors again. Not technicians.

Kerry GrensReuters. 1:24 p.m. CST, January 12, 2012

Endangered species...now we know why

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Drinking a liter of regular cola every day increases the amount of fat in the liver and in the muscles and surrounding the organs in the belly, according to a new Danish study.

“This study suggests that the adverse effects of sugary beverages go beyond just weight gain or fat gain. It’s the gaining of the wrong fat in the wrong places,” said Dr. Frank Hu, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, who was not involved in this study.

The American Heart Association recommends drinking no more than about three cans of soda a week, while young men far exceed that, with about two cans a day on average (see Reuters Health report of August 31, 2011).

Submitted by: Leah Zerbe 2012-01-12 00:00

The negative effects of sodas:

1. It causes invisible fat build-up around your organs.

How about WATER?

While total fat mass remained the same across all beverage-consuming groups, researchers say dramatic increases in fats that are hard to detect with the naked eye. Those who drank the regular cola experienced a 132- to 142-percent increase in liver fat, a 117- to 221-percent jump in skeletal fat, and about a 30-percent increase in both triglyceride blood fats and other organic fat. The regular soda-drinking group also experienced an 11-percent increase in cholesterol compared to the people who drank beverages.

In America, many sodas are sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup that has been shown to cause even worse fat build-up problems. Avoid turning to diet soda as a healthy alternative. Artificial sweeteners and food dyes have been linked to brain cell damage and hyperactivity; people who drink diet soda are also more prone to develop diabetes.

2.Some contain toxic flame retardants.

3.You’re taking part in the biggest science experiment on the planet.
Many soda brands on the market in America today are sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup, a heart-harming man-made compound derived mainly from genetically engineered (GE) corn.

Fixing soda problem is easy: Don’t drink it!

But there are hundreds of other toxins around us and inside us:

Easy!

Things that put extra stress on your liver and can seriously interfere with the livers ability to make bile and to detoxify include:

• Sugar and artificial sweeteners have no nutritive value and processing them burns up vital nutrients your liver needs to function properly (soda is a big culprit in the American diet).

• Trans-fatty acids extra toxic nature burns essential nutrients like a blowtorch and directly interferes with both bile production and detoxification.

• Most over the counter pain relievers and practically all prescription drugs, including blood pressure and cholesterol drugs which are now prescribed like candy. These substances put a HEAVY toxic burden on the liver.

• Regular alcohol consumption, because ultimately alcohol will pickle your liver and a pickled liver is a dead liver.

(I disagree with this one. Moderate alcohol consumption is beneficial for healthy people. Your body’s ability to process alcohol depends on your age, weight and sex. Your body breaks down alcohol at a rate of roughly one drink per hour. Nate)

• Constipation, because the liver empties toxins into the colon and if the colon is backed up, the liver dumps the toxins into fat cells, and the toxins are retained in the body. To start your bodies detoxification process, use cleansing formulas to detoxify the bowels, liver, kidneys and blood.

It is practically impossible to avoid all bad stuff in our lives.

So here is what we can do: Moderation. Don’t go crazy with any of the stuff, healthy or toxic.

Nikuz

Detoxify your body periodically. The easiest way to do it is herbal tea. One of the best is Nikuz Herbal Tea from Herbs of Kedem,

Always start a detox by cleansing the bowel. The aim is to improve its efficiency so you have regular bowel movements (ideally once each morning and after each meal and the bowel is free of yeast.

Plan of action:

Drop the sodas! Drink water, tea even a cup of coffee is fine.

Get educated about toxins in our lives. You don’t get paranoid about all this. Just learn to live a little healthier :-)

And don’t get stressed out from all of this. Just do what you can and enjoy life.

Cheers!

Words of wisdom

“Americans can eat garbage, provided you sprinkle it liberally with ketchup, mustard, chili sauce, Tabasco sauce, cayenne pepper, or any other condiment which destroys the original flavor of the dish.”
- Henry Miller

America the beautiful

People who eat lots of red meat may have a higher risk of some types of kidney cancer, suggests a large US study.
Researchers found that middle-aged adults who ate the most red meat were 19% more likely to be diagnosed with kidney cancer than those who ate the least. A higher intake of chemicals found in grilled or barbecued meat was also linked to increased risk of the disease, according tot the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

It is OK if you eat red meat in moderation-once a week maybe. But the portion varies for each of us.
Active lifestyle and proper diet that what is needed to stay healthy.

U.S. guidelines call for limiting high-fat foods including processed meat, and instead eating more lean meat and poultry, seafood and nuts.

Chicago tribune:
But for now, meat-related cooking chemicals “can be reduced by avoiding direct exposure of meat to an open flame or a hot metal surface, reducing the cooking time, and using a microwave oven to partially cook meat before exposing it to high temperatures,” said Dr Daniel.
This is B.S ! DO NOT USE THE MICROVAWE OVEN TO COOK FOOD! This suggestion just tells me how little doctors know.

Don.t cook in there!

Here is an excerpt from the study: Scientific evidence and facts
In Comparative Study of Food Prepared Conventionally and in the Microwave Oven, published by Raum & Zelt in 1992, at 3(2): 43, it states:
“A basic hypothesis of natural medicine states that the introduction into the human body of molecules and energies, to which it is not accustomed, is much more likely to cause harm than good. Microwaved food contains both molecules and energies not present in food cooked in the way humans have been cooking food since the discovery of fire.
Another study: The Swiss clinical study
Dr. Hans Ulrich Hertel, who is now retired, worked as a food scientist for many years with one of the major Swiss food companies that do business on a global scale. A few years ago, he was fired from his job for questioning certain processing procedures that denatured the food. In 1991, he and a Lausanne University professor published a research paper indicating that food cooked in microwave ovens could pose a greater risk to health than food cooked by conventional means. An article also appeared in issue 19 of the Journal Franz Weber in which it was stated that the consumption of food cooked in microwave ovens had cancerous effects on the blood. The research paper itself followed the article. On the cover of the magazine there was a picture of the Grim Reaper holding a microwave oven in one of his hands.

Here is more:
Microwaving prepared meats sufficiently to insure sanitary ingestion caused formation of d-Nitrosodienthanolamines, a well-known carcinogen.
Microwaving milk and cereal grains converted some of their amino acids into carcinogens.
Thawing frozen fruits converted their glucoside and galactoside containing fractions into carcinogenic substances.
Extremely short exposure of raw, cooked or frozen vegetables converted their plant alkaloids into carcinogens.
Carcinogenic free radicals were formed in microwaved plants, especially root vegetables.
Decrease in nutritional value
Russian researchers also reported a marked acceleration of structural degradation leading to a decreased food value of 60 to 90% in all foods tested.

Balance!

Back to the red meat

Another study that followed more than 72,000 women for 18 years found that those who ate a Western-style diet high in red and processed meats, desserts, refined grains, and French fries had an increased risk of heart disease, cancer, and death from other causes.

“The association between consumption of red and processed meats and cancer, particularly colorectal cancer, is very consistent,” says Marji McCullough, PhD, a nutritional epidemiologist with the American Cancer Society.

My suggestion: This is just another example that something can be good for you or bad for you. It all depends on how you use it and on your personal body structure. The same general rule is applicable for all. But details may wary for different people.

The rule of thumb: Moderation. Some of us need meet some don’t. Enjoy your steak but once a week!

Balance your food. Use common sense. For example I love ice cream but I don’t eat it during cold season. Drink hot tea.

In our society it is almost impossible not to have contact with toxins. Use organic cleansers to help your body to get rid of bad stuff. 

Take days off and vacations. Money spend on vacations you will save with doctors and medications.

Have a happy and healthy year!

Don't worry be happy!

Happy Healthy and Peaceful New Year to our readers and contributors!

Health and happiness go hand in hand.

Words of wisdom

Mystery creates wonder, and wonder is the basis for man’s desire to understand.
Who knows what mysteries will be solved in our lifetime, and what new riddles will become the challenge of the new generations.
John Keel, journalist, researcher.

inseparable

“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.”

- Steve Jobs

Chicago tribune health

Earlier this year, a pair of influential bioethicists argued in an essay in The New Republic that the amount of money the country spends on Medicare is unsustainable. With senior citizens the fastest-growing age group in the country, they say, the only way to control the ballooning costs is to try to bring the entire population up to a life expectancy of 80 and stop using most expensive technologies and medicines to extend life beyond that, even if some people will die.

“If you want to save all lives, you’re in trouble,” said Callahan, co-founder of The Hastings Center, a bioethics research institute in New York, and a faculty member at Harvard Medical School, in an interview. “And if you want to save all lives at any cost, you’re really in trouble.”

Medicare was signed into law in 1965, a time when life expectancy was 67 for men and 73 for women, and half of people 65 and older had no health insurance. In 2007, life expectancy had grown to 75 for men and 80 for women, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In contrast, in 1900, life expectancy was 46 and 48, respectively.

“Doctors can keep you alive until you are 105, but that may not be a particularly good aim of the health care system,” Callahan said. Senior citizens should receive good basic health care, but the main resources should go to children and the adult population, he believes.

So what is the solution? Who decides who lives and who dies? There is simply not enough money in the system to do everything for everybody. And the first time in history of this country the post baby boomers generation will have a shorter life expectancy than their parents.

There is no short term solution other than to educate the aging parents and their adult kids on how to make the sensible decision on when is it time to go.

In the mean time we need to learn how to maintain a healthy life style so we stay healthy and die gracefully.

Is this life?

“We get selfish families, and it’s often easier for doctors to pull out prescription pads,Doctors need more often to say no, to say (if a patient is dying): ‘We will give you palliative care, but not give you chemotherapy. We will not give you new expensive drugs because it will not make you better.’”

“More importantly, this article ignores another reality for doctors who must make these difficult decisions: the nearly unlimited liability exposure if the family members disagree with all members of the health care team, including hospital ethics panels.

Once again, because of special interest resistance to malpractice reform, centralized government control will become the default option.

And maybe, just maybe, we need to rethink our stand on direct-to-consumer advertising of expensive medications to the populace on the Nightly News.”

By PETER SINGER

Published: July 15, 2009 

Life's wisdom

We all know that we will die eventually.

We were all born and we will all die

It is the way of nature to assure the continuation and progress of the species.

And death is just as natural as birth and life and just as necessary for the success of species.

As we age we think about life and death and quality of life as we near the end.

And it is scary. After all this is one in a lifetime experience.

We all like to have a healthy and happy life.

The true wisdom, I think, is the understanding of the beginning and the end and the knowing when the time comes to go. And to go with dignity.

And even as the primal instinct of self preservation kicks in I hope that wisdom will prevail and I will be able to make the right decision

Wisdom and happiness.

One of the reasons I am writing on this subject is the lack of understanding of life and death and the medical establishment on keeping terminally ill people alive artificially at any cost causing suffering to patient and the families and, due to limited resources denying life saving treatment to those who could be saved.

It is a complicated issue and we all should learn the wisdom of living and dying.

So enjoy life and learn how to stay healthy naturally.

Meanwhile Happy Holidays to all our readers and Happy and Healthy New Year!

Words of wisdom

A healthy body is a guest chamber for the soul: a sick body is a prison. (Francis Bacon, Sr.)

NYT:

Instant gratification

Patients begin by popping too many pills to deal with a migraine or a simple tension-type headache. When the medications stop, another headache follows, similar to a hangover. Sufferers race again to the medicine cabinet, and before long they are locked in a cycle of headaches and overmedication.

At any given time, more than three million Americans are suffering from headaches they are inflicting on themselves, according to Dr. Stephen D. Silberstein, a professor of neurology and director of the Jefferson Headache Center at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. “If a patient’s headaches have grown markedly worse or more frequent, the problem is almost always medication overuse,” Dr. Silberstein said.

“Overuse has less to do with how many pills you take to relieve a single headache than with how often you take them,” said Dr. Robert Kunkel, a headache specialist at the Cleveland Clinic Headache Center. “If you get more than two headaches a week and take pain pills for them, you’re at risk.”

Instant gratification

Pain relievers may offer quick relief for occasional headaches, although there is a limit. If you find yourself taking pain medication more than two or three days a week, you may actually be contributing to your headaches rather than making them more manageable. This is a cycle known as rebound headaches.
In the case of a rebound headache, your body actually starts to get used to the drugs. With rebound headaches, your body actually starts craving the drugs, as if they have somehow become essential nutrients! Many commonly used immediate relief medications, when taken in large enough amounts, have been found responsible for inducing rebound headaches.

Here are some incredible statistics. It seems that with current approach to health care the treatment is worse than the disease.

I am not blaming all the doctors here.

I am blaming the whole “Health care” industry that feeds on our health and our ignorance.

* The term iatrogenic is defined as “induced in a patient by a physician’s activity, manner, or therapy. Used especially to pertain to a complication of treatment.”

Furthermore, these estimates of death due to error are lower than those in a recent Institutes of Medicine report. If the higher estimates are used, the deaths due to iatrogenic causes would range from 230,000 to 284,000. Even at the lower estimate of 225,000 deaths per year, this constitutes the third leading cause of death in the U.S.

Another analysis concluded that between 4% and 18% of consecutive patients experience negative effects in outpatient settings, with:

116 million extra physician visits

77 million extra prescriptions

17 million emergency department visits

8 million hospitalizations

3 million long-term admissions

199,000 additional deaths

$77 billion in extra costs

The high cost of the health care system is considered to be a deficit, but it seems to be tolerated under the assumption that better health results from more expensive care.  However, evidence from a few studies indicates that as many as 20% to 30% of patients receive inappropriate care. An estimated 44,000 to 98,000 among these patients die each year as a result of medical errors.

My advise: again and again please educate yourself. Don’t trust the medical establishment. Don’t go for instant gratification-quick pain relief. Pain is worning you of a problem.

Stress relief, exercise, proper food and natural supplements and vitamins will in many cases help with your headaches and many other pains.

For example strong stomach and back muscles will help with your back aches.

So drop the pills!