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Osteoarthritis: Joint Carnage, I Mean *Cartilage

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After Reading: The Arthritis Cure, Revised and Updated: The Medical Miracle That Can Halt, Reverse, And May Even Cure Osteoarthritis By Jason Theodosakis, M.D., M.S. and Shelia Buff

“I had hoped to change arthritis treatment because the traditional treatments are, in my opinion, a violation of the physician’s Hippocratic oath to ‘Do no harm.” As Jason does, I too feel that the medical profession tactfully avoids the root causes of disease and only acts in the best interests of those signing their fancy-car-buying paychecks—”…in the long run they simply cover up the symptoms while the disease progresses further.”

These maskers of symptoms and villains of the real world can be identified as painkillers and anti-inflammatory medications. I had a hard time choosing between this book and another book when choosing an author I would like to collaborate with. One book offered all of the ‘alternative’ insight one could handle and the other—this one—,unlike the first, offered both insight and the actual breakdown of the disease process.

I hesitatingly chose this one because Jason approaches this—at least what I thought after reading the review and chapter breakdown—with the mindset that osteoarthritis can be thwarted with a set of natural-medical supplements—”…since they are substances we already consume, and also produce in very small quantities  in our bodies, glucosamine and chondroitin have no significant side effects.” I knew, prior to beginning the journeyed read, that these ‘supplements’ were natural bodily mediators and or found in the food we eat…

…but I didn’t know how important they were to any effect. Doctors can shove small-paper-cupped pills into your field-of-vision and towards your grasping hands, but unless you understand their function, you will be no better at improving your health. Understanding involves a realization of the bodily process and how this drug and or supplement interacts with that bodily process—understanding is not a realization or verbal acceptance of doctor’s, nurse’s, etc… surge of words. Their words are almost always more effective at combating the disease because their words are scapegoats of mental relief.

I am no advocate for the use of any supplements or medications, but the message offered within his book elevates them to another level. If you go too far, these supplements may be beneficial, but the true and underlying message is that one should never have to go ‘too far.’ Continue Reading

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Princess to Be, Olly Olly Oxen Free!

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Calif. finds toxins in ‘nontoxic’ nail polishes

Years ago, lead was used by painters, drivers running on empty, water rushing its way to your glass or de-clothed body, toy manufacturers, and etc… Awareness has spread about the troubles of lead and now new paints, unleaded gas, piping, filters, and childhood gizmos are ‘safer.’ Occasionally there will be a huge recall for some toy—almost always from Asia—, but other than old homes, the problem has been dealt with half-appropriately.

Half because lead is still present—both in outbreaks and in many of the places we live. Half because of our inability to make a transition from our past learnings into a learned, ready, and evolved future. Half because lead is only the intro to a topic that is much more widespread. It is a plague of sorts, but nobody realizes the catch involved with a plague of pretty pink nails and today’s toxic painters’ canvasses of skin.

Ideally—according to societal ‘standards’—the painters are women, young ladies, and princesses to be. Ideally, in reality, there should be no painters. There should be no businesses pumping out batches of beautiful-to-the-eye and tingling-to-the-nostril chemicals for each and every square millimeter of skin and or crevice your imagination can reach. There should be no women, young ladies, and princesses to be who feel they can only ‘fit in’ or feel ‘beautiful’ by donating their bodies as chemical splash-zone canvasses. Continue Reading

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Multiple Sclerosis: tREASONS for Lesions

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After Reading: Overcoming Multiple Sclerosis: An Evidence-Based Guide to Recovery By Professor George Jelinek

“There is every reason for people now diagnosed with MS to optimistic about the future.”

It was during my advanced medical surgical clinical rotation that I came across my first patient with multiple sclerosis. He was in his mid-forties and his body was where it had been for many years—bed rest and on a submissive decline. Feeding tubes and IVs were flooding his body with the metabolic necessities of life and myself as well as the nursing staff provided his physical requirements.

I had a vague idea about what MS was at the time—a terrible freakin’ disease that we have no control over with a decline that is utterly inevitable. Confirmed by much of the staff and my instructors, this drilled nonsense led me to believe that some people are just doomed. Doomed to die, and doomed to suffer along the way.

I was not the least bit skeptical at the time because the modern medical view of disease was the same that I was being lectured on. Although this incredibly reckless ‘knowledge’ has been slapped-clean from my interior mush, George’s book is both intriguing and ridiculously informative about our heinous attempts to ‘treat’ diseases such as multiple sclerosis.

“Lifestyle change is the most important issue as it is with most chronic diseases. Diet, sunlight, exercise, meditation, preventing depression, resolution of difficult emotional issues. These are the keys.”

Picking through and disregarding the nonsense can be extremely difficult…

  • New England Journal of Medicine—2007 Study
  • 94% of physicians report financial links with drug companies.

…but it can be done. As with every factor of life, multiple sclerosis is both real and profitable. Whether it’s a wavering commitment or a jump because everyone’s jumping mentality, someone’s making money and someone’s health is not improving. Money will not protect you from crossing the thin and highly permeable line that separates the diseased and those who have capitalized. Seeping back is an accepted and much expected impossibility within the modern medical view. Seeping back utilizing what many have ironically slurred the ‘alternative’ approach is more than feasible…it has been feased.

“It is important to realize right at the outset that recovery from MS requires a sustained commitment over many decades, really the rest of your life.” Continue Reading

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Truth or Slander?

By · 4 Comments · In All, Food, Health News Now

Disclosure: This is an opinionated article—my opinion—about Dr. Oz. I do provide factual evidence to compliment and support my opinion and to urge you to reconsider how helpful he may or may not be. How you proceed after reading this article is solely your choice.

Before I became vegan. Before I ever even thought about becoming a vegan—a thought that did not occur until the actual action had. I proceeded through life on my journey to live longer, longer than anyone ever has, to an age that friends and family view as an impossibility, but to an age that only ceases to exist because we have made it so.

So, I read the China Study one night—Ash Wednesday to be exact—a holy day of obligation within my former religion. We were obligated to go to extra masses, have ashes smeared upon our foreheads, and to abide by some dietary restrictions. I failed to abide, but more so chose to microwave some turkey meatloaf on that meatless Wednesday—I needed my protein and that is literally all I knew.

Little did I know that I could know more and that I would be vegan within a few hours and in an all so invitingly manner. My goal is to live to 150, not to be stringent and stubborn with how I am going to achieve it. I sought and found information as I continue to do so today. Before this epic read that seemed to open new possibilities and expand my thinking beyond my nursing-school background and general interest in the body, I relied heavily on what was already known, lived, and practiced and there in laid the flaw in the feat I was hoping to complete.

It was flawed because it is ever-so obvious that one cannot live longer than those already living and dying by only modestly modifying the tactics of theirs truly. So I swept veganism up into myself and continued from there in a creative snowball of progression.

It wasn’t well accepted within my family at first as I was flooded with the “where will you get your protein/nutrients” and “you have always loved these foods” statements and hostile remarks. This initial flash flood of inquiries was only short lived thankfully—in a very sarcastic tone—to the one and only Dr. Oz or the ‘tv doctor’. The tides seemed to withdraw rapidly as he materialized on his usual 4pm Eastern slot and appeared to be encouraging a vegan diet. Continue Reading

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IBS: Gut Milk?

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After Reading: What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About IBS: Eliminate Your Symptoms and Live a Pain-free, Drug-free Life By Richard Ash, M.D.

“I was looking for a cure in an arena where a cure does not exist.” Richard was wandering where many have wandered, where many still wander, and where many will continue to wander until their demise. He had the symptoms, and like most, he treated them. What other way could there be? Could there be another way?

“In truth, an estimated one out of every three Americans regularly battles digestive problems, such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).” As evidenced by the three-billion dollars we spend each year on the over-the-counter laxatives, antacids, anti-diarrheals, and fiber, we have permanently cemented digestive problems into existence by only sugar-coating the symptoms. It has become normal to be gassy or bloated after your daily chewing and gulpings. It has become something much more sinister.

Fueled by these meds, is there any reason to believe that this digestive carnage is unrelated to anything beyond the symptomatic cry for relief? Richard believes so. Richard believes: “When it comes to treating ongoing medical problems, such as Irritable Bowel Syndrome, medication is the not answer. In these cases, medicines end up masking the patient’s symptoms when what the doctor needs to do is to determine the cause of the problem.”

It is powerful to know and menacing to not. As you pop another pill, plop down for another greasy Friday afternoon tasty treat, and breathe easily as memories of pain dwindle in the past, you soon realize the dwindling was only your cloudy judgement and that this Friday afternoon treat did nothing but re-kindle the already fiercely burning fire.

“This woman ate foods that were so irritating to her digestive system that they were almost the equivalent of eating glass.” You may be able to anesthetize the hell out of your gut with as many laxatives, antacids, anti-diarrheals, and fiber as you or your professionally licensed health care provider deems necessary to calm the fire, but sharp glass remains sharp even when you cope its feeling out of existence. Continue Reading

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Qnexa: Disregarding the Un-…

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…in unsuccessful.

Analysis: Clamor for obesity pill may test FDA limits

“The FDA has set a high approval bar for obesity drugs in the past, primarily because of worries that a large portion of the population is likely to take them.”

Another one bites the dust and that other one is not the up and coming fat-pill tagged Qnexa—oh how that slips so beautifully off the tongue—but that other one can and very will may be you. We find it troubling that we cannot eat and imagine-off our pounds so we resort to some magical candy that must undergo rigorous testing to even be considered. I find it troubling that we can reach such a level where the totality of our reliance is shifted to a pill where current success is defined as:

  • “U.S. drug regulators may have a hard time stopping millions of overweight Americans from taking a new obesity drug that many are likely to view as a miracle pill for slimming waistlines, despite its safety risks.”
  • “Regulators and doctors are hoping they can limit the pill, called Qnexa, to only those patients that need it most, helping fight the nation’s obesity epidemic while avoiding exposing people to unnecessary risks of birth defects and heart problems.”
  • “It combines the appetite suppressant phentermine with the anti-seizure drug topiramate, and helped patients lose 10 percent of their weight after a year during trials. However, the pounds started to creep back on after the first 12 months.“
  • “FDA staff reviewers said patients taking the drug had more safety problems, including memory loss and higher heart rates, than those on a placebo.”
  • “They also said exposure to topiramate has been linked to a higher rate of oral clefts in infants of women taking the drug during pregnancy.”
  • “Qnexa has some uncertain effects on the heart: it lowers blood pressure, but raises heartbeat. Doctors on the FDA panel were divided about what signal that sends, and asked Vivus to conduct more studies on heart safety, most likely after Qnexa is approved.”
  • “”There is going to be a huge demand for Qnexa… (and) if the FDA doesn’t regulate Qnexa appropriately there are going to be a deluge of lawsuits,” said Gortler.”

Current success, what about future success?

  • “”Based on the data that we’ve seen, we think this drug may do enormous good,” he said during the panel meeting. “But we may not know that for a long time, or we may find out we’ve been fooled.”" Continue Reading
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Lupus: The Girl Who Cried Wolves

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After Reading: The Lupus Book: A Guide for Patients and Their Families By: Daniel J. Wallace, M.D.

“In Lupus, the body reacts to an unknown stimulus and makes too many antibodies, or proteins against body tissue.”

As with almost every disease, the standard fallback is blindly concluded and leans on an ever pressurized worn-down shed wall—just don’t know. One million U.S. citizens are afflicted with SLE (Systemic Lupus Erythematosus)—90% of these individuals are women and 90% of these women are of childbearing age. Daniel, the author, skirts around the problem and eventually casts his die in with a hope of continued future medical and technological ingenuities. He is aware of what may be causing lupus and provides an almost complete cookbook for better health, but he only slightly nudges the reader to take action.

Being a male though, he does bring a voice to what he may term a mute community—”If the population of patients suffering from lupus were ninety percent male, I daresay that the medical community would be more responsive.” Continue Reading

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My Shelved Shake

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My shake: seven years in the making and perfected to my liking, only to be shelved due to a more health-focused diet, but I would like to share it with you.

When I began making my shakes, they consisted of:

  1. Overly Sweetened Protein
  2. Mint Chocolate Chip Ice-cream
  3. Peanut Butter
  4. Milk
  5. And some Ellio’s Pizza on the side.

Next, at the beginning of my senior year in high school:

  1. Somewhat better tasting protein
  2. Peanut Butter
  3. Plain Quaker Instant Oats
  4. Water

Then came the protein, carrots, cucumbers, oats, and grape juice version which had a very natural and absolutely refreshing taste. When I made this shake I had asked a few people what would taste great blended up and carrots were always the go-to-food, but when I suggested cucumbers, they were instantly shunned. Cucumbers are a key ingredient to the refreshing taste that I aspired for. My next step was to add a more nutritionally dense assortment of ingredients and to eliminate protein powder and juice. Continue Reading

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