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A Wellness Approach for Children

In raising healthy children, it’s not enough to just focus on the physical aspect of health. To be truly healthy, a child’s emotional health must be nurtured and strengthened. Developing a mental attitude of wellness is also essential. When we adopt an attitude of wellness, we take on a belief that being well is a natural, normal state. Our goal is to have outstanding, vibrant health, not just to be free of disease. With a wellness attitude, we know that we have control over our own body and how healthy it will be.

We can teach and help our children to grow up with an attitude of wellness. Children have much more control over their own health than you may think. The mind is a very powerful mechanism with miraculous control over health and healing. The more children learn to use the extraordinary powers of their minds, the healthier and happier they will be. They may also live longer than someone who takes a passive approach to health.

Children can learn that negative, unhealthy lifestyles are choices that contribute to sickness. We all know what a struggle it can be to encourage children to eat the foods that we know are essential for health, and to avoid junk food. When our children are very young, we can pretty easily restrict the things we know to be unhealthy for them. However, as they get older, telling them that they cannot have sugar or other problem food is not productive. They will feel deprived and will probably rebel. Anything that is forbidden is tempting.

Children need to know they have a choice—they can either choose good health and wellness or opt for poor health and sickness. They need to be taught the facts so they are able to make educated choices. Talk to them about the effects that food has on their body. They can understand that sugar lowers their immunity, making them more susceptible to sickness, as well as contribute to tooth decay. You can explain to them how eating healthy foods will give them more energy and make them feel better. This can be taught in very simple, fun and creative ways. It may take a while to actually sink in, and at first the lure of scrumptious tasting sugar and white flour “treats” that all the other kids are eating may be too much to refuse, but eventually the time and energy you put into health education will pay off. If children are raised with a respectful attitude of wellness, as they get older they will most likely choose to turn down things that they know are not healthy for them. Respectful is a key word, meaning not nagging or shaming them about food.

As they get even older, they can be taught that smoking cigarettes or taking drugs is their choice to opt for sickness. Telling them to “just say no” and forbidding them to smoke or take drugs is not enough. They need to understand the health consequences and realities of putting these substances in their bodies. Children are very intelligent, but they need to be reminded that they are powerful and they have choices. They can understand the consequences of their choices.

Talk to your children about how strong their bodies are and the extraordinary things their bodies can do. Show them how their bodies can miraculously heal a cut, how their heart works and how they can strengthen their heart through exercise and healthy food, how their immune system fights off germs and other invaders, and how getting enough sleep makes them feel better throughout the day. All these things can be taught in fun and imaginative ways with drawings, stories, etc. Children are fascinated with their bodies and they want to know how they work.

Dr. Wayne Dyer tells us in his book, What Do You Really Want For Your Children?, “the more children learn from you to rid themselves of attitudes which foster sickness, the more you are helping them to enjoy life each day. They will actually live longer and more productive lives if they learn wellness as very young children.” Parents frequently make statements that reinforce a sickness attitude. Did your mother ever tell you that if you don’t wear a scarf, you’ll catch a cold and be sick? A wellness approach would be to say, “You are so strong and healthy that you probably won’t develop a cold, even if the other kids do, but here is a scarf to keep you warm and comfortable outside”. Dr. Dyer also cautions us to resist taking frequent trips to the doctor and using medications for everyday aches and pains and common ailments such as a cold. When we teach children that there is a pill for every complaint and that a doctor visit is part of every cure, we disempower them and set them up to rely too heavily on drugs and doctors throughout their lives. They need to know they are in charge of their own health.

In order to teach our children to choose health, we must model wellness and take charge of our own health. Wellness is not just having an absence of symptoms. It’s asking yourself how you can attain outstanding health. It’s making exercise and stress reduction a daily part of your lifestyle, choosing healthy foods and modeling this behavior for your children. As Dr. Dyer puts it, “It means simply being as healthy as you possibly can be, and being determined not to allow your wonderful body, the place where your mind currently resides, to deteriorate unnecessarily.”

There has been much research on the relationship between illness and attitudes. The research suggests that even cancer and heart disease are strongly related to a person’s inner attitudes. Dr. Harrison tells us in his book, Loving Your Disease, that “Predispositions to disease are often not passed on in a physical sense but rather through the messages parents give their offspring and the living habits and diet they pass down”.

Dr. Dyer recognizes the obvious elements of wellness that include diet, exercise, and eliminating negative lifestyle habits. In addition, he suggests two elements that will help children as much as the physical components. These elements are using visualization and having a sense of humor. They are just as important as diet and exercise.

Positive imagery or visualization is a powerful tool that children can use to help them become capable, healthy and vibrant people. Visualization puts the imagination to work to help achieve a desired outcome. It is the process of creating positive thoughts and images in the mind to communicate with the body. It is one of the strongest and most effective ways to make happen what you want in your life. Children can be taught to regularly see themselves in their minds as being radiantly healthy, vibrant, and actively participating in whatever activities they want to do. Positive imagery or visualization is very helpful for children who are overweight or who have acne or other skin diseases and need to establish a better self-image. Verbal affirmations can be used with imagery. A good affirmation for a child to say regularly is “I am good to my body and my body is good to me” or “Every day I am feeling better and growing more vibrantly healthy”. Children can also use visualization to help their body to heal. Studies show that there are significant remission rates among people healing from cancer who use visualization as part of the healing process.

Laughter is a strong healer and health builder. Dr. Dyer tells us that “when children laugh they are actually releasing into their bloodstream chemicals which are necessary for the prevention and cure of disease”. Have fun with your children. Be a little crazy and silly and laugh as much as you can. Each good belly laugh means that you and your children are becoming more physically and emotionally sound.

Healthy Child Online is a comprehensive resource providing parents and caregivers with free information and safe, natural products to enhance the health and lives of children. Healthy Child Online is a project of Future Generations, started by Jane Sheppard, a work-athome mother, in 1997. The children are our future, and Future Generations is dedicated to protecting and enhancing the health and well-being of children by:

• Providing information about how to promote vibrant health naturally.

• Raising awareness about how the profit-driven food, chemical, and medical, and entertainment industries have spawned some unhealthy foods, drugs, vaccines, pesticides, and other products and practices, and are perpetuating an unsafe environment for children.

• Supporting parents and caregivers in switching to a more natural, respectful, nurturing way of tending to babies and children’s needs and helping children to become happy, loving, emotionally-secure adults. We advocate natural, holistic, heart-centered, attachment parenting.

Article originally posted at ICPA.org.

Choosing a Wellness Mentality

by Kevin Donka, DC – ICPA.org:

One day not so long ago, a practice member named Craig walked into our center with a slight limp. When I asked him what was wrong, he told me that he had been wrestling with his son A.J. and had hurt his knee. When I told him we’d take a look at it he replied, “Oh that’s OK, it will be fine by the end of the week.” Just then, a woman walked in and I heard Amy at the front desk greet her and ask her how she was doing. She replied to Amy, “Oh I’m fine today, but I just know I’m going to be in bad shape by the end of the week with the storm that’s on its way!”

Albert Einstein once said, “The most important question you will ever ask yourself is whether this is or is not a friendly universe.” Dr. Einstein believed that your answer to this question would in fact be the most important decision you would ever make. The reason it would be so important is summed up in another of his famous quotations; “You cannot solve a problem with the same level of thinking that existed when it was created.” You see, Einstein knew that it is our deeply held BELIEFS about something that will determine which actions we will consistently take or avoid regarding that thing, and those actions or inactions will in turn determine the circumstances we will find ourselves in. So, your determination of whether we live in a friendly or hostile world will influence your actions in the world and bring about the circumstances of your life.

In our center for wholeness, we can see your answer to this question demonstrated in your attitude. You see, you either go through life with what we call a WELLNESS mentality, or an ILLNESS mentality. People with an illness mentality expect that mainly unpleasant things will happen to them because they believe that the world is basically hostile, unpredictable and out of their control. On the other hand, those with a wellness mentality expect that mainly good things will happen in their lives because they believe that the world is basically friendly, and that they control and attract to themselves most of what happens to them through each of their thoughts, words and actions. In the story above, Craig was in a state of dis-ease, and yet he had a WELLNESS mentality—a positive expectation that things would be good.

The other woman was actually in a state of ease, and yet had an illness mentality – a certainty that things would go downhill for her.

How do we develop, maintain and even expand a wellness mentality? Three things are necessary.

1. A deliberate focus on moving TOWARD what you want, as opposed to trying to move away from what you don’t want.

2. A healthy lifestyle that allows your body to function properly, heal and continue growing.

3. A clear neurological CONNECTION.

4. Where does chiropractic fit into this equation? Interference in your nerve system (what we call the subluxation process) causes your body to use energy at a much greater than normal rate. This rapid depletion of energy sends your body into SURVIVAL MODE and causes the highest thinking centers of your brain to shut down. With these parts of your brain shut down, do you think it is possible to see the world as friendly, or do you suppose that coming from a state of SURVIVAL that you might interpret many (if not all) things as threatening?

5. The chiropractic adjustment process restores the free flow of energy at a normal and natural rate; a rate that allows for EASE of function in every cell, tissue, organ and organ system—INCLUDING YOUR BRAIN! Your body goes out of survival mode and back into ease, allowing you to once again see the world as friendly.

6. You see, your adjustments don’t just help you feel better, they allow you to FEEL better—that is, they allow you to sense your environment in a totally different way than you would if you were subluxated and in survival mode. This is why we emphasize so strongly that everyone should get checked by a chiropractor regularly.

Article originally posted at ICPA.org.

Taking Charge of Your Family’s Natural Wellness

by Andrea Candee – ICPA.org:

“Self empowerment” is the buzz word of our time. Yet, many feel disempowered when it comes to the care of their family’s health. Integrated medicine, taking the best of all worlds, is a sensible, responsible approach to healthcare. Here’s more from Andrea Candee, author of Gentle Healing for Baby and Child.

Trying Herbs

Grandparents recognize this as the health care approach of their youth: administer natural remedies at home unless the situation requires more professional help. Perhaps this is why grandparents seem to be the biggest purchasers of books on natural wellness for children, offering it to their adult children for the care of the grandchildren.

Turning to the health food store or even the kitchen pantry, and given a medical diagnosis, a parent educated in medicinal herbs can return a youngster to health or soothe discomfort until seen by the family care provider. And what better way to empower a child about their own wellness than to engage them in their healthcare, creating an awareness that will stay with them for their entire lives. They learn that taking care of their bodies preventatively is every bit as important as consulting a doctor when they are sick.

Statistics indicate that 75 percent of children have at least three ear infections before the age of six. Most of us either have or know a child who repeatedly suffers from what we have tacitly come to accept as a common childhood illness. Doesn’t it make you wonder why, with all the advances of modern medicine, children seem to suffer from ear infections more, rather than less than they did even 20 years ago?

Some children respond well to antibiotics; others are put on a round robin of antibiotic treatments (sometimes for years); and others still require surgery. A study reported in The Journal of the American Medical Association found that children given antibiotics for ear infections were two to six times more likely to develop a recurrence than children who did not receive the antibiotic treatment.

I am not the only one asking the question: What long-term effects do antibiotics have on developing immune systems?

“We found that, in the case of ear infections, sometimes the prescribed medicines created other problems and occasionally didn’t even cure…We have had the opportunity…to observe how effective, gentle and well tolerated these (herbal) remedies are in children.” (Larry Baskind, MD, FAAP, Riverside Pediatrics, Croton on Hudson, NY; excerpted from the foreword of Gentle Healing for Baby and Child [Simon & Schuster] ).

First Signs of Ear Discomfort

I recommend the following courses of action at the earliest signs of ear discomfort:

• Limit the intake of sugar. Processed sugar is a challenge to the body and feeds fungal, parasitic, and bacterial infections. Reduce fruit juice intake by diluting with water. Learn how to use echinacea, an invaluable immune system support found in health food stores, at the first sign of infection. Colds usually wind up in the ears of children predisposed to weakness in this part of their body. If you can prevent a cold from blossoming, you will have prevented another ear infection from developing.

• If a cold does take hold, you may choose to introduce an herbal decongestant.

• Add garlic to your child’s diet. Garlic is naturally anti-bacterial, as well as anti-fungal, anti-viral, and anti-parasitic. A fresh clove can be chopped into mashed potatoes or put on toast with butter.

• If infected fluid has settled in the ear, and there is no perforation of the eardrum (check with your family practitioner to be sure of this) add a drop or two of anti-microbial garlic oil in each ear, along with a drop or two oil of mullein flower. Mullein flower is well known for its anti-inflammatory, decongestant action in the ear. The easiest time to administer ear drops is when a child is sleeping.

• If there is pain in the ear, add a drop or two of St. John’s Wort oil. Its ability to calm nerve sensitivity may help to diminish the discomfort.

• For many children, chiropractic adjustments have been instrumental in preventing recurrent ear infections. If there is a misalignment in the spine affecting nerve and muscle function, chiropractic adjustments could help by enhancing proper drainage and function.

Don’t be afraid to implement all of the above protocols even if your child is on an antibiotic (To maintain the integrity of the intestinal tract, if your child is ever on an antibiotic, be sure to provide your child with a good source of probiotics). When a parent is informed and courageous enough to take charge of the situation, I have seen even the most chronic ear infections turned around—indeed eliminated—from the child’s life.

View article references and author information here:
www.pathwaystofamilywellness.org/references.html

Ear Infections

Van D. Merkle, DC Says:

1. Become informed about Prevnar vaccine (PCV7), also known as the pneumococcal strep vaccine, or ear-ache vaccine. The literature does not support its use.
2. Avoid ALL dairy products, sugar, and congestive type foods.
3. Try Monolaurin, an immune system enhancer.
4. Echinacea: 3/day. For infants 4 months to 25 lbs use 1 echinacea per day; open the capsule and put in food or water.
5. Chiropractic adjustments have been shown to be of great benefit.

Management of Acute Otitis Media Summary

1. Nearly two thirds of children with uncomplicated ear infections recover from pain and fever within 24 hours of diagnosis without antibiotic treatment. Over 80% recover within 1 to 7 days.
2. More than 5 million cases of acute ear infections occur annually, costing about $3 billion.
3. The report points out that in other countries otitis media is not always treated with drugs at the first sign of infection. Rather, in children over the age of 2 years, the norm is to watch and see how the infection progresses over the course of a few days.
4. The report notes that in the Netherlands the rate of bacterial resistance is about 1%, compared with the US average of around 25%. 1

What Causes Damage to the Ear and/or Ear Infection?

Ear Wax: “During more than 25 years in pediatric medicine, I have never seen a case of permanent hearing loss as a result of ear infection…Parents and doctors can be responsible for injury to the ear canal and the eardrum because of the efforts to remove wax from the ear. It is inadvisable for you or your doctor to use ANY kind of instrument to remove wax forcibly from your child’s ears, even a cotton swab.” – Robert S. Mendelsohn, MD

The best was to remove ear wax is by inserting a few drops of hydrogen peroxide into the ear twice a day for 2 or 3 days. Let the peroxide remain in the ear for several minutes and then rinse the ear with gentle bursts of water from a syringe.

Pacifiers: Pacifier use was found to cause a 40% increased risk of ear infections in infants, as well as higher rates of tooth decay and thrush, according to Dr. Marjo Niemela and associates from the University of Oulu in Finland. Pediatrics September, 2000;106:483–488.

Don’t Drink Your Milk!: Ear specialists frequently insert tubes into the ear drums of infants to treat recurrent ear infections. It has replaced the previously popular tonsillectomy to become the number one surgery in the country. Unfortunately, most of these specialists don’t realize that over 50% of these children will improve and have no further ear infections if they just stop drinking their milk. This is a real tragedy. Not only is the $3,000 spent on the surgery wasted, but there are some recent articles supporting the likelihood that most children who have this procedure will have long-term hearing losses. http://www.mercola.com/article/milk/no_milk.htm

“The most common culprit [that causes ear infections] is cow’s milk, in its natural form or as found in infant formula. It causes swelling of the mucous membranes, which interferes with the drainage of secretions through the eustachian tube. Eventually infection results because of the accumulated secretion.” – Robert S. Mendelsohn, MD

What About Antibiotics?

Although more antibiotics are prescribed today for children’s ear infections—and for longer periods of time—in the US than anywhere in the world, several recent, independently financed studies have found that for the vast majority of ear infections, antibiotics are little more effective than no treatment at all. http://www.mercola.com/2001/jan/14/whistle_blower.htm

Experts say the routine use of antibiotics against pediatric ear infections produces little health benefit while contributing to the spread of drug-resistant bacteria, and recurrent ear infection. The article evaluated the results of seven different studies conducted over the past 30 years. They found that while antibiotics were linked to short-term decreases in the duration of pain or fever in patients in a few (but not all) of the studies, no long-term (more than six weeks) benefits are reported. All seven studies concluded that children recovered from ear infections at roughly similar rates, regardless of type of treatment. JAMA November 26,1997;278(20):1643–1645

When Is Tympanostomy (Tubes in the Ears) Justified?

“In all my years of practice I have never seen a case in which a punctured ear drum did not heal itself. The principle justification for the procedure [tympanostomy] is to prevent hearing loss, which is no justification at all. Controlled studies have shown that when both ears are infected, and a tube is inserted in only one of them, the outcome for both ears is almost identical. Meanwhile the procedure itself carries many risks and side effects. Justified as means of preventing hearing loss, tympanostomy can cause scarring and hardening of the eardrum, resulting in hearing loss.” – Robert S. Mendelsohn, MD

Prevnar, Pneumococcal (Strep) Vaccine Does NOT Prevent Ear Infections and Has Major Side Effects

Abstracted from lecture by Erdem Cantekin, PhD, Professor of Otolaryngology at the University of Pittsburgh at the Second International Vaccine Information Center Conference September 9, 2000; Washington DC.

Prevnar is a new vaccine against pneumococcus. This is the most expensive routine vaccine to date. The wholesale cost is about $58.There are over 90 different strains of pneumococcus. The vaccine only has 7 strains assumed to be the common ones, but this is an uniformed experiment at best as there is no way to know if this will be covering all of the strains.

The FDA approval states the drugs is ONLY approved for invasive cases of pneumococcal disease such as bacteremia and meningitis. It is NOT approved for ear infections. This is most peculiar as it is commonly recognized that bacterial meningitis is primarily seen in adults not in infants for which this vaccine is recommended. The HMO trial in which Prevnar was approved had no placebo group. The control group received another experimental vaccine for mennigococcus. This was the ONLY trial that was done to establish the safety and efficacy to recommend this vaccine for every newborn in the US.

Just how well did the vaccine work in the HMO trial? In the first 17 cases of bacteremia it worked perfectly. However it was NOT effective for any cases of ear infections. If Prevnar could have stopped this or even reduced this problem it would have been great. But that is not the case. The FDA data from the HMO trial and that in Finland showed that the prevention benefit is less than 4%. The efficacy claims of Prevnar in ear infections and pneumonia remain unproven.

What About Adverse Side Effects of Prevnar?

The children who received Prevnar in the trial were:

• 4 times more likely to have seizures
• 4 times more likely to have stomach problems

Also, significantly more children who had been given Prevnar developed asthma. There was also one death in the Prevnar group and none in the other. Prevnar also alters the developing immune system. Additionally it will put selective pressure on the pneumococcal strains and has the potential to change the natural pattern of strep infections.

Over one trillion dollars of health care system are under the watchful eyes of the FDA, CDC, and the NIH. These three pillars of our public health care system have become to be more and more controlled by “expert panels” advisory committees. Such experts dictate policy and control the complex biomedical system. They directly influenced taxpayers health and wealth. However there is a huge conflict of interest as most of these experts served the special interest groups who profit in their decision. Many are in financial relationships with various manufacturers and are registered as their paid speakers or as some people might say paid lobbyists.

In Summary…

Ear infections will not cause permanent hearing deficits, and mastoiditis is so rare a condition that most contemporary physicians have never seen a case. Conventional treatment with antibiotics, other drugs and the surgical procedure known as tympanostomy is no more effective than the body’s own defenses in dealing with the problem.

Dr. Robert S. Mendelsohn’s Recommendations for Earache

1. Wait 48 hours before you call your physician.
2. Relieve the pain with a heating pad, two drop of heated olive oil (not hot) inserted in the ear canal, and the appropriate dose of acetaminophen if the pain becomes unbearable.
3. If the pain persists after 48 hours, see a doctor—not to treat infection, if that’s what it proves to be, but to rule out the possibility of trauma or the presence of a foreign body.
4. Don’t allow your doctor to use an instrument to remove wax from your child’s ear, and don’t try to do it yourself.
5. If your doctor examines your child and finds a viral or bacterial infection, question the need for antibiotic use. If he finds a foreign body, let him remove it, but again question the need for antibiotic use. If your child has a self-inflicted injury to the eardrum, your pediatrician may refer you to an ear and throat specialist. Be suspicious and question the need if he recommends surgical treatment or antibiotics. In all my years of experience I have never seen a case in which either was necessary.
6. If your child has chronic, recurrent middle ear infection, it is probably because of allergies or the antibiotics he was previously given. If your doctor recommends tympanostomy, don’t permit it without obtaining a second opinion. This procedure has replaced tonsillectomy as the favorite of pediatricians, but there is no reliable scientific evidence that it will do any good, and there’s considerable evidence that it may cause further harm.

Article originally posted at ICPA.org.

Symptoms Are Not the Problem

by Susan M. Brown, D.C. – ICPA:

I’ve had people say to me “I know you don’t want to hear about my symptoms, but…..” Enough people have said it lately that I thought an explanation of my view of symptoms was in order. It’s not that I don’t want to hear about symptoms or that you can’t tell me what they are, I just view them so differently.

The current view of health holds that if we have symptoms, we are sick and if we are without symptoms then we are healthy. And so much of modem health care, especially that which is medical in its approach, is geared toward ridding the individual of their symptoms. Some of the sickest people are symptom free. They just don’t feel anything. Their bodies are so impacted with toxins and stress and injury (emotional and physical) that they have shut down. So lack of symptoms does not necessarily prove to be a healthy individual. As the reverse can also be true. A person with symptoms is not necessarily “sick”.

Now at first, ridding the system of symptoms seems like a wonderful, noble thing. At least until you start to consider how the body functions. Many of the symptoms people experience are actually signs that the body is healing and stopping those symptoms can inhibit the healing process. For example, a normal fever rise is the body’s first line of defense against infection. Temperature goes up, which increases the body’s activity and signals the immune system to ‘turn on”. When we take something to decrease the temperature it compromises the body’s natural healing response.

When we ingest something that the body considers to be toxic, nausea and diarrhea are healthy responses. When a joint is injured the body gives us pain to let us know to be careful, to avoid using it and re-injuring it. It swells to provide a natural splint to the area to protect the injured joint and gets hot as the body increases the circulation to repair and heal the injured tissue. The runny nose we get at the change of seasons is the body sluffing off the old respiratory lining, much like the trees sluff off their leaves and animals sluff off winter coats.

Every symptom our body lovingly gives us is a message. The body can only speak to us in two ways, pain or pleasure, discomfort or comfort, ease or dis-ease. The words it speaks to let us know it is working or not working are what we have defined as symptoms. A heart that aches after years of abuse will signal us with chest pains. A stomach will flare up with an ulcer to let us know that we have let life get too stressful, that it is too much to bear. Our pulse will race with the anxiety forcing us to face the fears that have built up in our bodies.

When symptoms occur, when our body is trying its best to communicate with us, do we listen to what it is trying to say? Or do we just try to shut it up, quite down or stop the symptoms. Do we ignore the body’s only voice and try to “shut it up” like putting our hand over the mouth of a screaming child. If our intention is just to stop the symptoms, then we miss the gift. It’s not that I don’t want to hear about the symptoms, it’s that my intention is not to treat them or silence them, it is to acknowledge them with something far greater than talking about them.

My purpose and intent is to turn on the power of the body so that it can heal, and can integrate the experiences of life. Sometimes when the body is in flow with life it has no symptoms and sometimes it does. Sometimes we feel great, sometimes we feel the process of healing happening and sometimes we feel our body telling us that a change is definitely in order.

Life is a process not an event and so is healing. When your body is speaking, listen to what it is saying, acknowledge it and answer it. Educate yourself as to the processes of the body so that you can help it to heal and understand the messages it is giving you. I think the body’s wisdom will amaze you and if you both listen and respond, the conversations you have will surely enlighten you.

Article originally posted at ICPA.org.

Hormonal Health

by Keith Wassung – ICPA:

When the body is in a state of homeostasis, the precise amount of hormones are released into the bloodstream and things proceed smoothly. But when the control system malfunctions-either too much or too little of a particular hormone is secreted, or when an organ or a tissue does not respond efficiently – the results can be severe and can result in numerous health conditions including, but not limited to, thyroid disorders, diabetes, osteoporosis, and depression. Thyroid disorders are either classified as “hypo-thyroid” meaning too little thyroid activity or “hyper-thyroid” meaning too much thyroid activity. At any given time in the U.S. more than twenty million people suffer from a thyroid disorder, More than ten million women have a low grade thyroid imbalance and nearly eight million people with the imbalance remain un-diagnosed. More than 500,000 new cases of thyroid imbalance occur each year.

15.7 Million Americans have diabetes and it is estimated that 5 million of them are undiagnosed. Each year there are 789,000 new cases of diabetes. diabetes is the 7th leading cause of death in the U.S. and total direct and indirect costs of diabetes in the U.S is over 100 billion dollars.

The endocrine pancreas is regulated by hormonal activity controlled by the hypothalamus. The dysfunction of the regulation of islet hormone secretion as well as its mechanisms and the pathophysiology of the islet dysfunction is primarily a breakdown in the neuroendocrine control.

Osteoporosis is a major health threat for 28 million Americans, 80% of which are women. Annual treatment costs for osteoporosis exceeds 15 billion dollars. One out of every two women and one in eight men will have an osteoporosis-related fracture at some time in their life.

“Interference with bone remodeling-that is, the imbalance between bone formation and bone reabsorption-underlies nearly every disease that influences the skeleton. Most such disorders are caused by imbalances in hormones and related chemicals in the blood.”

“The key to stopping osteoporosis lies in a balanced body chemistry and a delicate balance of minerals in order to maintain a calcium homeostasis in the blood”

Depression is on pace to be the world’s second most disabling disease (after heart disease) by the year 2000; already the World Health Organization ranks it first among women and fourth overall. In the United States, depression afflicts 18 million people at any given time, one in five over the course of a lifetime and costs over 40 billion dollars a year in lost work time and health care.

The term “depression” often carries a stigmatism with it that denotes a certain sort of sadness, but research has revealed that the majority of the cases of clinical depression are due to imbalances in hormonal levels and are related to a dysfunction in neurological signaling and chemistry.

“Today, neuroscientists know that in many cases, psychopathology (ie depression) arises because of dysfunctions in particular brain structures or particular brain chemicals”

“In fact, it takes an incredibly strong person to bear the burden of the depression condition. The name, “hypothalmo-pituitary-adrenal-axis dysfunction” an appropriate jargony medical description that is accurate but would never make it into the headlines”

Traditional Approach to Hormonal Health

The medical approach to endocrine disorders and hormonal imbalances is to use a variety of drugs in an attempt to artificially compensate for a hormone deficiency. In the case of an overactive gland, radiation and surgical procedures are used. Drugs and related synthetic chemicals may be necessary and appropriate in certain situations, but they do little to correct the cause of the disorder or imbalance since they can do nothing to correct the original cause of the problem, which is often in the system of the control mechanism. Drugs often create an even greater chemical imbalance, which can result in harsh side effects that are much worse than the original condition.

“Too many medical remedies get in the way of the body’s ability to heal itself”…

Article originally posted at ICPA.org.

Pharmaceuticals are Gateway Drugs

by Colleen Huber, NMD – ICPA:

Gateway drugs to more serious substance abuse have often been thought of as just the illegal drugs: marijuana, amphetamines, cocaine to begin, and worse drugs, such as heroin, later. However, there are other gateway drugs, and these affect a much larger proportion of the population, and are perfectly legal.

You probably know all too well that pharmaceuticals often have side effects that result in the prescribing of additional pharmaceuticals.

One of the most common problems I see in my practice is the over-prescription of beta-blockers. These are utterly useless drugs. Sure they lower the blood pressure, which is why they’re prescribed. But they do that by weakening the whole cardiovascular system. So much so that at times, I have had patients who were then diagnosed with congestive heart failure. Furthermore, beta-blockers, because they weaken circulation, destroy libido, which then leads to the prescription of Viagra®, a drug that has been shown to cause blindness in some men.

Beta-blockers also cause weight gain, for which pharmaceutical corrections are then desperately sought. And perhaps worst of all, the beta-blockers cause fatigue, which is then interpreted by an incompetent or rushed physician as depression, and an anti-depressant is ordered.

In fact, anti-depressants seem to be gaining ground as the treatment of choice for doctors who simply have no idea what to do with the patient in front of them. The doctor’s inadequate understanding of the patient’s health is interpreted as “all in the patient’s head,” which then justifies the prescription of antidepressants. Some illnesses, not yet understood by conventional doctors, are treated this way more than others. Fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, Epstein-Barr and Lyme disease are especially treated with unhelpful antidepressants.

But anti-depressants are not at all innocent. Just the psychological symptoms of them include suicidal thoughts and attempts and anxiety. (Don’t worry; there are more drugs to control the anxiety.)
The first drug opens up one wound, and then as sloppy bandaging of that wound begins, other wounds develop, until there are multiple wounds, and multiple inadequate bandages.

Many times the first pharmaceuticals are prescribed for someone else. According to the 2006 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, published September, 2007, every day 2500 teenagers, aged 12 to 17 years, try a painkiller for the first time. This is often right out of their parents’ medicine cabinet, such as drugs left over from a surgery or simply left unguarded. Teens are finding drugs and taking large amounts so they can get high. In fact, for 12- and 13-yearolds, prescription drugs are the drugs of choice. For teens, prescription drugs are second only to marijuana for getting high. Unfortunately, because they were acquired legally, and were prescribed for a family member, kids assume they are safer.

But the problem is these kids don’t realize that prescribed drugs can be just as dangerous as illegal drugs. So, even if your kids would never try street drugs, they may be getting high out of your medicine cabinet.

In the specific case of painkiller abuse, which is the biggest accelerating problem for youth, these drugs are often opioid derivatives. A huge problem is the well-known mental impairment from these drugs. Another problem is the severe constipation that such drugs can cause. The rockhard constipation that can result from these drugs is not so easily resolved with fiber, and may require stool softeners and lead to accumulated toxicity in the body.

Sometimes the prescription or legal drugs are gateway drugs, not just to other pharmaceuticals, but to street drugs as well.

For example, Ritalin® and others in the methylphenidate class, such as Adderall®, Strattera™, and Concerta® have an identical molecular structure to amphetamines. Although these drugs are designed for the short-term palliation of hyperactivity or inattentiveness in kids (ADHD and ADD), patients never feel that they are permanently healed from these drugs. So, if the doctor after some years stops prescribing the ADD drug, the teenager very often ends up on a methamphetamine afterward. There are naturopathic physicians who have had numerous young men consult them in order to break the addiction to both Ritalin® and to the secondary addiction to crystal methamphetamines.

Both legally and morally, the pharmaceutical industry and the physicians who carelessly prescribe these drugs should be held accountable for this whole expanded branch of the street drug trade.

One of the main reasons that people come to naturopathic physicians is that they are tired of being on so many drugs, with the side effects and the expense. One of the main things we as naturopaths do is to taper people off poorly prescribed drugs. This is usually a gradual process because some drugs will cause a possibly dangerous rebound effect if stopped suddenly.

For every human ailment there are natural treatments. In fact they can treat more human ailments than drugs can resolve. So, consider this option for yourself and your family.

Article originally posted at ICPA.org.

Rethinking Modern Medicine’s Germ Theory

by Daniel A. Middleton, DC – ICPA:

The germ theory states that diseases are due to specific microorganisms, which are capable of transmission from body to body. Yet although it is widely accepted by medical professionals, forming the basis for billions of dollars of healthcare spending (actually sickness care, but that’s another article), the fact that so many people believe it to be true doesn’t make it so. This is one of the classic logical fallacies: argumentum ad populum, the appeal to the majority, where a thing is stated to be true simply because so many people believe it.

That didn’t work for the belief that the earth was flat, and it shouldn’t work for a theory of disease that is increasingly coming under fire from the scientific community and whose fundamental premise was known to be flawed almost from the beginning. I am reminded of the famous quote by Anatole France: “If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.”

Everyone has heard of the Black Plague that swept through Europe in the Middle Ages, resulting in the death of nearly a third of the European population (25 million people dead over the five-year period between 1347 and 1352). What is most interesting, however, is the other two-thirds—the ones who didn’t die. Many times the survivors were members of the same family as the victims, sharing a home and meals across the same family table. What about them—why didn’t they ‘catch’ the disease? Were they just lucky?

I’m not denying that the disease itself existed; it’s well-documented. The Bubonic Plague, associated with the bacterium named Versenia pestis, was one of the deadliest pandemics in human history—and one of the most studied. Instead, my argument is against the ‘germ theory of disease’ itself, the overriding idea in many people’s minds that exposure to a germ almost always equals disease, when common sense tells us that this simply is not the case.

The germ (or virus or bacteria) might well be the agent of disease, but the cause is much more complex than that. Otherwise, as chiropractic pioneer B.J. Palmer said, eventually no one would be alive to tell you about it! If our bodies can be kept whole and healthy, then the germs, which we come into contact with every day, would have no purchase. One of the goals of chiropractic is to have your body function at such a level that you don’t get sick very often—and that when you do, your immune system, stronger because of more efficient body-brain communication, is better able to fight off the disease, letting you recover more quickly.

Chiropractic is a vitalistic way of looking at our ideas of health and wellness, of how we get sick and why. Very often, it’s at odds with the predominant (mechanistic) model of health that everyone is used to. With the number of drug ads on television and in magazines, and news shows touting the latest medical advancement to treat this or that disease (many of which show up later with unpredicted—maybe even unpredictable—side effects or problems) and the countless TV shows idolizing medicine (e.g. House, ER, Grey’s Anatomy, Nip/Tuck, etc.) all the way back to the early days of television (City Hospital and The Doctor first appeared back in 1951, with the more well-known and iconoclastic Dr. Kildare and Ben Casey showing up ten years later).

Is it any wonder that we all grew up believing in the medical model of health care? After all, surely we could trust Robert Young’s kindly and grandfatherly Marcus Welby, M.D. In fact, we trusted him so much that Young made a subsequent commercial for a popular pain reliever (“I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV…”) that became a well-worn cliché. But what if the foundation on which the entire medical model rests is flawed? What if the “germ theory of disease” is not quite so cut and dried as we’ve been led to believe? Highly controversial when it was first proposed, the germ theory is now the cornerstone of modern medicine, and its chief proponent, Louis Pasteur, a demigod in the medical canon. But is what we remember Pasteur for the last he said on the subject?

Everyone is familiar with Pasteur’s name, but one of his contemporaries and chief opponents was a scientist named Claude Bernard (1813–1878), who argued that it was not the ‘seed’ (the germ) that caused disease, but was instead the ‘soil’ (the human body). Bernard argued that germs are nothing more than opportunistic organisms. It was an argument that persisted throughout their careers, and for his entire life Pasteur was convinced that germs lay at the cause of all disease. Only on his deathbed—with Claude Bernard present—did Pasteur finally admit that Bernard was right. In the end, Pasteur came to realize that the germ was not the only element in determining who became sick and who remained well.

What this tells us is that modern medicine (or Big Pharma, as the pharmaceutical companies with revenues exceeding $3 billion are often called) has based its fundamental premise on a theory that even its most well-known proponent—as Pasteur arguably was—recanted in the end. For the past one hundred years, modern medicine has pursued a theory that is, at best, only a single aspect of the cause of disease and, at worst, a theory flawed at its core.

How much better spent would our health dollars be—in treatment, education and research—if they supported instead research into how to make the “soil” less hospitable to the “seed,” rather than chasing cures and potions for every collection of symptoms that can be named? Just as in a court of law deathbed confessions are given an extra weight, so too should we regard Pasteur’s final comment on his most famous theory: “Bernard avait raison. Le germ n’est rien, c’est le terrain qui est tout.” (“Bernard was right. The seed is nothing, the soil is everything.”)

Article originally posted at ICPA.org.

Living the 10 Tenets of Wellness

by Michael Arloski, PhD – ICPA:

Wellness always seems to be working toward answering one critical question: Why don’t people do what they know they need to do for themselves? Providing people with good information about physical fitness, stress management, nutrition, etc., is important, but insufficient. A lack of information isn’t the problem. With the amount of media attention given to health and well-being, it is hard to believe that most people don’t already know more than enough to live very well lives. Articles on cholesterol, healthy relationships, exercise and smoking cessation abound. But where is the motivation to change, and what is blocking it?

Whether we are looking at our individual health, or wellness programming for a small or large organization, there seem to be certain factors that have emerged in the decades that the wellness movement could call itself a field of study. Let me share some informal suggestions or tenets that, after many years in the “wellness biz,” it all comes down to for me.

1) Wellness is a holistic concept. Anything short of that is incomplete and ultimately ineffective. We need to look at the whole person and program for the mind, body, spirit and environment. Just picking the dimension of wellness that you like and minimizing the others doesn’t work in the long run.

* Imagine each dimension of wellness in your life like a spoke on a wheel. Draw a picture of your wellness wheel, extending your physical fitness spoke, your spiritual development spoke, your nutrition spoke, etc., out as far as you feel you have developed it, and practice what you preach. Do you have a wheel that rolls reasonably well? Where do you need to put your energy into learning more and practicing more?

2) Self-esteem is the critical factor in change. Wellness is caring enough about yourself to take stock of your life, make the necessary changes and find the support to maintain your motivation. Heal the wounds. Find what is holding you back from feeling good about yourself and work through the blocks, not around them.

As psychiatrist Jerry Jampolsky says, everything we do comes either from love or from fear. Where do your wellness lifestyle efforts come from? For many of us, change requires the hard, roll-up-the-sleeves work of facing our fears and healing old wounds received during our experience growing up in our families of origin and from our peer groups and communities. Positive affirmations, or self-statements, are excellent, but need to be coupled with this type of lifelong self-reflective work.

* Identify one negative message you frequently say to yourself (“You’re so stupid!” “You’ll never amount to anything,” etc.). Relax for a minute or two with your eyes closed. Think of the negative message, and say out loud in a shout, “Who says?” Notice who flashes into your mind: a parent, a teacher, a one-time peer? See with whom you have some unfinished business to deal with.

3) The people with whom we surround ourselves either help us stretch our wings and soar, or clip them again and again. Positive peer health norms encourage wellness lifestyle changes. Mutually beneficial relationships with friends, lovers, family members and colleagues who care about us as people are what we need to seek and create in our lives. Rather than being threatened by our personal growth, they support it. Do your friends, partners, etc., bring out your OK or not-OK feelings? Giving and receiving strokes are what it’s all about. Friends keep friends well.

* List who has joined your inner circle of supportive friends in the last ten years. Give thanks—or grieve, and get busy making new friends!

4) Break out of the trance! Conscious living means becoming aware of all the choices we have and acting on them. It involves a realization that we don’t have to run our lives on automatic pilot. We can turn off the television (remember, TV stands for “time vacuum”), read labels, turn off the lawn sprinklers when we have enough rain, notice how our food tastes, and notice how tense and contracted we are when we drive 15 mph over the speed limit. It means consciously working on our relationships, life goals and maximizing our potential.

* For three work days in a row, minimize your attachment to the world of the media: no radio, television, Internet, newspapers or magazines. See what you become aware of about yourself and the world around you.

5) A sense of connectedness — to other people, other species, the Earth and the “something greater” — grounds us in our lives. We are all of one heart. Much of this sense can come out of the land we live on. By identifying with where we live and getting to know the plants, animals, weather patterns, water sources and the landscape itself, we develop not only a love for it, but feel that love returned. Through our commitment to our place on earth we value and protect our environment by the way we live our lives, and by how we speak at the ballot box. Through our contact with the natural world we experience a solid sense of belonging, peace and harmony.

Theologian Matthew Fox likes to say that we can relate to the Earth in any of three ways. We can exploit it, recreate on it, or we can be in awe of it. I believe it is within a sense of awe that our potential for growth and healing is multiplied. From such a state of wonder it is easy to see all other species as relatives. The Lakota like to close every prayer with the words “Mitakaue Oyasin”: “For all my relations.”

* Spend twenty minutes in a natural area just listening to every sound you hear. Locate its origin. Identify patterns. Try it with your eyes closed part of the time. Cup your hands behind your ears and try it. Note your awarenesses.

6) We are primarily responsible for our health. There are the risk factors of genetics, toxic environments and the like, but our emotional and lifestyle choices determine our health and well-being more than anything else. As much as we’d like to cling to blame and cop-outs, we do have to be honest with ourselves. The flip side is the empowerment that this realization gives us.
One path out of passivity and illness is to realize what you can do to boost your immune system. Stress, fatigue and poor diet have a tremendous influence on our body’s ability to resist illness and disease. Most people report excessive stress and chronic sleep deprivation.

* To take charge of your own health and boost your immune system, follow the usual wellness advice and live a well-balanced, healthy lifestyle but, more specifically, experiment with getting more rest and practicing some established form of relaxation training.

7) From increased self-sufficiency comes the confidence and power that overshadows fear. The Australian aboriginal people say that when a person cannot walk out onto the land and feed, clothe and shelter himself adequately, a deep, primal fear grips his soul. Recognizing our interconnectedness, we grow tremendously when we can care for ourselves on many different levels. Skills, information and tools that enable us to live more fully all increase our self-respect and self-confidence. These could include knowing how to choose our food wisely (or even how to grow it ourselves); how to become more competent at our career; how to adjust the shifter on our bicycle; how to take a hike into a wilderness area; or even how to bake bread from scratch. We need to learn these skills and teach them to others, especially our children.

* Identify some skill you want to learn that would make your life easier, more economical or fun (baking, something mechanical, an outdoors skill). Locate a person from whom you can learn that skill and arrange an exchange of knowledge, skill, time, or some other reciprocal arrangement you both like.

8) As much as we all need time with others, we all need time apart. Solo time, especially in the natural world, helps us relax, de-contract and get beyond the distractions of modern life that prevent us from really knowing ourselves. Peoples from all around the world have traditions of spending time alone (usually in a wilderness setting) in order to gain vision about the direction and meaning in their lives. There are some powerful reasons for this.

* Find a partner who shares your desire to spend one full day in solo time. Locate a nearby natural area where you both feel safe and would enjoy spending the day. Pick a day with a relatively good weather forecast. Take a whistle with you, appropriate clothing, rain gear, etc. Bring water, but no food unless you have a special dietary consideration. Do not bring anything to read, or anything to write with. When you arrive, you should both select a small area (10 to 15 yards in diameter, max) where you would like to spend five to eight hours alone. Your site should be close enough for your partner to hear your whistle easily, but far enough away that you can have complete privacy. Taking opposite sides of the same hilltop ridge works very well for this. Reunite at a prearranged time. Spend your time in contemplation and awareness of everything around you. This is a journey into inner and outer nature. Reflect and write about your experience afterward if you like.

The goal here is not endurance. Bail out if you have a nasty change in weather, feel ill, etc. You can always reschedule. Though this exercise in solo time is not physically demanding, you need to be your own judge, or seek your physician’s advice, if you have any health concerns.

9) You don’t have to be perfect to be well. Extreme perfectionism is a shame-based process that feeds a really negative view of ourselves. Workaholism, anorexia and other addictive behaviors can result. Wellness does not mean swearing off hot-fudge sundaes. It just means not “b.s.-ing” yourself about when you last had one! Whenever our healthy habits move from being positive addictions to being compulsive behavior that works against us, we’re usually the last ones to know. A lot of time, extreme behavior is a way to distract yourself from some other issue that needs your attention.

* Get a gauge on your diet, exercise, etc. Read several sources and see what the experts recommend. Check your program out with a qualified local resource, such as a nutritionist or exercise specialist.

10) Play! We all need to lighten up and not take ourselves (and wellness) so seriously. Remember the lessons of the coyote and be playful, even ornery in a non-malicious way. Let the child within out to play. Give yourself permission.

The “work hard, play hard” philosophy does little to help us maintain the balance needed for a healthy life. Psychophysiology works twenty four hours a day, every day (not just on weekends). Integrate a healthy sense of humor and play into the workplace. Make sure your yang equals your yin!

* List several of your favorite “play” activities that you either do, or did at one time in your life. Now note when you last engaged in each of these activities. Celebrate, or contemplate what you’ve (temporarily) let go of in your life. Have fun reclaiming it!

Even with these tenets, there is no concrete wellness formula. You have to discover what works for you. Take them not as rules, but as modern folklore gathered by one who has walked the wellness way for quite a few years.

Article originally posted at ICPA.org.

Preventative Care

submitted by jwithrow.

Journal of a Wayward Philosopher
Preventative Care

November 12, 2014
Hot Springs, VA

The S&P opened at $2,028. Gold, starting to recover from its recent mugging, is up to $1,165. Oil is down to $77.25 and contemplating testing its support level. Bitcoin is up to $396 per BTC, and the 10-year Treasury rate opened at 2.34%.

Precious metals are still the asset class that most warrants your attention in the financial markets today. The U.S. mint sold 5.8 million ounces of silver in October which was a 40% increase from September sales. The Mint then started the month of November off by selling another 1.3 million ounces.

Then it ran out of silver to sell.

But guess what happened to the price of silver? It dropped from $19.50 per ounce on September 1 to $15.72 per ounce as the closing bell rang yesterday. Concurrently, the gold forward rate has just gone negative for the sixth time in fourteen years which suggests the market is pricing for a physical gold shortage. Despite this, the price of gold has been systematically beaten down in 2014 as well. What was that old saying about supply and demand?

Both gold and silver will probably flop around a bit for a while longer but ten years from now you will look quite wise if you allocate some of your capital to precious metals at the current prices.

Shifting gears to continue with our recent health care theme…

Last week we pondered a new model for health care based on cash payments for personalized service in order to opt out of the big-government/big-insurance/big-pharma cartel. We reckoned such a model would be similar to the free market model of a bygone era where family doctors had the freedom to offer personalized service to patients without having to worry about an avalanche of insurance paperwork needing to be complied with or a legion of attorneys hiding in the bushes outside looking for a malpractice lawsuit. We also reckoned there will be a small but growing number of health care professionals willing to offer personalized service for cash as the health insurance industry in the U.S. continues to spiral down into a sinkhole of bureaucracy.

What we didn’t ponder last week was how to afford a cash-based model and keep the insurance company in the waiting room unless an emergency occurs. The answer is simple: preventative care.

No, not the preventative care where you run to the specialist and sign up for the latest and greatest test or screening every time you think you might have sniffled in your sleep the night before. We mean the preventative care where you actually take responsibility for your own health and wellness.

The general guidelines are really pretty intuitive: get a good night’s sleep, stay active during the day even if you work behind a desk, walk as much as possible, eat real food and avoid the fake food that comes packaged in boxes and bags, drink plenty of water and not much soda, consider natural supplements and stay away from pharmaceutical drugs, reject stress and negativity, and maintain a positive state of mind.

Do these things consistently and you probably won’t ever get sick. And if you don’t get sick you won’t feel the need to go to the doctor – not even for checkups if you trust yourself implicitly. Then you could take the money you would have spent on doctor visits and prescription drugs and work on your asset allocation model.

Of course it is still advisable to maintain a wellness network. There are plenty of people and groups out there in cyberspace discussing natural health topics and answering each other’s questions at any given time of day. Though I gave it up years ago, I understand there are plenty of active Facebook groups in this space also.

Wife Rachel and I are big fans of routine chiropractic care as well. Instead of pushing a pill for every ill, chiropractors embrace a more holistic approach to wellness by focusing on musculoskeltal health to ensure optimal functionality of the nervous system. We found chiropractic care to be an especially important part of Rachel’s prenatal and postpartum wellness and it is an excellent tool to monitor the development of little Madison’s nervous system. You know how the pediatrician taps infants on the knee with the little hammer tool? Chiropractors do that too along with numerous other more advanced bio-mechanical and reactionary measurements.

Fortunately for the sake of this journal entry, many chiropractors operate on a cash-only basis. That is, they do not deal with insurance companies (they will accept credit cards). This eliminates the extra costs associated with insurance paperwork and compliance which means lower prices for clients. Some insurance policies may cover chiropractic care but it would be up to the client to file for reimbursement in that case. Ask the chiropractor whether or not his services are covered by insurance and he will probably say “I don’t know” and explain that your insurance policy is a private contract between you and the insurance company and has nothing to do with him (or her). How refreshing to know there is still a sliver of honesty and respectability left in the health care field!

With the proper mindset, preventative care is really quite easy so why do most people ignore it? One cannot know for certain but I suspect propagated fear has a lot to do with it. We’ll save that for a later entry…

More to come,

Joe Withrow
Wayward Philosopher

For more of Joe’s thoughts on the “Great Reset” and regaining individual sovereignty please read “The Individual is Rising” which is available at http://www.theindividualisrising.com/. The book is also available on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle editions.