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Preserving Our Right to Health-Naturally

Posted on: Wednesday, 19 October 2005, 03:00 CDT

By Teitelbaum, Jacob

By using simple natural therapies to lay a foundation for health, it is often easy to eliminate fatigue and pain while markedly increasing vitality. This article will teach you how to do that. At this time, however, there appears to be a power-play occurring where groups that have powerful financial interests are attempting to eliminate or sharply curtail your right to natural health. Recognizing that the public is strongly in favor of maintaining this right, these groups often attempt to bypass democratic processes by using trade agreements and the powers of regulatory committees (e.g., medical boards). One of the benefits of a democracy, however, is that you have the power to prevent loss of access to natural health options by contacting your elected officials. E-mail addresses for all congressmen and women can be found at www.visi.com/ juan/congress/. An excellent Web site for information on health freedom provided by Dr. Julian Whitaker, a tireless fighter for your health rights (www.whitakerhealthfreedom.com). Because the current American political scene is so evenly divided, your representatives recognize that even a relatively small yet committed group can make the difference between their being elected or not. Please let them know that the issue of health freedom is very important to you.

In this article, we will discuss why the changes of modern life make access to natural therapies critical if we are to maintain our vitality. I will use two of the most common health complaints in the United States, pain and fatigue, as models for the failure of using only allopathic medicine.

How Does Traditional "Pharmaceutical" Medicine Handle Pain?

Unfortunately, most doctors have not yet been trained in proper pain management. I can summarize most of what I was taught about pain in medical school in one sentence: "Use Tylenol and/or the Advil/Vioxx family of medications; if the patient has cancer, you can use narcotics if you have to." I was given the impression that chiropractors, and anyone else who offered remedies that weren't taught in medical school, were quacks trying to steal people's money, and that physicians needed to protect gullible patients from them. Fortunately, by eliminating the underlying causes of pain, as we discuss below, most pain can be eliminated without medications. In addition, many herbals have been shown to be as effective as Vioxx and Motrin family medications for treating pain. These include willow bark, Boswellia, and even cherries (all present in my End Pain Formula by Enzymatic Therapy). As an aside I would note that I do not take money from any companies, and 100 percent of the royalties for products I make go to charity. More information on natural pain relief can be found in my new book Pain Free 1-2-3! and at www.vitality101.com.

What Happens When You Combine Natural and Allopathic Medicine?

Utilizing both natural and allopathic (prescription) medicine dramatically increases our ability to help you get well. Although both medicines have their weaknesses, when you combine them almost all pain can be effectively treated. It's the difference between having only one tool-say a hammer, allopathic medicine-or a whole tool kit that includes the dozens of other healing arts available in natural medicine. A hammer can be a very useful tool, but unfortunately when all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail! It's much easier to get the job done safely and effectively when you are using all the tools available.

They Didn't Sell Vitamins 100 Years Ago. Why Do We Need Them Now?

This is a good time to look at changes that have occurred in modern life. Changes in our diet and sleep habits, combined with toxicity from the tens of thousands of chemicals in our environment, plus the increased pace of modern life, have combined to result in a national "energy crisis" which has resulted in an epidemic of fatigue and pain. While it may be obvious how our "energy crisis" contributes to fatigue, pain is less discernible. It becomes clear when you observe what happens when someone dies and the muscles are starved. Instead of going limp, they become rigid as a board (rigor mortis). When your muscles do not have energy, they become stuck in the shortened position, causing pain. In addition, the amount of inflammatory fats (e.g., grain and grain fed animals, saturated fats, etc.) in our diets have skyrocketed, leading to an epidemic of inflammation. Pain is like the oil light on your dashboard alerting you to a problem. Fortunately, using chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia as a model, our research has shown that 91 percent of patients can improve; half can become pain-free when treated with our "SHIN protocol.""SHIN" stands for sleep, hormonal problems, infections, and nutrition. Treating these areas can dramatically improve energy and decrease pain. Let's look at the changes that have created this epidemic problem, and why natural therapies can be so effective at restoring your vitality.

Food Processing

Let's begin with nutrition. The American diet is awful. In fact, it is often called the Standard American Diet (SAD), and the initials are appropriate. Let's look at why this occurs.

The average American's diet includes 150 pounds of added sugar per year, accounting for approximately 18 percent of your caloric intake. White flour, which has lost most of its vitamins and minerals, accounts for another 18 percent of caloric intake. Since a healthy diet without white flour and added sugar may have only a 10 percent margin of safety for supplying optimum amounts of nutrients, these two changes alone make the average American diet a disaster. Sugar also suppresses your immune system, encouraging the growth of yeast in your bowels and stimulating yeast overgrowth. Yeast grows by fermenting sugar, and it says "thank you" by making billions of baby yeasts. This causes chronic sinusitis and spastic colon.

As Dr. S. B. Eaton noted in his study in the prestigious New England journal of Medicine, "Physicians and nutritionists are increasingly convinced that the dietary habits adopted by Western society over the past one hundred years make an important etiologic [causative] contribution to coronary heart diseases [angina], hypertension, diabetes, and some types of cancer." This is the same conclusion that was reached by the authors of Western Diseases: Their Emergence and Prevention (Harvard University Press.)

I sometimes hear doctors express skepticism about the importance of nutritional supplements. A typical comment is: "Five hundred years ago, there were no vitamin tablets, and people seemed to do just fine." These doctors forget that 500 years ago sugar was not readily available and was expensive. The king of England might have sprinkled a teaspoon of sugar on his food as a sign of power, but when he wanted sugar and had none left, he had to send someone to the West Indies to get it.

The argument about people not needing vitamin tablets 500 years ago simply does not apply to the average modern American. One study reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showed that fewer than 5 percent of the study participants consumed the recommended daily amounts (RDAs) of just the two key nutrients they tested for. What is frightening is that this study was conducted on employees of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) research center.

Despite this, some skeptics still say that vitamins go out in your urine, so all you're doing by taking vitamin supplements is making expensive urine. Using this line of reasoning, these skeptics can stop drinking water (it just goes out in their urine). That way, they'll soon stop annoying people who are in the process of getting themselves well.

As there are literally dozens of different nutrients that are critical for health, and it would take at least 35 supplement tablets a day to replace them all, I recommend that you use a powdered nutritional supplement such as my Energy Revitalization System (available in most health food stores or at www.vitalityioi.com). One good tasting drink and one capsule replace over 35 tablets of supplements a day and make nutritional support easy.

Sleep

To eliminate muscle and many other sources of pain, it is critical to get 8 to 9 hours of uninterrupted, deep sleep each night on a regular basis. Disordered sleep is, in my opinion, a major underlying process that perpetuates both fatigue and pain.

Inadequate sleep can occur for a number of reasons. Many Americans simply do not make enough time for adequate sleep. One hundred years ago, the average American was getting 9 hours of sleep a night. Anthropologists tell us that 5,000 years ago, the average night's sleep was n to 12 hours a night. When the sun went down, it was dark, boring, and dangerous outside, so people went to bed. When the sun came up, they woke. The average time from sunset to sunrise is 12 hours. The use of candles initially shortened sleep time. Then light bulbs were developed, followed by radio, TV, computers, etc. We are now down to an average of less than seven hours of sleep a night, and this is simply not adequate to allow proper tissue repair.

Eight to nine hours of solid sleep each night, without waking or hangover, is the goal, and natural remedies can be very effective at helping you to get a great night sleep.

Th\e natural sleep remedies discussed here are not sedating, yet they will help you fall asleep and stay in deep sleep. Many are available in combination formulas as well. I recommend the following sleep aids, which can help you to get a wonderful relaxing and refreshing nights sleep-naturally!

1. Begin with the herbs wild lettuce, Jamaican dogwood, hops, passionflower, valerian, and Theanine. All six of these herbs can be found in combination in my Revitalizing Sleep Formula. These ingredients may be used as muscle relaxants to treat pain. Then if needed, add

2. Magnesium (75 to 250 mg and calcium, 600 mg) at bedtime

3. 5HTP (200 to 400 mg) at bedtime and/or

4. Melatonin (i to 2 mg)

Hormonal Problems

This category is becoming endemic, many of the chemicals in the modern environment disrupt our hormonal systems. The results of these insidious insults cause numerous hormonal deficiencies which are not discernible in normal blood tests. You would think we would have paid attention to this problem when DDT almost drove our national symbol (the bald eagle) to extinction. Instead, we ignored it and continue to pump tens of thousands of chemicals into our environment daily, which is being reflected in a dramatic drop in sperm counts around the planet. Once sperm counts drop below a critical level, infertility may be the norm, and we may drive ourselves to extinction one day. As an aside, I would note that natural therapies can be dramatically and inexpensively effective in treating infertility. In fact, my wife and I are developing a study for the use of these treatments by couples that cannot conceive. Because these natural therapies are inexpensive, and in vitro fertilization costs tens of thousands of dollars, guess which one your doctor will hear about and recommend? Although it's beyond the scope of this article, for more information on highly effective natural therapies for infertility, as well as to have a healthy pregnancy, I invite you to read the articles at www.vitalityioi. com (see the links at the bottom of the home page).

Our hormonal system regulates the body's metabolism. Although most hormonal deficiencies (and sometimes excesses) can cause pain, the key players are hypothyroidism, inadequate adrenal function, and low estrogen and testosterone. Always use the safer natural hormones.

As you can see, having access to and information about natura remedies is critical. It's time for you to have a life that you love.

by Jacob Teitelbaum, M.D.

Jacob Teitelbaum is Medical Director of the Annapolis Center for Effective CFS/ Fibromyalgia Therapies in Annapolis, Maryland (410.573.5389) and senior author of the landmark study "Effective Treatment of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia-a Placebo- controlled Study." He is also the author of the bestselling book From Fatigued to Fantastic!, Three Steps to Happiness!: Healingthrough Joy, and the recently released Pain Free 1-2-3- A Proven Program to Get YOU Pain Free! For more on Dr. Teitelbaum's work and for related health products, visit his Web site at www.vitality01.com.

Copyright Total Health Communications Aug 2005

Source: Total Health

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