Cholesterol misunderstanding

 Statins

The establishment definition of a statin refers to,

“any one of a class of drugs that inhibit the action of an enzyme involved in the liver’s production of cholesterol.”

The reason that drugs are required to inhibit the production of cholesterol is claimed by the NIH, on the Resources web page entitled High Blood Cholesterol: What You Need to Know, to be because,

“High blood cholesterol is one of the major risk factors for heart disease.”

The medical establishment theory, which claims that a high level of cholesterol is dangerous and needs to be reduced, is, however, flawed. Interestingly, the establishment definition of cholesterol highlights one of the flaws in this theory because it includes the statement that,

“Cholesterol and its esters are important constituents of cell membranes…”

Despite the plethora of recommendations by the medical establishment that people should lower their intake of cholesterol, the total level of cholesterol within the body is not regulated by dietary intake. The overwhelming proportion, approximately 85%, of the body’s requirement for cholesterol is produced by the liver; it is only the remaining 15% approximately that is obtained through the diet. If, for some reason, the diet provides the body with insufficient cholesterol, the liver will increase its production to compensate for that dietary deficiency. It is clear therefore, that it is the body that regulates the level of this vital substance.

Cholesterol is not solely an important constituent of cell membranes; it is also an important constituent of the brain and essential for its proper functioning; as indicated by a 2010 article entitled The Effects of Cholesterol on Learning and Memory, which states that,

“Cholesterol is ubiquitous in the central nervous system (CNS) and vital to normal brain function including signaling, synaptic plasticity, and learning and memory.”

The recognition that cholesterol is vital for the proper functioning of many of the body’s vital organs directly contradicts the information promulgated by the medical establishment that cholesterol is ‘dangerous’, and that high levels in the body pose a serious ‘risk’ to health.

An April 2016 article entitled Re-evaluation of the traditional diet-heart hypothesis, published in the BMJ, explains that the original hypothesis about levels of cholesterol stemmed from a study called the Minnesota Coronary Experiment that was conducted between 1968 and 1973; but the results of this study were not published. This experiment was a controlled study that, for the participants of one of the groups, involved the replacement of saturated fats with vegetable oils rich in linoleic acid, a polyunsaturated fat. This dietary intervention was shown to reduce serum levels of cholesterol and assumed to be beneficial.

The documents and data from this original study have recently been re-analysed and the results published in the BMJ. The reason that the original study was not published is claimed to be because the researcher did not believe the results he had obtained. The BMJ article states that,“In meta-analyses, these cholesterol lowering interventions showed no evidence of benefit on mortality from coronary heart disease.”

In addition to the lack of evidence that any benefits accrued from the lowering of cholesterol levels, the BMJ article reports that the evidence,

“…suggests the possibility of an increased risk of death for the intervention group…”

This is not the only study that has discovered that low cholesterol correlates with an increased risk of mortality, not a reduced risk, as the medical establishment claims.

It is stated that there are two types of cholesterol; LDL (low-density lipoproteins), which is regarded as ‘bad’ and HDL (high-density lipoproteins), which is regarded as ‘good’; but these labels are completely misleading. The idea that cholesterol can be either good or bad is based on a misunderstanding that arose from another study that investigated the effects of cholesterol on laboratory animals. The misunderstanding occurred because it was not recognised at the time that the cholesterol used in the study had been oxidised; it is the oxidation of cholesterol that causes health problems. In his book entitled Health and Nutrition Secrets, Dr Russell Blaylock explains the mistaken perception about the different types of cholesterol,

“The reason LDL cholesterol is bad is that it is much easier to oxidize than HDL cholesterol. But oxidized HDL cholesterol is just as dangerous as oxidized LDL cholesterol.”

Oxidation of the cholesterol that constitutes cell membranes will inevitably, adversely affect the cell’s function and, likewise, oxidation of the cholesterol in the brain will affect brain function. These detrimental effects are the direct result of the process of oxidation; a process that produces ‘free radicals’, which are highly reactive particles that can cause damage to any part of the body with which they make contact. Oxidised cholesterol has been shown to cause damage to blood vessels; although free radicals cause damage wherever they are produced in the body.

On the basis of the flawed idea that it is a high level of cholesterol in the body that is the problem, the pharmaceutical industry developed drugs called statins to inhibit the production of this vitally important substance. Inevitably, there are many dangers associated with the use of statins, which, by intention, are designed to interfere with the body’s normal production of cholesterol. The consequences of inhibiting the enzyme in the liver to reduce the production of cholesterol are discussed by Dr Carolyn Dean in Death by Modern Medicine,

“That enzyme, however, does much more in the body than just make cholesterol, so when it is suppressed by statins there are far-ranging consequences.”

Statins are proclaimed by the medical establishment to be both safe and effective, yet, like all other drugs, they produce a number of severely detrimental effects, some of which are explained by Dr Dean,

“Since the brain has the highest concentration of cholesterol in the body, it’s no wonder that the constant demand for lower and lower cholesterol counts is going to impinge on brain function. Previous studies have shown that statins can result in polyneuropathy, which causes numbness, tingling, and burning pain. Researchers showed that people taking statins were 4 to 14 times more likely to develop polyneuropathy than those who did not take statins.”

Statins are intended to inhibit the production of cholesterol; they are not intended to address the problem of oxidised cholesterol, which means that they fail to address the underlying cause of the problem. There are a number of factors that can cause the oxidation of cholesterol and they include many toxic chemicals that are ubiquitous to the environment, as Dr Dean explains,

“In addition, chlorine, fluoride in water, pesticides and other environmental pollutants can also oxidize cholesterol in the body.”

The problems with these chemicals and other environmental pollutants are discussed in more detail in chapter six. Oxidised cholesterol can also be found in processed and ‘fast’ foods, which are also discussed in more detail in chapter six.

In addition to their increased use as treatments for patients with high levels of cholesterol, statins are increasingly prescribed as preventives on the basis of the idea that this will reduce the risk of developing a CVD. As demonstrated by the study published in the BMJ, there is no evidence that high levels of cholesterol constitute a health problem or even increase the risk of developing health problems. The study in fact revealed the opposite; that low levels of cholesterol produce adverse health consequences and that statins increase the level of harm to health.

The harm that they have been shown to cause is demonstrated by the withdrawal of certain statin drugs from the market following reports about a number of severe ‘side effects’, and even death in some cases. Nevertheless, many statin drugs remain on the market, including some that are known to produce many serious adverse effects, as has been reported by many patients who have taken these drugs. This would seem to be another instance of the benefit being claimed to outweigh the risk; but this is clearly not the case.

One of the serious adverse effects that can result from the use of statins is reported in a December 2015 article entitled Statin Use and the Risk of Kidney Disease With Long-Term Follow-Up (8.4-Year Study) published in the American Journal of Cardiology. This study acknowledges that there had been few studies on the long-term use of statins, especially with respect to the effects on kidney disease. The conclusion to the study states that,

“…statin use is associated with increased incidence of acute and chronic kidney disease.”

The reason that these serious health problems were not discovered from the original clinical trials is also explained by the article that states,

“These findings are cautionary and suggest that long-term effects of statins in real-life patients may differ from shorter term effects in selected clinical trial populations.”

Yet again, the medical establishment’s lack of knowledge about the human body has created more problems than it has solved in the attempt to reduce the incidence of heart disease. Cholesterol is not responsible for heart disease, therefore attempts to reduce the body’s production of cholesterol will not reduce the risk of heart disease.

What Really Makes You Ill?

Why Everything You Thought You Knew About Disease is Wrong

Dawn Lester & David Parker

The shocking truth about your health beliefs

 

A 1957 case study by Dr. Bruno Klopfer (who famously pioneered the Rorschach inkblot test) reports the story of Dr. Philip West and his patient Mr. Wright. Dr. West was treating Mr. Wright, who had an advanced cancer called lymphosarcoma. All treatments had failed, and time was running out. Mr. Wright’s neck, chest, abdomen, armpits, and groin were filled with tumors the size of oranges, his spleen and liver were enlarged, and his cancer was causing his chest to fill up with two quarts of milky fluid every day, which had to be drained in order for him to breathe. Dr. West didn’t expect him to last a week.

But Mr. Wright desperately wanted to live, and he hung his hope on a promising new drug called Krebiozen. He begged his doctor to treat him with the new drug, but the drug was only being offered in clinical trials to people who were believed to have at least three months left to live. Mr. Wright was too sick to qualify.

But Mr. Wright didn’t give up. Knowing the drug existed and believing the drug would be his miracle cure, he pestered his doc until Dr. West reluctantly gave in and injected him with Krebiozen. Dr. West performed the procedure on a Friday, but deep down, he didn’t believe Mr. Wright would last the weekend.

To his utter shock, the following Monday, Dr. West found his patient walking around out of bed. According to Dr. Klopfer, Mr. Wright’s “tumor masses had melted like snowballs on a hot stove” and were half their original size. Ten days after the first dose of Krebiozen, Mr. Wright left the hospital, apparently cancer-free.

Mr. Wright was rockin’ and rollin’, praising Krebiozen as a miracle drug for two months until the scientific literature began reporting that Krebiozen didn’t seem to be effective. Mr. Wright, who trusted what he read in the literature, fell into a deep depression, and his cancer came back.

This time, Dr. West, who genuinely wanted to help save his patient, decided to get sneaky. He told Mr. Wright that some of the initial supplies of the drug had deteriorated during shipping, making them less effective, but that he had scored a new batch of highly concentrated, ultra-pure Krebiozen, which he could give him. (Of course, this was a bald-faced lie.)

Dr. West then injected Mr. Wright with distilled water.

And a seemingly miraculous thing happened—again. The tumors melted away, the fluid in his chest disappeared, and Mr. Wright was feeling great again for another two months.

Then the American Medical Association blew it by announcing that a nationwide study of Krebiozen proved that the drug was utterly worthless. This time, Mr. Wright lost all faith in his treatment. His cancer came right back, and he died two days later.1

When I read this, I thought, Yeah, right. Surely, this case study couldn’t be true. How could cancerous tumors just “melt like snowballs” in response to an injection of water? If the case report was true and something so simple could make a cancer go away, why weren’t oncologists wandering through the wards, injecting stage 4 cancer patients with water? If they had nothing to lose, what was the harm?

The whole thing seemed improbable, so I kept looking. Surely, if there was any truth to such a story, there would be similar case studies reported in the literature.

Another patient reported in the Journal of Clinical Investigation suffered from severe nausea and vomiting. Instruments measured the contractions in her stomach, indicating a chaotic pattern that matched her diagnosis. Then she was offered a new, magical, extremely potent drug, which her doctors promised would undoubtedly cure her nausea.

Within a few minutes, her nausea vanished, and the instruments measured a normal pattern. But the doctors had lied. Instead of receiving a potent new drug, she had been dosed with ipecac, a substance known not to prevent nausea, but to induce it.

When this nauseated patient believed her symptoms would resolve, her nausea and abnormal stomach contractions disappeared, even when the ipecac should have made them worse.2

I sat there, scratching my head. Curious, but it didn’t prove anything.

The Healing Power of Fake Surgery

Soon after, I stumbled across an article in the New England Journal of Medicine that featured Dr. Bruce Moseley, an orthopedic surgeon renowned for the surgeries he performed on people with debilitating knee pain. To prove how effective his knee surgery was, he designed a brilliantly controlled study.

The patients in one group of the study got Dr. Moseley’s famous surgery. The other group of patients underwent an elaborately crafted sham surgery, during which the patient was sedated, three incisions were made in the same location as in the real surgery, and the patient was shown a prerecorded tape of someone else’s surgery on the video monitor. Dr. Moseley even splashed water around to mimic the sound of the lavage procedure. Then he sewed the knee back up.

As expected, one-third of the patients getting the real surgery experienced resolution of their knee pain. But what really shocked the researchers was that those getting the sham surgery had the same result! In fact, at one point in the study, those getting the sham surgery were actually having less knee pain than those getting the real surgery, probably because they hadn’t undergone the trauma of the surgery.3

What did Dr. Moseley’s patients think about the study results? As one World War II veteran who benefited from Dr. Moseley’s placebo knee surgery said, “The surgery was two years ago and the knee has never bothered me since. It’s just like my other knee now.”4This study hit me in the gut.

Mr. Wright and the lady getting ipecac were just case studies, and case studies, well known to have biases, aren’t considered the gold standard when it comes to interpreting the medical literature. The gold standard by which I was taught to investigate scientific data is the randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial, published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Dr. Moseley’s study, a randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled clinical trial—published in one of the most highly respected medical journals in the whole world—showed that a significant percentage of patients experienced resolution of their knee pain solely because they believed they got surgery.

That was the first real evidence I collected that proved to me that a belief—something that happens solely in the mind—could alleviate a real, concrete symptom in the body. Dr. Moseley’s study is what led me to research the placebo effect, the mysterious, powerful, reliably reproducible treatment effect some patients experience when given fake treatment as part of a clinical trial.

The Powerful Placebo

Like every scientist, I had long known about the placebo effect. Fake treatments, such as sugar pills, saline injections, and sham surgeries, are routinely used in modern clinical trials to determine whether a particular drug, surgery, or treatment is truly effective. The term placebo, from the Latin for “I shall please,” showed up in medical lingo ages ago to indicate inert treatments, traditionally given to neurotic patients to placate them.

For centuries, doctors prescribed treatments without any clinical data to prove that the treatments themselves actually worked. Nobody questioned the treatments the doctor prescribed, and nobody did studies to prove whether something was effective. The doctors simply mixed up tonics, dosed up their patients, and the patients got better, at least a percentage of the time. Or the doctor cut someone open, performed a surgery, and the symptoms improved, or they didn’t.

It wasn’t until late in the 19th century that the idea of using placebos in clinical research began to emerge. Then, in 1955, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a seminal article by Dr. Henry Beecher called “The Powerful Placebo,” which made the case that if you dosed people up with drugs, many got better. But if you gave them plain salt water or some other inert ingredient, about a third of them were also cured, not only in their minds, but in real, physiological ways that could be demonstrated in the body.5

Suddenly, the concept of “the placebo effect” became a mainstay of contemporary medicine and modern clinical trials were born. Now, good scientific studies bear the burden of proving that the healing effect of the drug or surgery being tested transcends the potent healing power of the placebo. If a drug or surgery demonstrates that it’s more effective than a placebo, then it is deemed “effective.” If not, the FDA probably won’t approve the drug, the surgery will fall out of favor, and the treatment will be dismissed as ineffective, as Dr. Moseley’s surgery was. Prescribing treatments that prove to be no better than a placebo is believed to violate the principles of evidence-based medicine. It’s what separates the real doctors from the quacks.

Or so I was taught.

It got me thinking. What exactly is the placebo effect? Until I began my research, I had never really stopped to think about it. We all know people in clinical trials get better when you treat them with nothing but a sugar pill. But why?

That’s when I realized I had hit the mother lode in my quest for proof that the mind can affect the body. If a percentage of people in clinical trials get better simply because they believe they’re getting a real drug or surgery, the response they are getting is triggered solely by the mind. This realization threw me into a bit of a tailspin.

Evidence That Positive Belief Can Alleviate Symptoms

Back to the medical journals I went, in search of more evidence that the mind’s belief that the body is getting a drug or surgery is enough to result in real, live symptom relief. I found that nearly half of asthma patients get symptom relief from a fake inhaler or sham acupuncture.6 Approximately 40 percent of people with headaches get relief when given a placebo.7 Half of people with colitis feel better after placebo treatment.8 More than half of patients studied for ulcer pain have resolution of their pain when given a placebo.9 Sham acupuncture cuts hot flashes almost in half (real acupuncture helps only a quarter of patients). As many as 40 percent of infertility patients get pregnant while taking placebo “fertility drugs.”10In fact, when compared to morphine, placebos are almost equally effective at treating pain.11 And multiple studies demonstrate that almost all of the happy-making responses patients experience as a result of antidepressants can be attributed to the placebo effect.12It’s not just pills and injections that work wonders when it comes to symptom relief. As proven by Dr. Moseley’s knee-surgery study, sham surgeries can be even more effective. In the past, ligation of the internal mammary artery in the chest was considered standard treatment for angina. The thought was that, if you blocked blood flow through that artery, you’d shunt more blood to the heart and relieve the symptoms people experience when they’re not getting enough coronary blood flow. Surgeons performed this procedure for decades, and almost all the patients experienced improvement in their symptoms.

But were they really responding to the ligation of the internal mammary artery? Or were their bodies responding to the belief that the surgery would be helpful?

On a quest to find out the answer, one study compared angina patients who got their internal mammary arteries ligated with patients who underwent a surgical procedure during which an incision was made on the chest wall, but the artery itself was not ligated.

What happened? Seventy-one percent of those subjected to the sham surgery got better, whereas only 67 percent of those who got the real surgery improved.13 Internal mammary artery ligation now exists only in medical history.

The data I was collecting was impressive, and I had to wonder if it might be even more impressive if every effort weren’t made to minimize the placebo effect in clinical trials. If researchers perceived the placebo effect as a positive phenomenon, something to embrace, perhaps we’d see even higher percentages. But that’s not the focus most researchers have. On the contrary, clinical-trial coordinators and medical researchers (who are mostly employed by pharmaceutical companies) go out of their way to diminish the placebo effect. After all, patients who get better from placebos interfere with a drug’s ability to get approved for market. To screen out those considered to have “excessive placebo responses,” many randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trials of drugs are actually preceded by a “washout phase,” in which all participants take an inert pill and anyone who reacts favorably to it is eliminated from the study.

So, if the majority of researchers for new pharmaceuticals weren’t in bed with Big Pharma, we might see placebo response rates shoot even higher in clinical trials.

Does Everyone Respond to Placebos?

As I pondered the placebo effect, I found myself doubting whether I would ever respond to a placebo if I were a patient in a clinical trial. After all, I’m a doctor. I’ve been an investigator in clinical trials myself. I’m a smart cookie, and I think I’d just know whether I was getting a real treatment or not. If I suspected I was getting a placebo, clearly it wouldn’t help me, right?

It got me thinking. Are certain types of patients more susceptible to placebo responses than others? Is there any data to suggest whether there’s a classic profile for placebo responders? Are there personality traits or intelligence measures that predict who gets better when given a sugar pill? Do people with high IQs demonstrate less responsiveness to placebos? Are some people just more gullible?

Turns out scientists have studied this. Researchers originally postulated that those who responded to placebos would have lower IQs or be more “neurotic.” But what they discovered is that nearly everybody can be induced to respond to a placebo under the right conditions. We are all susceptible, even doctors and scientists. In fact, some studies suggest that those with higher IQs are even more placebo-responsive.

I took this as good news, because if it’s true that the mind’s positive beliefs can heal the body, everyone has an equal chance of benefiting from this phenomenon. It’s not just gullible people who can believe themselves well; it’s smarty-pants people like you.

Is Healing from Placebos All in Your Mind?

As my research continued, I couldn’t quite wrap my brain around what I was learning. Clearly, the evidence I was collecting looked promising. When patients—not just the gullible ones, but all patients—believe they’ll get well, a hearty percentage of them experience clinical improvement.

But this failed to fully satisfy my curiosity. I could make the argument that symptom relief really is all in your head. What is pain, after all, if not a perception in the mind? What is depression, if not a mental state? Even with more tangible diseases like asthma or colitis, maybe you just perceive that you can breathe better or think you have fewer gastrointestinal symptoms. Maybe the mental perception is changing, but the body isn’t actually responding in any measurable physiological way. Maybe you just think it is, and that’s enough to make you feel better.

If it’s true that the mind can heal the body, there must be some way to demonstrate that the body is responding, not just with symptom relief, but in physiological ways that can be studied. The next phase of my research led me in search of proof that it’s not all in your head, that the mind’s belief can actually alter the body’s physiology.

With hundreds of thousands of placebo-controlled trials published out there, finding an answer was no small feat, mostly because many of the studies I encountered evaluated symptoms such as headaches, back pain, depression, and decreased libido—which are difficult to quantify. When patients experience relief from such symptoms, it’s largely subjective. There’s no objective measurement that can prove that what they report is true.

But I did finally find proof that, at least a percentage of the time, real physiological changes happen in the body in response to placebos. When given placebos, bald men grow hair, blood pressure drops, warts disappear, ulcers heal, stomach acid levels decrease, colon inflammation decreases, cholesterol levels drop, jaw muscles relax and swelling goes down after dental procedures, brain dopamine levels increase in patients with Parkinson’s disease, white blood cell activity increases, and the brains of people who experience pain relief light up on imaging studies.14These findings convinced me. Placebos don’t just change how you feel, they change your biochemistry. This is where things really start to get interesting.

The biochemical impact of the placebo effect potentially throws our whole model of disease into question. But before I made any giant leaps, I wanted to investigate whether there might be other explanations for why people’s bodies were responding with both symptom relief and measurable physiological change when treated with placebos. Was it really just positive belief making all those changes in the body, or were there other factors influencing the patients’ outcomes? The next phase of my inquiry led me to a few theories. (...)

From Mind Over Medicine

Lissa Rankin

Science and medicine

Science and technology have generated many innovations that have profoundly changed the way people live; these changes have accelerated substantially over the past three centuries since, and largely as the result of, the Industrial Revolution.

The consequences of these changes have not always been beneficial; many have been positively detrimental. One of the main consequences has been the almost total obeisance to ‘science’ in the belief that it is the only method through which ‘knowledge’ can be obtained. Dr Mendelsohn’s simile that modern medicine is like a religion can be extrapolated to apply to ‘science’, in which ‘scientists’ have assumed the mantle of ‘authority’ and become a new kind of priesthood.

This situation is highly problematic; real science is a process of discovery, but the discipline of ‘science’ has become largely authoritarian because its teachings are: that scientific knowledge is the sole repository of ‘truth’; that only those who accept the ‘consensus’ view are the genuine scientists; and that any dissenting views are to be vilified and described in terms such as ‘unscientific’ and ‘pseudoscience’ or with other similarly disparaging labels.

The field of knowledge that has suffered the greatest harm from this dogmatic approach is that of ‘health’, in which dissenters are labelled as ‘quacks’. But the use of insults has no place in a genuine scientific debate. The greatest error of ‘scientists’ in this field, which is often referred to as ‘medical science’, originates from a false perception of the human body as essentially a ‘machine’ of separate parts that are fundamentally chemical in nature; meaning that a malfunction in each part can be ‘fixed’ by altering its chemical nature. This error has been compounded by the equally erroneous idea that ‘diseases’ are the result of an ‘attack’ on the body, mainly, but not exclusively, by ‘germs’.

Furthermore, most ‘scientists’ in the field of ‘medicine’ regard the living human body as if it were inert; they effectively deny that it has a role of any significance in the production of illness or in the restoration of health. To add insult to injury, the medical establishment maintains the stance that it is only their healthcare system, which operates from the basis of these ideas, that is capable of correctly addressing matters pertaining to health.

Yet again, nothing could be further from the truth.

From: What Really Makes You Ill? Why Everything You Thought You Knew About Disease is Wrong

Dawn Lester & David Parker

How To Be Naturally Healthy

 

“Health is not something bestowed on you by beneficent nature at birth; it is achieved and maintained only by active participation in well-defined rules of healthful living…” Henry Bieler

The health policy guidelines developed and issued by the WHO are recommended for implementation by all Member States; they therefore have the ability to affect the health of the entire world population. It may be assumed from the magnitude of this responsibility that the WHO possesses a thorough understanding of the problem it purports to be able to solve; it may also be assumed that the measures recommended for the treatment and prevention of illness are not only appropriate but are also safe and effective; these would however, be mistaken assumptions. As the discussions in this book have demonstrated, ‘modern medicine’ does not possess a thorough understanding of the nature of illness and has failed to correctly identify all of its causes. They have also demonstrated that the measures employed to treat and prevent disease, namely medicines and vaccines, are not only inappropriate, they are neither safe nor effective.

Although modern medicine is claimed to be founded on evidence-based science, it is abundantly obvious that it has failed to solve the problem of illness; this can be demonstrated by a substantial volume of evidence that shows ill-health to be a problem that continues to worsen rather than improve. It is clear that medicines and vaccines do not heal and prevent disease; but the problem with these measures is not merely their lack of efficacy. There is a large and growing body of evidence that shows pharmaceutical products to be toxic and therefore inimical to health, not supportive of it.

The main reason that ‘modern medicine’ has failed to solve the problem of illness is because it operates from the basis of fundamentally flawed theories; yet the medical establishment refuses to revise these theories, despite their obvious flaws.

In common with all other problems, that of ‘illness’ can only be solved by understanding its nature and correctly identifying its real causes. People can only be restored to good health when the causes of ill-health have been eliminated and therefore cease to exist; as indicated by Herbert Shelton who explains that,

“…full recovery cannot be expected so long as cause remains.”

As stated in the Introduction to this book, health is the natural state of the human body, but achieving and retaining good health requires people to take certain actions. The main actions involve making conscious decisions, firstly, to avoid, or limit, exposures to the factors that adversely affect health and secondly, to increase exposures to the factors that improve health. In other words, it requires people to actively participate in ‘healthful living’, as explained by Dr Henry Bieler in the quote that opens this concluding section of the book.

Although most people trust the medical establishment as the ‘authority’ with respect to illness, especially in the treatment and prevention of disease, this is, unfortunately, a misplaced trust for reasons that have been discussed throughout this book. It must be emphasised that authority is not synonymous with ‘truth’. Authority, when not based on truth, can impede progress and even prevent the discovery of truth; as indicated by a saying attributed to Albert Einstein,

“Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.”

It is likely that, at the beginning of this book, most readers would have considered the information in this book to have been controversial; it is however, appropriate at this juncture, to repeat the saying attributed to Arthur Schopenhauer,

“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”

It is sincerely hoped that, having reached the end of this book, you, the reader, will have attained the third stage and recognise the ‘self-evident’ nature of the information it contains. It is also hoped that, with your new understanding of what really makes you ill, you will feel you are now in possession of the information you require to make truly informed decisions about your healthcare.

from: What Really Makes You Ill?

Why Everything You Thought You Knew About Disease is Wrong

Dawn Lester & David Parker

Gallstones In The Liver

The liver is the largest gland in the body, weighing up to three pounds. It is suspended behind the ribs on the upper right side of the abdomen and spans almost the entire width of the body. The liver is an extremely active organ that has to perform hundreds of different functions. With its dazzlingly intricate labyrinth of special cells, veins and ducts, it resembles an entire city for the variety of its activities.  

Because the liver is responsible for processing, converting, distributing, and maintaining the body’s “fuel” supply – energy and nutrients – it directly affects the health and vitality of every cell in the body. 

The liver also influences the secretion of digestive enzymes and produces many hormones that affect the way the body functions, grows, and heals. It makes new amino acids and converts existing ones into proteins which serve as building blocks for cells, hormones, neurotransmitters, genes, etc. This vital organ also breaks down old cells and recycles iron. It stores blood and important vitamins and nutrients. Apart from breaking down alcohol, the liver makes powerful enzymes that detoxify noxious substances, bacteria, parasites and certain drug compounds. All in all it filters more than a quart of blood each minute. 

The liver keeps the body warm, provides the energy for sexual performance, maintains good eyesight and keeps the mind clear and efficient. One of the liver’s most important functions is to produce bile, about 1 - 1½ quart per day. Bile is a viscous, yellowish-green fluid that is alkaline (versus acidic) and has a bitter taste. Most food cannot be properly digested without bile. For example, to enable the small intestines to absorb fat and calcium from the food you eat, the food must first be mixed with bile. When fat is not absorbed properly, it indicates that bile secretion is insufficient. The undigested fat remains in the intestinal tract. When the fat reaches the colon along with other waste products, bacteria break down some part of it into fatty acid components, or else it is excreted with the stool. Since fat is lighter than water, it may make the stool float. If fat is not absorbed, then calcium is not absorbed either, leaving the blood in a deficit. The blood subsequently takes its extra calcium from the bones. Most bone density problems actually arise from insufficient bile secretion and poor digestion of fats rather than from not eating enough calcium.

Apart from breaking down fats contained in our food, bile also removes toxins from the liver. One of the lesser known but extremely important functions of bile is to de-acidify and cleanse the intestines. If gallstones in the liver or gallbladder have critically impeded bile flow, the color of the stool may be tan, orange-yellow or pale as in clay, instead of the normal greenish-brown. Gallstones are one outcome of an unhealthy diet and lifestyle. If gallstones2 are still present in the liver even after all other disease-causing factors are eliminated, they still pose a considerable health risk and may lead to illness and premature aging. For this reason, the subject of gallstones has been included here as a major risk factor or cause of disease. The following sections describe some of the main consequences that gallstones in the liver have on the different organs and systems in the body. By removing these stones, the body as a whole is able to resume its normal, healthy activities.

Persons suffering with chronic illnesses have hundreds if not thousands of gallstones congesting the bile ducts of the liver and gallbladder. The liver is able to return to its natural efficiency once the stones have been removed through a series of liver cleanses. And by maintaining a healthy diet and lifestyle most, if not all, symptoms of discomfort in the body will soon begin to subside. Many allergies will disappear, back pain will come to an end and energy and well-being will improve dramatically. In my experience, cleansing the liver bile ducts from gallstones is one of the most important and powerful means to improve your physical, mental and spiritual health. 

  Gallstones – A Constant Source Of Disease  Gallstones in the bile ducts of the liver, medically known as intrahepatic stones, consist of mostly cholesterol (60-90%). The rest is made up of other bile constituents as well as toxins, bacteria, and parasites. Relatively few are made of organic matter from food. They are “invisible” to X-rays because they are not calcified. The gallbladder may have larger stones that are calcified and can be detected. 

Ultrasound technology can spot non-calcified fatty deposits in the liver only if they occur in very large quantities (many thousands of stones). The diagnosis of this condition is often referred to as “fatty liver.” The gallstones found in the liver come in all shapes and colors. Most of them are bright or dark green, yet some others can be white, red, black or tan colored. They result from overeating, an unhealthy diet and lifestyle, as well as stress and repressed anger. As the stones grow in size and become more numerous the liver cells are compelled to reduce bile production. Normally, the liver produces well over a quart of bile each day. This is the required amount to properly digest food in the small intestine. When the major bile ducts are blocked, barely a cup or even less will find its way to the intestinal tract. The restricted bile production does not only impair digestion, but also prevent the liver from excreting toxins and propelling the stones out of the bile ducts. All this affects the blood circulation in the liver. The walls of the liver’s blood vessels (sinusoids) become increasingly clogged up. This, in turn, prevents Low Density Lipo Proteins (LDL and VLDL, also called bad cholesterol) from leaving the blood stream, hence the rise in blood serum cholesterol. Since gallstones are porous, they can pick up or absorb toxins, bacteria, viruses, parasites and cysts that are passing through the liver, like fishing nets collect fish. The stones can become a constant source of infection, supplying the body with an ever-increasing number of fresh bacteria. The attempt to permanently cure intestinal bloating, cystitis, Candida, stomach ulcers, infectious diseases or any of the above conditions is likely to fail if the bacteria-harboring gallstones are not removed from the liver. On occasion, one or several gallstones get stuck in the cystic duct - in the vessel that links the common bile duct with the gallbladder – or in the common bile duct itself. In this case, the wall of the duct undergoes strong spasmodic contractions in order to propel the stones onwards. The contractions of the duct wall can cause excruciating pain, throughout the abdomen, in the back and also in the legs and arms. When the gallbladder is packed with gallstones, it too may go into extremely painful, spasmodic muscle contractions, a condition known as gallbladder attack. Gallstones can trigger strong reactions of irritation and inflammation of the walls of the gallbladder and the cystic and common bile ducts. There may be superimposed microbial infection. Today, over 20 million Americans suffer gallbladder disease and each year about one million of them opt for an expensive gallbladder operation. If a person has his gallbladder removed surgically, he may feel tremendous relief from the acute pain attacks and his digestion is likely to improve for a short while. This is due to comparatively more bile being available for the digestive process. The disadvantage is, however, that that bile comes in small trickles throughout the day rather than in large amounts when it is needed to digest a meal. Bile causes injury to the intestinal walls unless it is mixed with food. In addition, since the patient still has all the stones left in his liver, the digestive troubles are most likely to return and get worse. Other existing health problems such as pain, asthma, bursitis, heart disease, arthritis, etc. become intensified as well. If gallstones become stuck in the ampulla of the bile duct, where the common bile duct from the liver and gallbladder joins the pancreatic duct, jaundice and acute pancreatitis usually develop. This condition can eventually lead to tumors in the pancreas and to a number of other diseases. Gallstones of any kind, size and number can be easily and safely removed through the Liver Cleanse described in Employing Nature’s Healing Powers, Chapter 7, or in my book The Amazing Liver Cleanse. 

The first positive effects that are commonly noticed soon after the cleanse are pain relief and regained or enhanced energy, vitality and general well being. Although the Liver Cleanse can be done by people of any age, including children above 10 years (many children today have gallstones in the liver) and the elderly, it is recommended to do the cleanse only after having followed the general guidelines for creating a healthy body for at least four to six weeks, as is described in the following chapters. The colon and kidney cleanses outlined in Chapter 7, Employing Nature’s Healing Powers, are an ideal preparation for a liver cleanse, too. 

During a series of liver cleanses, I passed about 3,000 small pea-sized green stones, hundreds of chickpea sized and a dozen large ones of 2centimeters in diameter. A recent cleanse showed that my liver was completely clean. The effects of each cleanse were often dramatic and added more and more benefits to the previous one(s). The overall results were that my energy and vitality increased by at least three-fold, all discomfort, stiffness and pain in the body, particularly in the back, ceased and digestion and elimination normalized. Speaking for myself, the liver cleanse is the best thing I have ever done for my physical and mental well-being. You may wonder why in mainstream medicine there is no medical knowledge or reference that deals with gallstones in the liver. The reason for this extremely important missing link is that the theories of modern medicine tell you that gallstones can only be formed in the gallbladder, and not in the liver. The “experimental evidence” supporting this theory is mainly based on taking X-rays or ultrasound scans, which can detect only the few stones in the gallbladder that may have grown to a certain size and are calcified (mineral stones). The current diagnostic tools are unable to recognize the hundreds or thousands of non-calcified hardened bile deposits in the liver as gallstones. Ultrasound scans can reveal fatty deposits in the liver only when there is an excessive number of oversized stones (20,000 or more) congesting the liver bile ducts (fatty liver). And even if early deposits are recognized, there is no effective therapy in conventional medicine that can remove them. The presence of gallstones in the liver can easily be verified by anyone suffering from a chronic illness, especially if his/her gallbladder has been removed. By performing a liver cleanse, the body will release plenty of non-calcified, bile-coated stones. These stones are identical to the green non-calcified stones found in a surgically removed gallbladder. When cut through their middle part, both these “types” of gallstones bear typical age marks, similar to those seen in cut tree trunks. Proper analysis would reveal their age and the kinds of toxins, chemicals and bacteria the body had or has to deal with most. Sweeping the liver clean eliminates thousands of bits of poisonous substances that have helped form the stones and plague the thousands of liver bile ducts. Cleansing the liver bile ducts from gallstones is one of the most important and powerful procedures to regain or improve your health. 

For further details on how cleansing of the liver and gallbladder can make all the difference when it comes to treating disease or improving your health and vitality, please refer to The Amazing Liver Cleanse. 

In Chapter 1 you will find a detailed explanation as to why the presence of gallstones in the bile ducts, both inside and outside the liver, can be considered to be the greatest health risk and cause of most major or minor illnesses. In Chapter 2 you will be able to identify the signs, marks or symptoms indicating the presence of stones in your liver or gallbladder. Other sections of the book detail the possible causes of gallstones and how to prevent new ones from developing. What Can I Expect from a Liver Cleanse covers some of the possible health benefits of this profound, self-help program. Also, find out what others have to say about their experiences with the liver flush. The question and answer section deals with many queries you may have about this procedure and its implications for your health. To reap the maximum benefit from the liver cleanse, I would like to encourage you to read the entire book.

Toxins in food

 As Dr. George Schwartz has pointed out in his remarkable book, In Bad Taste: The MSG Syndrome, often MSG and related toxins are added to foods in disguised forms. For example, among the food manufacturers favorite disguises are “hydrolyzed vegetable protein,” “vegetable protein,” “natural flavorings,” and “spices.” Each of these may contain from 12% to 40% MSG. (See Appendix I for more information about hidden sources of MSG.)

Hydrolyzed vegetable protein is a special case and deserves a closer look. If you will recall, the manufacturing process (as described in the introduction) is a series of chemical processes; first boiling vegetables in sulfuric acid for several hours, then neutralizing the acid with a caustic soda (an alkalizing agent often used to make soap), and then drying the resulting brown sludge. Additional MSG may be added as well to the fine brown powder. The result is marketed as hydrolyzed vegetable protein. When particular amino acids are combined with the basic hydrolyzed vegetable protein they can bring out a “beefy” taste that makes it useful in barbecue sauces and fast foods. Other protein combinations bring out a “creamy” taste that is frequently used in canned and instant soups, salad dressings, and sauces.

Analysis of this taste enhancing substance reveals some interesting findings. Not only does it contain three very powerful brain cell toxins–glutamate, aspartate, and cysteic acid–but it also contains several known carcinogens (cancer causing substances). Incredibly, the FDA does not regulate the amount of carcinogens allowed in hydrolyzed vegetable protein, or the amount of hydrolyzed vegetable protein allowed to be added to food products. As we shall see later, this substance poses an even greater danger than MSG itself.

EXCITOTOXINS: TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING

By the early forties it was known that the human brain normally contained relatively large concentrations of the amino acid glutamate, which at that time was thought to act primarily as a brain fuel. Based on this idea, in 1949 Dr. Weil-Malherbe tested a group of mentally retarded children to see if glutamate would improve their mental capacity. [14] Fortunately, as it turned out, the experiment was a failure. I say this because had the experiments continued, greater injury to these children’s brains would have eventually occurred.

Then, in 1957 two ophthalmology residents, Lucas and Newhouse, tested monosodium glutamate and aspartate on infant (suckling) and adult mice while studying a particular eye disorder. [15] What they found came as a complete surprise. After completing the experiment they sacrificed the animals and examined their tissues under the microscope. Of the animals that had been tested with monosodium glutamate, virtually all of the nerve cells in the inner layer of the animals’ retinas had been destroyed. The worst damage occurred in the newborn mice, but even the adults showed significant injury. They found that the amino acid aspartate caused similar, though less severe, damage. Keep in mind that aspartate is one of the main ingredients in Nutrasweet®, the artificial sweetener.

Unfortunately this important finding went virtually unnoticed by the medical world, and especially by the food industry, which at the time was adding tons of MSG to foods, including baby foods. It wasn’t until ten years later that someone saw the importance of this discovery. That person was a neuroscientist, Dr. John W. Olney.

In 1968 Dr. Olney, working out of the Department of Psychiatry at Washington University in St. Louis, repeated Dr. Lucas and Newhouse’s experiment using the same kinds of animals and the same doses of MSG. [16] But what Dr. Olney found was even more shocking. He discovered that not only did MSG cause severe damage to the neurons in the retina of the eye, but that it also caused widespread destruction of neurons in the hypothalamus and other areas of the brain adjacent to the ventricular system, called the circumventricular organs. (FIG 3-1) Again, this damage was most severe in the immature or newborn animals. He hypothesized that this area of the brain was affected most because it did not have a blood brain barrier system to protect it from toxic substances circulating in the blood.

from: EXCITOTOXINST The Taste that Kills

HOW MONOSODIUM GLUTAMATE, ASPARTAME (NUTRASWEET®), AND SIMILAR SUBSTANCES CAN CAUSE HARM TO THE BRAIN AND NERVOUS SYSTEM AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO NEURODEGENERATIVE DISEASES SUCH AS ALZHEIMER’S, LOU GEHRIG’S DISEASE (ALS) AND OTHERS.