This year, the estimated cost of putting your 80-year old grandfather in an assisted living facility and keeping him there until he dies is $228,000. And what happens to him while he is there? He gets his bed changed occasionally. Maybe someone actually brings him his pills. He gets to sit in a dumpy community living room with a bunch of old sick people, maybe playing checkers in his nightshirt, or watch a small old TV set in the corner. Seems to me that is a hell of a lot of money for that kind of treatment.

Why don’t you put grandpa, instead, on a luxury cruise liner, where he gets a stateroom of his own, great meals, live entertainment (big bands and dancing girls?) and he can spend the remainder of his life cruising around the world. The estimated cost of spending the same amount of time, full time, on board a luxury cruise liner instead of that assisted living facility is only $230,000. What? Only $2,000 difference? Would you say the cost of medical attention by some dirty janitor-type who probably doesn’t speak English is worth $228,000? Or would grandpa have more fun in his final days chasing tiny bikinis around the first class swimming pool? Oh, OK, equal opportunity here… grandma can probably pinch a lot more hunky butts on the ship than in the old folks home too. J

I stole the following cartoon from Readers’ Digest, but it is exactly what will happen to you if you let the doctors do every freakin’ surgery they think is necessary.

Herbs

Many of you have asked about specific herbs and their uses. I thought about doing a copy & paste deal here, telling you about some of the better herbs, a couple per issue. But what one person wants to know about, another won’t be interested in. Lannie found a good link, to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s health site. This has a whole mess of herbs all listed alphabetically. Go to this site, save it in your Favorites, and then refer back whenever you need some information on herbs.

http://www.ajc.com/health/altmed/shared/health/alt_medicine/ConsLookups/Herbs.html

You should probably note, however, that they are using traditional guidelines when they talk about diseases (e.g., they still think yeast infection is restricted to the vaginal and oral areas) and I doubt they have ever heard of a mycotoxin. Just keep in mind that their writer has not learned the things we have learned and use your own judgment. Oh, and ignore all the flashy ads they have on their website because most of them want you to go to a doctor, the results of which could be as per the cartoon on the previous page. At the bottom of each herb explanation (which is very expansive), are usually three links to “similar problems” and if you click on one of those, you’re just about guaranteed to be sent to a pharmaceutical website (eat more purple pills!). Hey, someone has to pay for their website.

Respiratory Disorders and Fungi

Doug A. Kaufmann

The following text is copied from the book The Fungus Link: An Introduction to Fungal Disease, copyright © 2000, by Doug A. Kaufmann, with permission of the author.

In our lives there can be nothing more fearful than the inability to breathe. Having one’s airway constricted so tightly that suffocation ensues is frightening. Why must millions of Americans suffer so terrible a fate every day? And why do Americans suffer more than any other people in the world with this affliction? The answer will amaze you!

I read with awe and disbelief the May 1997 issue of Life magazine. The cover was entirely dedicated to respiratory distress. But it sells a ray of hope to readers. “If you are one of the 50 million Americans with allergies or asthma,” it reads, “now you can take control of your life.” The hope offered is based upon “new discoveries, smarter drugs, and breakthrough therapies.” All of which, of course, we’ve been hearing for the past 50 years Hmmm, now wait a minute. Fifty years ago, antibiotics were first introduced to America’s children. It just couldn’t be that simple, could it? Because doctors and researchers would have already figured that one out! Read on.

The central article in the Life magazine issue of which I speak focuses on a four-year-old boy with asthma who loves the color blue. “He drinks blue soda pop,” it reads, “picks the blue marshmallows out of his Magic Star cereal, and grabs the blue crayon.” Do you think that even one physician who examined him saw a link between his asthma and the dangerous blue dyes or the sugar in the cereal he eats? My guess would be, “No!”

In their defense, medical doctors have licenses that preclude them from acknowledging anything medical except what they learned in medical school. This, despite their own Hippocratic oath, which recites in part, “I will use dietetic measures whenever possible.” Should a physician question, for example, that the antibiotics previously used on this boy might initiate or exacerbate his asthma, he would stand a chance of being reprimanded by the medical board in his state. Drug companies pay a great deal of money to medical schools and medical researchers. A fiduciary relationship exists between the senior medical staff and the providers of income streams. So, for a physician to even question that those providing money might, in any way, be involved in keeping Americans sick and in hospitals is un-American and unthinkable! And don’t you even think of implicating chemical dyes in respiratory diseases. Remember that drugs are chemicals and chemical companies make blue dyes.

If I were a “fungally informed” physician, the first thing I would do is to tell the parents of the boy in the Life magazine article to immediately change his favorite color to orange. Get him off the blue food he is eating, and get him drinking orange carrot juice every day. Carrots alone might improve his breathing condition, because I’m certain it’s been caused by a fungus called Candida albicans. You see, a 1988 Journal of Microbiology paper maintains that carrots contain an ingredient that damages the cell walls of Candida organisms.

Now, how did Candida albicans manage to impregnate the lungs of the boy of whom I speak? More than likely, a prolonged round of antibiotics combined with his favorite foods – all high in sugar – caused the fungus to run amok in his intestines, from which it invaded his blood stream, enroute to the lungs. Bronchopulmonary candidiasis was the eventual result.

At any rate, I would encourage the boy’s parents to obtain a prescription from their doctor for nystatin suspension, 100,000 units/ml. Nystatin is a harmless antifungal derived from a soil fungus. I would have the boy’s parents administer this medicine following the morning and evening meals. I would educate them that if a fungus has gained access to the boy’s lungs, it is living, it is parasitic, and it requires food from his diet. I would inform them that foods such as soda pop and cereals feed the fungus and allow it to spread. At some later time in his life, it could possibly infect other tissues than just his lungs. Doctors who understand these dangerous fungi have reported their presence in every tissue in the human body. Many are only found at autopsy, when it’s too late.

What upset me more than the content of this Life magazine was the fact that I smelled a skunk! The article appeared to me to be nothing more than a sales pitch to get more unfortunate pediatric recruits for the National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver. Don’t get me wrong, I’m certain there are wonderful medical people involved with this prestigious center. But I also know that each needs a paycheck. And just how do they get this paycheck? The insurance company of the family of the boy in the article paid $17,000 for a ten-day visit! The boy went in with asthma, he went home ten days later with asthma, and it only cost $17,000. Medical mediocrity at its best!

Do you think it would have worked for this hospital to have a physician sit down for two hours with the parents in question to counsel them to change their son’s diet, and then to inquire as to whether the asthma got its start after a round of antibiotics? The question is, worked for whom? It would likely have worked for the sick boy’s family, but it wouldn’t have worked for the hospital, at least in terms of the profits it raked in from the insurance company. I will never understand why powerful insurance giants allow their money to be flushed into the medical institutions the way they do.

I am relatively certain that those in power in these insurance companies really do believe that they are doing the right thing. And if they want to throw away their money, far be it from me to challenge them. But when all their money is gone, watch them crawl into health food stores for relief from the stress they’ve self-imposed.

Patients remain sick, insurance companies continue to waste money, and hospitals and their staffs keep the profits flowing. Is it any wonder that we in America continue to suffer?

Doug seems to be being too nice to the insurance companies here. Maybe he thinks they will sue him if he tells it the way it really is. I don’t know. But after reading a thing like that, do you now know why your insurance rates keep going up every year?

Those insurance companies do not suffer a loss when they pay out huge sums to doctors who did not cure the patient; they simply raise your rates again and again and again. You, the consumer, are the only one getting hurt in this vicious circle. You are the one getting sick; the doctor pads his wallet by keeping you sick, the hospital ups the sum every time you have to go through their doors, the drug companies get a big piece of the action because you know you can’t get out of a hospital without having taken some pills or an IV or both (and rarely out of a doctor’s office without a new prescription), the insurance company happily pays them all off, then raises everyone’s rates for next year to get their money back. You get screwed on both ends.

I have a friend who pays $500 per month for health insurance. She thinks that is reasonable. She doesn’t mind her doctor prescribing her a new medication because insurance will pay for it, just like they pay for her monthly doctor visits. If she got healthy and didn’t have to see a doctor or take the doctor’s pills, she would have an extra $6,000 every year to buy herself a great vacation. Before the socialists in this crowd jump up and say “Hillary will change all that,” my answer is “Bullshit!” That national health insurance scheme is paid for by tax dollars and the same criminal game will continue to be played out, only then everyone’s taxes go up to pay for it – even those of us who rarely visit doctors will pay for those who do it all the time. No!

It is time for a revolution in this country! No, you do not have take up arms or throw any tea in the harbor. All you need to do is stop giving them your money. Get healthy, stay healthy, and all the bad guys go out of business due to lack of sheep. It really is that simple.