A couple quotes left out of the Nervous System / Cell Communication / Glyconutrients issue:

“Studies show that a lack of communication on the cell surface can lead to an attack by the body’s immune system.” – Journal of Integrative Physiology and Behavioral Science

“Glyconutrients can enhance the cell’s ability to communicate, thereby enhancing the immune system.” – Robert K. Murray, MD, PhD, Glycoprotein

The Proof is in the Pudding

by Rich Amber

Or should that be “You Can’t Go Home Again”? In any case, this is a personal testimonial that I figured I better share with all of you. My scientific bent wants some proof of claims, so I figured it was time for me to test my own claims. In past issues, I have told you about my personal weight loss, which I attribute mostly to healthy eating with reduced caloric intake and sweat-exercises (workin’ the farm). I have told you that my joint pain (the bone doctor calls it “advanced degenerative arthritis”) is significantly less and that my blood pressure continued to fall in the normal range, resulting in me reducing my hypertension pill consumption, both of which I attribute to eating antifungal foods, cutting back on the mycotoxin-laden foods, and taking probiotics. At the point that this experiment started, I was taking no BP pills and was still well into the “normal” range. So, it became time to test whether it was indeed those things or something else. I do not believe in coincidence. I contend that nothing happens for “no reason at all.” There is a root cause for everything, even if you can’t put your finger on it at the moment. So, was the change in pain and blood pressure really what I thought it was?

A couple weeks ago, I tried an experiment on myself. We had a couple boxes of microwave popcorn sitting out on a pantry shelf, presumably waiting for the day when we were healthy enough to once again sample such forbidden fruit. A bag of popcorn at the movies once a month can’t hurt; or can it? How about half a bag every night for one week? I decided I could tolerate cold popcorn (is that so different from cold potato chips?), so one night of research and making notes on the computer would have half a bag of hot popcorn and the next night would have half a bag of cold popcorn. I am not aware of any caloric difference between hot and cold, and I know (from scientific data) that there is no difference in mycotoxin levels (humidity, yes; dry heat; no), so I’ll call that one even.

During that same week, it was hot and dry outside and I didn’t need to mow the fields because nothing was growing at its normal rate. I had no fence posts to set, nothing major to repair, and I figured I could avoid the weed-pulling chores for a week. Therefore, my exercise that week was restricted to moving my hunt-and-peck fingers as rapidly as possible around this keyboard. While that often produces a headache (trying to concentrate on the CRT screen through bifocals), it certainly does not produce the sweat I claimed was necessary to the weight loss. That is, regardless of the achy head and blurry vision, this is not work (as defined by science). So, we can say that for one week, I did no appreciable exercise.

I also continued to not take my BP pills. Everything else about that one week was normal. The routine meals did not change and were as healthy as any other week. I still took the probiotics (one Healthy Trinity capsule at dinner). Remember, all I wanted to do was to find out if all the things I have been spouting about mycotoxins were actually valid, and the best test subject – the only one I could control – was me.

My prescription for pain meds is eight hydrocodone pills per day. Prior to this experiment, and depending on how hard I worked in any given day, my actual dosage was down to four or six per day. I will assume four per day as a control because no physical exertions (which is why I usually took more pain meds) were performed during the test week.

The results, at the end of one week:

So, my blood pressure went back into the HIGH category (even by the old standards), my physical joint pain increased, inflammation at the joints was visibly increased, and I gained eight pounds. All in one week of eating fake-buttered mycotoxins and having no significant exercise.

This experiment just wiped out about two months of effort to control these things. And all from less than four bags of freakin’ popcorn and no exercise. Hey, I could understand these results if I had a banana split every night while playing couch potato, but half a dang bag of popcorn each evening can do this!?!

At that point, I took the remaining popcorn to the incinerator. That is one food that will never touch my lips ever again! I immediately replaced my late-night computer-time munchies with one raw carrot, cut in manageable sticks, and one celery stalk, cut likewise.

I had to get back on full strength BP medication, which took almost two weeks to bring me back into barely acceptable levels (140/88 according to my home Sphygmomanometer). It is a bit higher than that at the moment, but I just buried my favorite horse, so I’m sure my stress factor accounts for that.

It is now two weeks after the experiment concluded and I am now back to only six pain pills. Perhaps it will be another two weeks (or more) before I can even consider lowering my BP dose again.

Luckily, an increase in exercise dropped that eight pounds again. (phew!)

I wanted proof. I guess I got it. Popcorn is a killer! You folks now have to decide if you want to keep putting that poison in your mouths.

And now a word from Lannie:

My escapade with corn wasn’t an experiment, but just a stooopid thing! Way back in the Spring, before I found out about all this mold and mycotoxin stuff, I had planted a big patch of corn in the garden. Fortunately, I also planted some good stuff, like squash, carrots, tomatoes, onions, etc. Last Summer, the deer ate most of our corn and we only got a couple ears from the garden before they came in again and cleaned up the rest of it, so I was really looking forward to the corn this year. I had been doing my anti-fungal routine for about a month by the time the corn was ready and had managed to get rid of all my pains, those troubling little zits I used to get, and my elbows and the bottoms of my feet had become smooth like a baby’s again. I probably mentioned this all in a previous newsletter, but here it is again anyway. One thing I don’t think I mentioned before was that I seemed to have developed a mild ulcer somewhere along the line, but it wasn’t troubling enough to really do anything about it. That had disappeared also.

Anyway, we were out in the garden, picking fresh corn, and I just had to eat one. I just shucked one cob and ate that beautiful, sweet ear of corn raw. Now, I’ve done this before in the past, many times, and never noticed anything wrong. But this time was different. The next morning when I woke up, I had all my pains back in force, plus a nice yeast infection to boot. I’d never had a yeast infection in my life, but now I had one. I had just undone at least a month’s worth of healing by eating one single ear of corn! Because I had managed to eradicate most of the fungus from my system, it was painfully apparent when I introduced some fresh “bad guys.”

I’m just now getting back to where I was before I ate that corn, but it’s taken almost a month to get here. Needless to say, I won’t make that mistake again. The other batches of corn that are still ripening in the garden will be thrown over the fence for the antelope to eat.

I haven’t been brave enough to try eating anything with peanuts in it yet, because those are usually worse than corn. I have no desire to go through this again!

Make Your Own Pills

Lannie and I just received an herb order and have been having lots of fun making our own capsules. We got this cute little machine that you put 24 empty capsules into, fill them with your favorite herb, then it pushes them together to make 500 mg-sized gel or vegetable capsules. Not including the time Lannie spends grinding leaves into powder, I was making 240 capsules per hour and she was a bit faster at about 288. I guess I wasted a couple minutes trying to be a perfectionist. J This thing sure makes it easier to take evil-tasting herbs like Pau d’Arco or Olive Leaf, and the cost savings of making your own versus buying capsules someone else made is enormous. This also gives us a certain sense of control and satisfaction, as well as confidence that we know what is in the pill because we prepared the herbs and stuffed the capsules. Several places sell bulk herbs, empty capsules, and the little machines to put them together, but we got ours at Mountain Rose Herbs (www.mountainroseherbs.com). Not a bad deal at all. And at least as much fun as reloading a few boxes of .357 magnums. J Be vewy vewy quiet… I am hunting wabbits…

Another Experiment for Us?

One of the herbs we bought recently (we can’t grow it here – too wet) was a large bag of chaparral. Chaparral is an evergreen shrub that has brittle leaves and bright yellow flowers. These develop into thick, wooly seed pods. Only the leaves and slender stems are used as a medicinal herb. Chaparral grows in the dry desert plains in our (U.S.) southwest. Almost all the authors of books about medicinal herbs mention how useful it was to the American Indians. It is claimed to be an antifungal, antibiotic, and antiviral.

This herb is claimed to be good for treating such ailments as TB, bowel complaints, stomach ulcers, cancer, colds and flu. It is found to be beneficial to the walls of capillaries throughout the body and is good to take regularly in case of capillary fragility. Because Chaparral contains NDGA (Nordihydroguaiaretic Acid), it inhibits several enzyme reactions, including lipoxygenase, which is responsible for some unhealthy inflammatory and immune-system responses. NDGA is one of the most highly antioxidant substances known to man, so it should be good at reducing tumors (like the one in my throat?). It also improves liver function, causing the metabolism to speed up, clearing toxins, and improving the ability to synthesize fatty acids into HDLs (high density lipids – the good stuff). Likewise, LDLs will decrease (because it is antifungal?). Because chaparral inhibits lipoxygenase and 5-hydroxyaicosatatraenois acid, which are high in the synovial fluid of arthritis sufferers, this should also provide pain relief.

So Lannie ground it up and we stuffed it in these little capsules, approximately 500 mg per. This leaves a slight dilemma. Should we continue to take probiotics if we are taking a natural antibiotic? Wouldn’t the chaparral defeat the probiotic effects? So, the experiment of the week is to take three capsules per day while holding the probiotics in reserve (in the refrigerator, of course) until the end of the experiment. We will observe, daily, if there is any change in our physical aches, bodily functions, etc. If the chaparral doesn’t do anything significant, we can toss it. If it does, we can return to the probiotic treatment after the effects (good or bad) of the chaparral have been noted. We’ll let you know.

The Phase I Diet

By special request, Doug’s Initial Phase diet is presented here. Please note, this is a diet intended to jump start you into an antifungal lifestyle. For the average person, you might need to be on this diet for only two weeks. For someone who has heavy systemic fungal infections (i.e., many “diseases” of fungal origin), you might need to stay on this diet for a few months before you break through to a point where you can start the Inter-Phase diet, which allows the use of those foods presented in Issue 15 of this newsletter.

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.

This diet is not as nasty as it appears. For example, you could have a breakfast of fried eggs, uncured bacon, and half a grapefruit; snack on almonds; lunch on tuna with celery and a cup of herbal tea; snack on carrot sticks; have a dinner of steak, steamed vegetables, with sparkling lime water; then have a snack of plain yogurt with fresh raspberries. The next day, have an omelet with onions, leeks, parsley and chopped bacon; lunch on chicken salad; dinner of salmon fillets with lemon and butter and an avocado salad. Use your imagination! Remember, however, that if you cannot stick to this diet, it won’t do what you want. Any cheating guarantees failure.

Note, however, that while you can lose weight on this diet (most people do), it is not intended as a weight-loss diet; it is intended as a mycotoxin-destroying diet.

Holy Smoke!

I just found the following shocker in the introduction to The Healing of Cancer, The Cures-The Cover-ups and the Solution Now! There seems to be hundreds of exposé books out there. I guess I was just never looking for them before.

Dr. James Watson won a Nobel Prize for determining the shape of DNA. During the 1970s, he served two years on the National Cancer Advisory Board. In 1975, he was asked about the National Cancer Program. He declared, “It’s a bunch of shit.” (his words, not mine)

In 1953, a United States Senate Investigation reported that a conspiracy existed to suppress effective cancer treatments. The Senator in charge of the investigation conveniently died. The investigation was halted. It was neither the first nor the last of a number of strange deaths involving people in positions to do damage to those running the nation’s cancer program.

In 1964, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) spent millions of dollars to stop an alternative cancer treatment which had cured hundreds, if not thousands, of cancer patients according to documented records. It was later disclosed that the FDA had falsified the testimony of witnesses. The FDA lost the court case because the jury found the defendants innocent and recommended that the substance be objectively evaluated. It never was. Instead, it was totally suppressed.

In the early 1960s, two New York City doctors, one associated with the leading cancer center in America and the other the medical director of a Brooklyn hospital, decided to inject live cancer cells into 22 unknowing patients. When they were discovered, Dr. Chester M. Southam of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Dr. E.E. Mandel of the Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital of Brooklyn were put on “probation” for a year. The three physicians who “blew the whistle” on Dr. Southam and Dr. Mandel were dismissed.

For many years, the American Medical Association (AMA) and the American Cancer Society (ACS) coordinated their “hit” lists of innovative cancer researchers who were to be ostracized. One investigative reporter declared the AMA and ACS “a network of vigilantes prepared to pounce on anyone who promotes a cancer therapy that runs against their substantial prejudices and profits.”

In the late 1950s, it was learned that Dr. Henry Welch, head of the FDA’s Division of Antibiotics, had secretly received $287,000 from the drug companies he was supposed to regulate. In 1975, an independent government evaluation of the FDA still found massive “conflicts of interest” among the agency’s top personnel.

In 1977, an investigative team from the prominent Long Island newspaper Newsday found serious “conflicts of interest” at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). In 1986, an organized cover-up of an effective alternative cancer therapy, orchestrated by NCI officials, was revealed during Congressional hearings.

These examples are only the tip of a huge iceberg. The cancer establishment now has a 50-year history of vast corruption, incompetence and organized suppression of cancer therapies which actually work. Millions of people have suffered terrible torture and death because those in charge took payoffs, played it safe, had closed minds to the innovative, or simply were afraid to do what was obviously and morally right...

The doctor’s union (AMA), the cancer bureaucracy (NCI), the public relations fat-cats (ACS) and the cancer cops (FDA) are conspiring to suppress a cure for cancer... It would be easy for any Congressional committee, major newspaper, television network or national magazine to confirm and extend the evidence presented here in order to initiate radical reform of the critical cancer areas – the hospitals, the research centers, the government agencies, and especially state and local legislation regarding cancer treatment.

     
But that will not happen without a struggle. Neither Congress nor the media desire to lift the manhole cover on this sewer of corruption and needless torture. Only organized, determined citizen opposition to the existing cancer treatment system has any hope of bringing about the long-needed changes. I expect the struggle to be a long, difficult one against tough, murderous opposition. The odds against success are heavy. The vested interests are very powerful...

Here are a few reviews of other similar books. Buy them if you want or reject them as you please, but they were all written by MDs.

Confessions of a Medical Heretic
by Robert S. Mendelsohn, M.D. (Contemporary Books, 1979)

Written in 1979 and made popular with his nationally syndicated column, The People’s Doctor, Confessions is as fresh and relevant today as it was in the late ‘70s. The central thesis of the book is simple: medicine is all about money. Indeed, the orthodoxy’s methods are often more dangerous than the diseases they are designed to treat. Unnecessary surgery and over-prescribed drugs are so common it is now a cliché. This book is worth noting because Dr. Mendelsohn is higher regarded in the medical community, despite authoring this and similar books of like theme (How to Raise a Healthy Child… in Spite of Your Doctor and Male Practice: How Doctors Manipulate Women). He was an associate professor at the University of Illinois Medical School, national medical director of Project Head Start and chairman of the Medical Licensure Committee for the state of Illinois. Written in easy to understand layman’s terms, it is a good primer on the ails that have been wrought by the orthodox community with good (as yet unaddressed) proposals as to how to fix it.

The Medical Mafia: How to get out of it alive and take back our health & wealth
by Guylaine Lanctôt, M.D. (Here’s The Key, Inc. - 1995)

Dr. Lanctôt is a living testimony to the thin veneer that is the West’s commitment to freedom of speech. Not long after writing this book (1995) - which strongly advocated treating the whole person and even worse (gasp!) proposed putting more money into preventative and alternative medicines as well as improvement of the environment - she was sued. Indeed, the Canadian medical establishment went after Dr. Lanctôt like a tiger with all claws fully extended. So vicious were the attacks that Joachim Shafer wrote a follow-up book, The Trials of The Medical Mafia to document what measures were taken to ensure that Dr Lanctot would never be able to practice medicine again.

The Medical Industrial Complex
by Stanley Wohl, M.D. (Harmony Books, NY - 1984)

Although some of Dr. Wohl’s material now appears dated, it is still an excellent primer on “the transformation of (modern) medicine from an art and a science to a business for profit.” Wrote Robert Reich, M.D., then-Director of Psychiatry for the Human Resources Administration in New York: “(Dr. Wohl’s book) is a powerful account of the passing of medical authority from physicians to robber barons – to the peril of us all.” With impressive bibliographical support, Dr. Wohl shows how the medical monopoly has corrupted what was once a noble, altruistic profession.

The McDougall Plan
by John A. McDougall, M.D. & Mary A. McDougall (New Century Publishers, NJ - 1983)

This book presents superbly researched evidence of government conspiracy as it relates to diet and nutrition. The players are the same. Yes, you guessed it, the usual collection of rogues and large corporate sycophants: the FDA, AMA, NIH, etc. But the dietary recommendations themselves strongly favor a positive anti-cancer, anti-heart disease nutritional regime (what McDougall calls a “health-supporting diet”). Dr. McDougall’s wife, Mary, does an excellent job with the recipe section at the back of the book.

Racketeering in Medicine: The Suppression of Alternatives
by James P. Carter, M.D., Ph.D. (Hampton Roads Publishing, VA - 1992/93)

A man with an impressive medical pedigree, Dr. Carter speaks out from his tenured position as head of the Nutrition Section at Tulane University’s Department of Applied Health Sciences on everything that’s ailing us. Evidence is massive in this monograph to which Dr. Carter refers as his Ghandi-like quest for “Right Against Might.” Among the well-presented facts: Bona-fide therapies are being disparaged as quackery, health-care givers who offer alternative treatments are being persecuted, government agencies are participating in the harassment of alternative practitioners, drug companies are unduly influencing medical professionals’ actions, kangaroo courts are convicting honorable men of trumped-up charges. The financial bottom line all too often determines what medicine or treatment is researched, tested, and approved.

And hundreds of others…

For Those Who Have No PDR at Home

Go to http://www.pdrhealth.com, click on Drug Information, then select from Prescription Drugs A-Z, or OTC (over the counter) Drugs A-Z, or Herbal Medicines A-Z, or Nutritional Supplements A-Z. These folks have a lot of information, but they do not have some of the more fringe things listed (e.g., chaparral). Try using www.herbnet.com for herbal things you can’t find at pdrhealth.