Have I Got a Deal for You!

This might sound like an Amway come-on, but it isn’t. This might sound like an advertisement, and it might be, but it is not a paid ad, and you are the one who gets the money. I just signed a piece of paper to mail back to the Natren company that now allows you – every one of you who reads this newsletter – to get a 25% discount on any and all Natren products. No, they did not buy advertising space in this newsletter, nor would I ever sell space for ads to anyone. I only recommend products that I, personally, use and believe in. We did not join their company and we get no money from them for this (except the same 25% discount that you now get). So what gives?

The last time Le Anne was BSing with Connie at Natren, Lannie mentioned that we send out this newsletter to a group of friends and family. Connie then asked a bunch of questions about the newsletter, its purpose, how many people receive it, etc. Then she told Lannie that we qualify for a “ support group discount”  where all of our readers can purchase anything Natren sells at 25% off.

They also sent us catalogs, brochures, flyers, etc. to pass along to you if you want it. No catch. I am not running ads for them here and I will not mail you unsolicited stuff. I will send this stuff only to those of you who specifically ask me for it. So how do you get this 25%? If you decide to purchase Natren products (we use their probiotics) for yourself, your cats, dogs, or horses, just call Connie Dupre toll-free at 1-866-462-8736 (extension 2132) and tell her you are a member of the Path to Health Support Group. Whatever you buy will be 25% off. It’s that simple.

Reader Q&A

Q: Can you clear up the fuzziness between fungi and mycotoxins? How do you kill mycotoxins?

A: You cannot “ kill”  mycotoxins because they are not alive. “ Fungi,”  which is the name we give to both molds and yeasts, are like those spores shown in the microscope pictures I sent out in issue 40. Mycotoxins are metabolites of those little cellular lifeforms. Metabolite? Yeah, that’s any substance involved in metabolism (either as a product of metabolism or as necessary for metabolism). Still not clear? Well, forget the single cell beastie for a minute and think about yourself. Your metabolism is the organic processes that are necessary for life. So, what exactly are we talking about here? We told you mycotoxins were poisons. Well, is your urine or feces poison? It is to some creatures. Mycotoxins are the poisons that these fungal cells spew out as a regular part of their life cycle, and as a response to being attacked or otherwise having the feeling of being endangered (kind of like a skunk spraying an attacker). Fungi emit mycotoxins in an attempt to kill your white blood cells and disable your lymphatic system in order that your immune system cannot ward off (kill) the invading fungi.

So are fungi intelligent? No. What we perceive to be an intelligent attack is really no more than a genetically programmed environmental response upon which this tiny lifeform depends for its survival. If something is trying to kill it, or even as it is dying a natural death, it automatically responds by emitting mycotoxins. Sometimes the fungi are killed; sometimes their attackers are killed. And, here’s the really unintelligent part: even if there are too many of its own kind, it emits mycotoxins in its own defense to kill off the competition for the food source. Fungi perceive bacteria (good or bad is irrelevant) to be competition, which is why antibiotics are so successful at killing bacteria (antibiotics are mycotoxins). Your illness (created by an extreme imbalance of good vs. bad microorganisms) is your body’s response to this flood of poisons, whether generated internally by fungal overgrowth or as a hypodermic injection or pill given to you by your doctor.

Note 1: We have recently heard that there does seem to be a way to neutralize fungi and destroy certain mycotoxins. In the herb and spice world, it is the latest and greatest new “ miracle drug” : Oregano (margoranium siracum?). Yeah, I know, Mother Nature put that one here millions of years ago too, but because God didn’t leave humans a preprinted Precise Botanical PDR, apparently most of us didn’t know what it was for, and, being a plant, it simply is not sufficiently profitable because you cannot patent it. Can it all really be that simple? We’ll be doing some more research on this one and let you know what we find out (at least an introduction to oregano in the next issue, with possible follow-ups as we discover more).

Q: If we are all full of fungi or these mycotoxins are in the food we eat, did God get it wrong?

A: At the risk of sounding religious here, no, God did not get it wrong. Fungi have been around for about three billion years and they have a distinct purpose here on planet Earth. Their primary purpose for existing is the decomposition of dead things. What would this place be like to live in with zillions of dead bodies from billions of years of evolution lying around that never broke down and returned to the soil (dust to dust)? Not just people and animals, but old dead trees and other plants, and even other microscopic life forms.

Q: So why are they attacking me? I’m not dead.

A: Well, first, they are not attacking you. They can’t even perceive you as an entity. Again, they are not sentient beings; they operate via simple programming. So why would they be in you if you are not dead? Because you either breathed them in (these spores float freely in the air), got them on your skin (you touched something moldy or free-floating yeasts landed on you), or you ate something that either contained the living fungi or the mycotoxins they had already emitted while trying to decompose something else that was perceived to be dead or dying (corn, peanuts, wheat, etc.).

Here’s the tough part to visualize: They stay in you and live on your nutrients and the other foods you ingest because your immune system did not kill them and flush them out of your body. And why didn’t your own immune system defend you against these things? Because from your very first shot of penicillin or other antibiotics, you became immuno-compromised – out of balance. You can also get out of balance by eating too much of one kind of food (I plan to attack the food pyramid and Standard American Diet in an upcoming issue, hopefully to bring all of us out of our S.A.D. stupors) or by massive bacterial or viral invasion. And the clincher here is, if you do not get yourself back into balance, the fungi perceive you to be in a state of dying. Your system is degrading and they are just doing the job for which Mother Nature created them. If you look/smell/taste/feel (however these cells perceive) like a piece of rotting meat, you’re fair game to God’s little decomposers.

Q: How do I get back in balance?

A: That’s the purpose of this and the last 42 newsletters. To try to get you to think about your life, your lifestyle, your diet, your environmental and exercise habits, etc., etc. and apply a logical method to return to a natural healthy state. Stop listening to the money mongers vying for your dollars while lying to you about how good their product tastes and how good it is for you (i.e., foods or drugs that are bad for you). Yes, I love some of those foods too (we have one loved one who refuses to even read this newsletter because she doesn’t want to know that her beloved chunky peanut butter is killing her). It’s harder than hell to give up some of the foods that I have eaten all my life, but I am healthier now that I have done this. You have to make a choice whether you want to eat corn and peanuts and all the other foods we have already talked about, or live longer without illness and pain.

Q: How do I know when I have achieved this balance?

A: I don’t have a pat answer for that one. A good metric is your body’s pH level (fungi alters your pH to make you very acidic – it thrives in an acid environment). If your pH is in balance between acid and alkaline, then you’re probably OK… for that day anyway. I don’t know if I want to measure my pH every day, so my metric is “ How do I feel?”  What hurts, or doesn’t hurt that used to hurt? Are all my body metrics that my doctor normally pays attention to (temperature, blood pressure, etc.) within the “ normal”  scale? Do I have lumps and bumps? Is my skin soft and smooth or rough and scaly? Those kinds of things can also be your metrics.

Q: I think I only have the disease of “ Getting-Old-itis.”  Don’t we all degrade with age?

A: Well, as a kid, I used to look at my grandmother and think she was ancient, and all people as old as she was (at that time, she was younger than I am today) must have pain in their knees and backs, cough, hack, complain, etc. (Mom once said she was in bed for two weeks with Arthur Itis and he’s the worst of all them Itis boys.) J We have been programmed by society, by books, movies, TV, the church, the government, and by our own imaginations to believe that people only live to be so old and that when they reach a certain age they start getting all these infirmities, etc. It does not have to be that way. A few years ago, I read a science article that said the human body, if treated right, proper diet, proper exercise, proper maintenance, etc., should be able to live several hundred years. The problem is, no one I know who is alive today has ever treated his or her body with that “ proper”  care. And, I suppose, if we all lived to be 200 the government would just move retirement age to 165. Really now, how can they profit by allowing us to live that long? 

Results of Experiment Number 2

Remember a couple weeks ago, we started an experiment with Chaparral? Well, the results are… Rich: little noticeable difference (to me, although Lannie says I returned to looking like a hunched-over troll).(2) Lannie: one major Herxheimer reaction.

Prior to starting this experiment, we sat around discussing how to go about this experiment and decided that because chaparral is touted as an antifungal, antibacterial, and antiviral, that perhaps we’d be wasting our money by using probiotics at the same time as we were taking this stuff. So we decided to suspend the probiotics temporarily and to each take 500 mg of chaparral, three times per day.

At the end of one week, all I could report is that my joints were a little stiffer, making it a bit harder to get up and move about, but that could have had many different causes (this was not a perfectly controlled experiment). Lannie, however, was in a lot of pain. Given that she differs from me in her methods (2) (she’s much stricter about what she eats and how far she walks each morning, etc.), we concluded that the chaparral caused a major kill-off of fungi, which caused them to emit massive quantities of mycotoxins as their dying defensive act. So we sat down and talked about it some more.

We then decided that elimination of the probiotics was a mistake. Now we are taking 500 mg of chaparral twice daily and having 500 mg of probiotics after dinner. Both of us feel better after a week of that dosage. But now it is time to move on to a different form of antifungal because we also do not want the fungi to adapt and/or mutate due to having only one form of enemy.

Note 2: One might argue about personal perceptions of good and bad based on the methods chosen. It should be noted that Lannie’s methods differ appreciably from mine. I tend toward “ baby steps”  and she is “ all or nothing.”  For example: If we decided to go swimming, I would walk carefully down to the river, watch the current swirl in an attempt to determine the location of the rocks, then wade into the river to “ feel it out”  for depth and obstructions, etc. My sweetie, however, would say, “ If we’re going swimming, we’re going swimming”  and she’d just jump off the bridge while I watched in horror. Similar tactics are being used in this whole toxic-foods issue; she quit eating most of the suspected foods cold-turkey, while I merely tapered off in a slow exit strategy, then halted when I perceived it made a difference. Therefore, our reactions to reinstating certain foods have caused a more dramatic reaction for her than for me (example: Experiment #1 - the popcorn for me and the corn-on-the-cob for her). I suspect we also have a major difference in immune systems: hers was relatively non-existent (she’d instantly get a cold upon first contact with an infected person, while I might get a sniffle two weeks later, but never get the full-blown cold). All those things must be taken into consideration when comparing our respective perceived results.

Healer Under Investigation for Herbal Cancer Cure

Associated Press

Curtis Brown carries business cards with old pictures of his tumors, including an egg–sized growth on his neck. He says they were each shed after the application of a flesh–eating paste containing the medicinal herb bloodroot.

“ I cured myself of cancer,”  the cards read.

Georgia’s medical board and the United States Food and Drug Administration do not share Brown’s enthusiasm for the paste.

The state board has accused its maker, Dan Raber, a rural pastor–turned–healer, of practicing medicine without a license. FDA agents recently raided Raber’s business, and a doctor could lose her medical license for allegedly knowing Raber was giving people the paste – not approved for the treatment of cancer – and not reporting him.

Raber’s paste is described by the medical board as “ a caustic, tissue–destroying substance that eats away human skin and flesh.”

On his website, Raber claims the remedy helped him remove a tumor on his wrist, and he displays graphic before–and–after photos of others who have used the paste, including women with scabs on their breasts and men with scarred faces.

While the state board has leveled serious allegations against Raber, he has not been charged with a crime. Prosecutors are studying the case.

Raber has never responded publicly to the board’s allegations.

In an interview with The Associated Press, his son, Kelly, defended his father and his products, which also include enzyme capsules they claim will destroy cancerous cells.

“ The herb does not kill healthy tissue,”  Kelly Raber said, smearing some of the paste on his nose.

“ Instead, it performs a process known as apoptosis(1) that allows the [cancer] cells to self–destruct.”

Note 1: Definition: A type of cell death in which the cell uses specialized cellular machinery to kill itself; a cell suicide mechanism that enables metazoans to control cell numbers and eliminate cells that threaten the animal’s survival.

He said his father’s paste is being singled out because it is an old remedy that cannot be patented and therefore would not generate large profits for the medical establishment or giant pharmaceutical companies.

Dan Raber was named in a state complaint filed against Dr. Lois March, an ear, nose and throat specialist in south Georgia who risks losing her medical license for allegedly providing pain medication to 12 patients who had received Raber’s bloodroot treatments. The board said seven of the patients had breast cancer and that the doctor knew or should have known that Raber’s use of bloodroot “ mutilated their breasts and caused excruciating pain.”

March has denied any wrongdoing. “ These are wild accusations that aren’t true,”  she said earlier this month when reached by telephone at her office in nearby Cordele.

During a 2003 crackdown on alternative medicine merchants who made false claims on the internet, the FDA shut down a Louisiana company that sold a bloodroot paste and its owner was sent to prison. An Indianapolis woman who said she used products from that company and Raber’s in 2001 contends in a lawsuit that her nose was eaten away, exposing the bone and forcing her to have seven reconstructive operations.

A settlement was reached in the suit against the company; Raber is also expected to settle soon, said the woman’s lawyer, John Muller.

To prove bloodroot’s effectiveness, Raber cites numerous books and studies that support the use of salves and pastes containing herbs and other ingredients for treating skin cancer. Such preparations are supposed to isolate the tumor from healthy tissue and cause it to fall out.

Mark Blumenthal, executive director of the American Botanical Council, said bloodroot has been used for years by non-traditional healers to treat skin cancers, but he acknowledged, “ the efficacy has been unproven from a scientific point of view.”

Brown is a believer. After years of sun exposure, the retired farmer was plagued with skin cancer. Doctors surgically removed cancerous growths from his face and arms, but when an 8cm–long tumor grew on the left side of his neck in 2002, Brown instead tried the paste, even though it meant nearly a month of excruciating pain.

“ None of my people ever survived the conventional way,”  said the 71–year–old Brown, who listed relatives who had succumbed to cancer. “ I knew there was a better way.”

Brown said after 26 days of using the paste his tumor fell off, leaving a crater in his neck that eventually healed. A scar is hardly noticeable just below his jaw.

Brown said he promotes the paste strictly to help others and receives no compensation from Raber or his company, Deodorant Stone Manufacturing Company.

Michael Bradley of Monroe, Georgia, a Vietnam veteran who said he was exposed to the herbicide Agent Orange, said he decided to try Raber’s paste after doctors confirmed he had a large melanoma on his upper back.

“ It came out after 30 days,”  Bradley said. “ It was very painful, but I’m still alive. I know a lot of people who didn’t go that route and they’re dead.”

Hmmm… I don’t know the science behind this (yet), but here’s a plant “ healing tool,”  and, as such, it cannot be patented, therefore it is not profitable to the pharmaceutical corporations, therefore it must be hated by the FDA (Big Pharma’s lackeys), even more so because it appears to work when all of their concoctions clearly do not. So let’s chase down and destroy everyone who is in any way associated with it. I only have one question:

Which country is it that we live in?