Fwd: DOCTOR YOURSELF Newsletter (Vol 3, No 8) March 5, 2003

[Guest guest]

" Andrew Saul, PhD "

DOCTOR YOURSELF Newsletter (Vol 3, No 8) March 5, 2003

Sat, 22 Feb 2003 14:59:13 -0500

 

(To UN: dynewsletter-

 

To for free: dynews )

 

" An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually

winning over and converting its opponents. What does happen is that its

opponents gradually die out and that the growing generation is familiar with

the idea from the beginning. "

 

(Max Planck (1858-1947), Nobel Laureate in Physics)

 

The DOCTOR YOURSELF NEWSLETTER (Vol 3, No 8) March 5, 2003

 

" Free of charge, free of advertising, and free of the A.M.A. "

 

Written by Andrew Saul, PhD. of http://www.doctoryourself.com , a free

online library of over 350 natural healing articles with nearly 4,000

scientific references.

 

PARASITE PARANOIA

 

When I reflect back on the bugs, worms, pond snails, bullheads, dead frogs,

desiccated fox carcasses, and other carrion that we handled as children, I

am amazed that any of us made it to adulthood. One of our self-appointed

youth projects was the rescue and rehabilitation of wounded and sick

animals, and we specialized in pigeons. We routinely found them, bleeding,

flapping and helpless, mired in mud and their own droppings, under a nearby

railroad overpass. Parents, think before you give your kid a BB gun.

 

The common pigeon has been called the " feathered rat " because of the lice

and other undesirables that it is known to carry. But to us, filthy or not,

they were beautiful, iridescent birds that needed a home. When they were

inevitably evicted from my parents' garage, the pigeons ended up

convalescing in our treehouse. I would like to tell you that we all donned

masks, gowns and gloves when we handled them, but we did not. Pigeons

perched on our fingers. We hand-fed them bread and graham crackers. They ate

our lunches with us. Their droppings surrounded us. I doubt if we even

washed our hands half of the time. My great-grandmother often said, " You

have to eat a peck of dirt before you die. " She almost certainly meant this

metaphorically, but we took it pretty much literally.

 

Foolish or not, we had no fear of parasites, seen or unseen.

 

Years later, as a masters student, I studied the common dog tapeworm,

dipylidium caninum. It is rather odd to learn that you can literally eat

this tapeworm, or its eggs, and you will not get infested with it. This is

because the animal needs an intermediate host, such as a flea, to complete

its life cycle.

 

http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/accounts/dipylidium/d._caninum$narrati

ve.html

 

Therefore, do not eat fleas. More on this later.

 

Periodically I receive questions from folks worried they might be toting

around a veritable menagerie of nameless internal parasites inside their

body. The answer is, yes, you are literally loaded with little critters.

Most are harmless, and a few are beneficial. There are tiny mites that live

in the roots of each of your eyelashes. If you saw yogurt, bread or cheese

under the microscope, you would never eat it again. There are far more

bacteria on your skin than there are people on the earth. Your bowels are

full of bacteria: nearly one-half of the dry weight of a bowel movement is

nothing but bacteria.

 

The notion of parasites is so creepy that it cannot help but get your

attention. It can also be great way to sell a product. Beware.

 

Truly harmful parasites are the biggest problem for the world's poorest

people. If you have a sanitary food and water supply, your worries are few.

For most of us, household pets are probably our biggest potential source of

unwanted fellow parasitic passengers. Fleas from your dog or cat can carry

tapeworm larvae. If you eat a flea, you can get a tapeworm. So don't.

Eliminate fleas by frequent vacuuming and an occasional steam cleaning of

any carpeting. Bathing a dog (lots of luck bathing your kitty) will also

kill fleas. Regular use of a flea comb (on the animal, not yourself) will

trap the little arthropodia as you groom your pet.

 

If you find yourself obsessing about parasites at 3 AM, go and get tested.

Better yet, go and have your dog or cat tested. They are much more likely to

have them than you are. For the vast majority of people, I think the fear

far surpasses the danger.

 

As a biologist, I know that a population's existence is dependent on its

environment. Habitat and food supply are absolute limits to ANY population.

This is why, to the overfed Westerner, undereating and periodic fasting can

be so effective in preventing and often reducing overgrowths of fungi,

bacteria, worms, and what have you. I also think that near-vegetarians, who

get abundant dietary fiber, drink a lot of vegetable juice, and megadose on

vitamin C will have a particularly clean internal environment that parasites

cannot abide.

 

So here's the plan: Eat right, and make parasites' lives miserable. Let's

drive the little buggers right out of town.

 

I recognize that serious microbial diseases may require serious medication.

Don't be a martyr: when in doubt, see a physician. Yet even when you do,

some doubt will remain. For grim example, let's consider malaria. Does

anyone know exactly how many bites from malaria-carrying mosquitoes it takes

to give a person malaria? If the number varies, then why does it vary? How

come many people get this severe parasitic disease, and yet most people do

not, including people that live right beside them?

 

MALARIA

 

My grandfather worked on the Panama Canal. I have his pick. I've been

through the entire Canal. Grandpa did good work, and he lived to old age to

tell the tale. In my college days, I spent a little time in both Central

America and in equatorial Africa. One night in Ghana, a bunch of us just

could not take the heat and humidity any more. Someone bought a bottle of

cheap gin; someone else produced some limes and enough quinine water (tonic)

to fill every glass we could find. We sat in the dark, trying to hide from

the mosquitoes, and had a great old time.

 

The particular mosquitoes we were attempting to evade carry a single-celled

parasite, called a plasmodium, which causes malaria. Though my grandfather

never suffered from it, malaria has been, and remains, one of the major

killers on our planet, perhaps taking as many as 2,500,000 lives a year. A

high percentage of those fatalities are children.

 

http://www.rph.wa.gov.au/labs/haem/malaria/history.html

 

The World Health Organization (WHO) says, " Science still has no magic bullet

for malaria and many doubt that such a single solution will ever exist. " WHO

recommends mosquito netting for prevention.

 

http://www.who.int/inf-fs/en/InformationSheet01.pdf

 

While there now are a number of costly drugs used to fight malaria,

drug-resistant strains of the disease have rendered them increasingly

untrustworthy. I think it is significant that the conventional medical

treatment of malaria still relies on the use of quinine, even after some 300

years. While heavy dosage of quinine has its side effects, in moderation it

appears to have worked for me, and presumably for my grandfather. Modern

antimalarial drugs also have significant, often serious, side effects.

 

http://www.rph.wa.gov.au/labs/haem/malaria/treatment.html

 

WHO says that " 40% of the world's population - mostly those living in the

poorest countries - is at risk for malaria, " and that over 300 million

people a year get the disease.

 

Let us explore the numbers, and therein the risk.

 

Our planet currently contains over 6,276,000,000 people. 40% of that is

about two and a half billion, the number WHO says are " at risk for malaria. "

Of that number, over 300 million actually get the disease. If we estimate

350 million, that is an infection rate of 14% of people, mostly poor, that

live 24-7 with lots of mosquitoes and far too little insect repellant.

 

If 350 million have malaria, and we accept the high estimate of two and a

half million who die from it, that is a death rate of 0.7% of those

infected. The world's people have far more to fear from war, poverty,

malnutrition, poor sanitation, and cigarette smoking.

 

While there is no joy to be found in any mortality statistics, these suggest

to me that malaria is effectively a symptom of poor living conditions and

low resistance to illness in general. These are the real angles to explore

in order to eliminate malaria, and for that matter, most other diseases.

 

CAN MALARIA BE PREVENTED WITH ASCORBIC ACID?

 

What most physicians will tell you about malaria prevention, including

medication side effects:

 

http://www.rph.wa.gov.au/labs/haem/malaria/prophylaxis.html

 

The antibiotic doxycycline is one of the drugs used for malaria prophylaxis.

( http://www.travdoc.com/ptrav4.html ) Since vitamin C has a history of

successful use as an antibiotic, I speculate that daily high dosages of

vitamin C may work to prevent malaria, and do so with fewer side effects. I

only took 500 mg vitamin C daily when I was in the tropics nearly 30 years

ago. Knowing what I know now, I would take a vastly higher daily dose should

I return.

 

" Ascorbic acid. . . when given in massive repeated doses. . . in acute

infectious processes is favorably comparable to that of the sulfonamide or

the mycelial antibiotics, but with the great advantage of freedom from toxic

or allergic reactions. " McCormick, W. J. (1951) Ascorbic acid as a

chemotherapeutic agent. Archives of Pediatrics NY, Volume 69, Number 4,

April, 1952, pp. 151-155.

 

http://www.seanet.com/~alexs/ascorbate/195x/mccormick-wj-arch_pediatrics-195

2-v69-n4-p151.htm

 

Related References:

 

Klenner, Frederick R. (1953) The use of vitamin C as an antibiotic. Journal

of Applied Nutrition. 6:274-278, and posted at

 

http://www.seanet.com/~alexs/ascorbate/195x/klenner-fr-j_appl_nutr-1953-v6-p

274.htm .

 

McCormick, W. J. (1951) Vitamin C in the prophylaxis and therapy of

infectious diseases. Archives of Pediatrics NY, Volume 68, Number 1,

January, pp. 1-9, which is posted at

 

http://www.seanet.com/~alexs/ascorbate/195x/mccormick-wj-arch_pediatrics-195

1-v68-n1-p1.htm )

 

What practically no physician will tell you about malaria treatment:

 

GARLIC FOR MALARIA

 

" In cell culture studies, sulphide compounds such as those found in garlic

were active against malaria-infected human cells and against cultured

melanoma cells. The compounds ajoene and dysoxysulphone may act by affecting

an enzyme that allows malarial parasites to infect cells, and which is also

present in malignant cells. Despite the garlic's pungent nature, these

compounds deserve further study. "

 

 

Source: Crandall I, et al. Paper at American Society of Tropical Medicine

and Hygiene meeting 2001, Toronto. Abstract cited at

 

http://www.everybody.co.nz/nutrition/nnoct22_01maleria.html

 

IRRELEVANT STATISTIC:

 

Our upstate New York town has received over ten feet of snow so far this

winter. After your above vicarious trip to the tropics, well, I just thought

you'd like to know.

 

BOOK REVIEW:

 

Vitamin B-3 and Schizophrenia, by Abram Hoffer, M.D., Ph.D.

 

The United States Patent Office delayed issuing a patent on the Wright

brothers' airplane for five years because it broke accepted scientific

principles. This is actually true. And so is this: Vitamin B-3, niacin, is

scientifically proven to be effective against psychosis, and yet the medical

profession has delayed endorsing it. Not for five years, but for fifty.

 

In 1952, Abram Hoffer, MD, PhD, had just completed his psychiatry residency.

What's more, he had proven, with the very first double-blind,

placebo-controlled studies in the history of psychiatry, that vitamin B-3

could cure schizophrenia. You would think that psychiatrists everywhere

would have beaten down a path to Saskatchewan to replicate the findings of

this young Director of Psychiatric Research and his colleague, Humphry

Osmond, M.D.

 

( http://www.doctoryourself.com/biblio_osmond.html )

 

You'd think so.

 

In modern psychiatry, niacin and schizophrenia are both terms that have been

closeted away out of sight. And patients, tranquilized into submission or

Prozac-ed into La-La Land, are often idly at home or wandering the streets,

where either way it is highly doubtful that they will get much in the way of

a daily vitamin intake. Those in institutions fare little better

nutritionally. For everyone " knows " that vitamins do not cure " real "

diseases.

 

But Dr Hoffer dissents. For half a century Dr Hoffer has dissented. His

central point has been this: Illness, including mental illness, is not

caused by drug deficiency. But much illness, especially mental illness, may

be seen to be caused by a vitamin deficiency. This makes sense, and has

stood up to clinical trial again and again. If you do not believe this,

Vitamin B-3 and Schizophrenia will provide you with the references to prove

it. And remember that it was Dr. Hoffer who started off those clinical

studies in the first place. In 1952.

 

I personally should have first become aware of a food-brain connection

during those all-night, cookie-fired mah-jongg marathons I all too regularly

indulged in while attending Australian National University. Though arguably

somewhat less than psychotic, my mind was nevertheless pretty whacked out on

sugar, junk food and adrenaline by 3 am. My mood was destroyed; my mind

agitated; unable to sleep, sit still, or smile. Of course, I never

entertained even the thought of a nutrition connection. For we've all been

carefully taught that drugs cure illness, not diet.

 

And certainly not vitamin supplements!

 

But the truth will out eventually. Three years later, I first saw niacin

work on somebody else. He was a bona fide, properly-diagnosed,

utterly-incurable, State-hospitalized schizophrenic patient. I did not see

niacin work in the hospital, of course; the only vitamins given there are

what you can filter out of your " Jell-O " and your " Tang. " No, the patient

was a fellow whose parents were desperate enough try anything, even

nutrition. Perhaps this was because their son was so unmanageably violent

that he was kicked out of the asylum and sent to live with them. On a good

day, his Mom and Dad somehow got him to take 3,000 milligrams of niacin and

10,000 mg of vitamin C. Formally a hyperactive insomniac, he responded by

sleeping for 18 hours the first night and becoming surprisingly normal

within days. I'd seen him before, and I saw him after. I'd talked to his

parents during the whole process. It was an astounding improvement.

 

Sometime afterward, I tried niacin to see if it would help my own touch of

sleeplessness. I found it worked nicely, and it only took a little to do so,

perhaps 100 milligrams at most. Any more and I would experience a warm

" flush. " But then I found that when I ate junk food or sugar in quantity, I

could hold 500 mg or more without flushing a bit. And when I took all that

niacin, instead of flipping out, I was calm. In Vitamin B-3 and

Schizophrenia, Dr. Hoffer explains why this is so:

 

1) As a rule, the more ill you are, the more niacin you can hold without

flushing. In other words, if you need it, you physiologically soak up a lot

of niacin. Where does it all go? Well, a good bit of it goes into making

nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, or NAD. NAD is just about the most

important coenzyme in your body. It is made from niacin, as its name

implies.

 

2) Niacin is also works in your body as an antihistamine. Many persons

showing psychotic behavior suffer from cerebral allergies. They need more

niacin in order to cope with eating inappropriate foods. They also need to

stop eating those inappropriate foods, chief among which are the ones they

may crave the most: junk food and sugar.

 

3) There is a chemical found in quantity in the bodies of schizophrenic

persons. It is an indole called adrenochrome. Adrenochrome (which is

oxidized adrenaline) has an almost LSD-like effect on the body. That might

well explain their behavior. Niacin serves to reduce the body's production

of this toxic material.

 

That Dr. Hoffer can compress a lifetime of research experience into one

readable and surprisingly short book is a tribute to how clearly he teaches

both layman and physician the essentials of niacin treatment. I have taught

nutritional biochemistry to high school, undergraduate, and chiropractic

students. To most, it is not an especially gripping subject. But when even a

basic working knowledge of niacin chemistry can profoundly change psychotic

patients for the better, it becomes very interesting very quickly.

 

Dr. Hoffer has treated thousands and thousands of such patients for nearly

half a century. At 85, he still is actively practicing orthomolecular

(megavitamin) psychiatry. He has seen medical fads come and go. What he sees

now is what he's always seen: that very sick people get well on vitamin B-3.

 

Vitamin B-3 and Schizophrenia: Discovery, Recovery, Controversy

by Abram Hoffer, MD (Quarry Press, Kingston, Ontario Canada: 1998. ISBN

1-55082-079-6 Softcover, 150 pages plus bibliography and two appendices.)

 

 

CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT:

 

Dr. Abram Hoffer and many outstanding orthomolecular scientists will be

attending and speaking at the International Society for Orthomolecular

Medicine's 32nd Annual International Conference, " Nutritional Medicine

Today. " It will be held at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel, Toronto, Canada,

April 10 -13, 2003. For more information, you can write to the Journal of

Orthomolecular Medicine office at 16 Florence Ave., Toronto, Ontario,

Canada, M2N 1E9 (requires 60 cents postage if you are writing from the USA),

or you can email

 

centre .

 

DOCTOR YOURSELF WEBSITE OF THE MONTH:

 

http://www.seanet.com/~alexs/ascorbate/ is an extensive (and free) archive

of especially valuable full-text vitamin C research papers, several of which

I cite above in this Newsletter. Such articles are quite hard to find

anywhere else. The website's creator tells me that one of the most

frequently downloaded is a 1993 review of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome

(SIDS, or crib death) by Joseph G. Hattersley. That one paper cites 112

references. You will also find it easy to access original papers by Dr.

Irwin Stone, Dr. William J. McCormick, Dr. Emanuel Cheraskin, and quite a

number by Dr. Frederick R. Klenner. I highly recommend this excellent,

non-commercial, and most valuable Internet resource.

 

FOR MY READERS THAT LIKE STATISTICS:

 

DOCTORYOURSELF.COM is now (as of Feb 20) evidently the 50,514th most visited

of all websites in the world, and I guess there are millions of them. Why,

that is more activity than the Pittsburgh Panther's website receives. Sure,

we are a tad behind http://www.americanpresidents.org , the World Gold

Council, and of course we cannot approach (nor do we want to) most X-rated

internet sites. But still, we get more visitors than the University of

Phoenix, the Household Finance Company, or the Fender Guitar Corporation. We

even beat the J. C Penney company. I am not making this up, you know.

 

(Source: http://www.trafficranking.com )

 

NEW YORK TOWN STOPS FLUORIDATION OF WATER, Spurred by College Faculty, Staff

and Students

 

Village trustees voted, on February 18, 2003, to halt fluoridation in

Canton, New York ( http://www.canton.ny.us/ ). One hundred and thirty

faculty and staff members of Canton's St. Lawrence University and 300

students petitioned the village trustees to ban fluoride from its water

supply.

 

The decision caps months of public discussion and research about whether

residents' best interests were served with fluoridation, the intentional

addition of cavity-preventing fluoride into water supplies. Trustee Stephen

Putnam, who voted against fluoridation, said he spent much of December and

January reading articles about fluoride and was concerned that fluoride

accumulates in the bones, particularly for menopausal women who drink

fluoridated water over many years, reported the Watertown Daily Times.

 

Chemistry professor Paul Connett, PhD, who led the campaign to rid fluoride

from Canton's tap water said, " An independent review of the literature finds

that fluoridation is:

 

· unethical (medication without patient's informed consent)

 

 

· unnecessary (kids get too much fluoride from many sources)

 

 

· ineffective (at best, fluoridation saves less than one tooth surface out

of 128 in a child's mouth)

 

 

· unsafe (fluoride accumulation can make bones brittle and joints painful)

 

 

· inequitable (the poor cannot afford to avoid it, if desired)

 

 

· unscientifically defended (proponents cannot defend the practice in open

debate)

 

 

· wasteful, literally pouring taxpayer money down the drain. "

 

Hardy Limeback, PhD, DDS, Head of Preventive Dentistry, University of

Toronto, drove four hours by car, at his own expense, to give testimony.

Once an avid fluoridation promoter, Limeback turned fluoridation opponent

when he discovered the:

 

a) incidence of children's dental fluorosis (fluoride discolored teeth) has

risen sharply,

 

 

b) benefits of fluoridation are topical, not systemic (swallowed fluoride

does not prevent tooth decay),

 

 

c) chemical most used in fluoridation schemes is not pharmaceutical grade,

but an industrial waste-product, hexafluorosilicic acid, which the US

Environmental Protection Agency admits has never been safety tested.

 

For more information, you can contact:

Dr. Paul Connett,

 

ggvideo , http://www.fluoridealert.org

Dr. Hardy Limeback, hardy.limeback

 

Attorney Paul Beeber nyscof

(Reprinted with permission of the NYS Coalition Opposed to Fluoridation.

 

http://www.orgsites.com/ny/nyscof )

 

 

My website offers these articles on fluoridation:

 

http://www.doctoryourself.com/fluoridation.html

 

http://www.doctoryourself.com/fluoride_cancer.html

 

And on care of the teeth:

 

http://www.doctoryourself.com/teeth_tooth.html

 

There are many fluoridation links to be found on my LINKS page at

 

http://www.doctoryourself.com/links.html

 

READERS ASK:

 

" What is your opinion of Dr. D'Adamo's " Blood Type Diet " ?

 

Peter J. D'Adamo, N. D. ( http://www.dadamo.com ) is the best-selling author

of Eat Right 4 Your Type and several related sequels. My short opinion of

his work is that there is some good advice in each of his four diet plans,

and that a human being cannot go terribly wrong following any of them.

Nothing in my studies of genetics or nutrition has so far led me to adopt

his conviction that diet is so very closely related to blood-type. I am

nevertheless always interested in whatever works.

 

One gently negative reviewer put it this way:

 

" If you eat less calories than you burn, you will lose weight no matter what

your blood type. "

 

http://www.no-diet.com/blood-type-diet.htm

 

Personally, I am uneasy with Dr. D'Adamo's online " Blood Type Store "

 

http://www.dadamo.com/napharm/store3/PJDstore.cgi?user_action=detail & catalog

no=ED002 , which markets products according to your blood type.

 

I will readily agree that one nutritional size does not necessarily fit

everyone. Different people need different amounts of calories, depending on

activity, personal choices and heredity. Sick people need vastly more

vitamin C than healthy people. I know people that do very well with no dairy

products, and others who do much better when they start eating dairy.

Variation in nutritional needs can be very wide, even among people of the

same blood type. Roger J. Williams, PhD, has been teaching the concept of

biochemic individuality since the 1950's.

 

I personally find it hard to believe that all humanity can be divided into

four parts. (Even Julius Caesar was off a bit claiming merely that all Gaul

is divided into three parts, because there were in fact five parts

 

( http://www.sdopera.com/pages/education/edusourcebook/sbNorRomeGaul.htm). I

find it equally unlikely that one-twelfth of all readers of the morning

newspaper will have the same astrologically-preordained day. But then, I

could be wrong. It wouldn't be the first time.

 

Your opinion is invited to drsaul . Some of the most

interesting readers' comments will be shared in a future Newsletter.

 

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Saul's books, which help fund these free public services.

 

Persons interested in his book PAPERBACK CLINIC: A Simplified Manual of

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AN IMPORTANT NOTE: This newsletter is not in any way offered as

prescription, diagnosis nor treatment for any disease, illness, infirmity or

physical condition. Any form of self-treatment or alternative health program

necessarily must involve an individual's acceptance of some risk, and no one

should assume otherwise. Persons needing medical care should obtain it from

a physician. Consult your doctor before making any health decision.

 

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service marks of Andrew W. Saul. All rights reserved.

 

Copyright c 2003 and prior years Andrew W. Saul drsaul

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