Never Give Up on Your Health

I had an appointment at Kaiser today for some small skin imperfections I wanted checked out. We only switched to Kaiser in the past few years after my health had improved from adopting many of the diet and exercise changes outlined in my www.ctds.info site. My Kaiser doctor didn't know me at the time I was having severe bleeding issues, fibromyalgia, TMJ and many of the other issues listed in my connective tissue disorder site. She commented today at my appointment on how she rarely saw me and how few Kaiser resources I used compared to most of her other patients. It was pretty cool hearing that.

A few years ago I was going from specialist to specialist for all of my different health issues to hope to get a diagnosis, let alone a cure for everything that was wrong with me. There was actually a time when I was considering using a wheel chair. My husband and I also had been househ unting for a one story home because I was having trouble going up and down stairs in our two story house.

Well, after many hours of reseaching my health issues, a lot of diet changes and many hours of yoga, today I'm in pretty good shape. We ended up staying in the same house. Last year I bought an expensive mountain bike instead of a wheel chair.

So if you have unusual problems, even a supposedly incurable disorder like me, my advice is to never give up trying different doctors and searching for answers on your own. If I had not done my own health research, I might be in that wheel chair today instead of back on a bike.

Pfizer Suspends Bextra, Agrees to Warning on Celebrex - another drug solution bites the dust. Or as the famous quotes goes, "Some remedies are worse than the disease." ~ Publilius Syrus

Morgellons

I read an article in the paper the other day about a disorder called Morgellons and it just blew me away. My son and I had many of the same symptoms, though nothing as extreme. The part I found especially interesting was that people with the disorder all had weird fibers growing out of lesions on their bodies, yet most of them were being diagnosed with "delusional parasitis (DP)". It's the doctor's that are delusional in this case, and probably most others cases of DP, too. The doctors are at a loss to explain or treat the patients symptoms so they take a "the patient must be crazy approach". It does make me wonder about the logic skills of the medical profession as a whole. How can lesions in thousands of people, all complaining of the same symptoms, all with strange fibers growing out of their bodies, possibly attributed to delusion?

I have medical text books from the early 1900s and medical textbooks from recent times and there is very little overlap. Most of the diseases we have identified today did not have names or diagnostic criteria in the early 1900s. What are the odds that there will be many more diseases and infections in medical texts of a hundred years from now? Are all of the people who have disorders that are not in the current medical texts being diagnosed today as delusional? I worry that might be true. In the old medical books many disorders were attributed to "female hysteria"--conditons that would more likely be diagnosed as epilepsy today.

Link Between Multivitamins and Asthma

Recent research show a link between infant multivitamin use and asthma.

Researchers do not understand the reason for the link, but I have some thoughts....Mutlivitamins generally don't have any appreciable magnesium because it requires too much space to fit inside the pill or tablet. So they just leave the magnesium out. Yet this leaves the multivitamins with little or no magnesium, yet chalk-full of magnesium antagonists like iron and B vitamins. Since asthma in many people has been linked to a magnesium deficiency, this study makes a lot of sense to me. I stopped giving my kids multivitamins years ago when they were having health issues associated with magensium deficiency and other readers of my CTDS site have reported similar issues with their children.

Click here for more information on magnesium deficiency and asthma.

Failings of Modern Medicine

Click here to read Death by Medicine

An interesting and well referenced article on the failings of modern health care in the U.S. and the conflicts of interest in health resarch. Written by By Gary Null, PhD; Carolyn Dean MD, ND; Martin Feldman, MD; Debora Rasio, MD; and Dorothy Smith, PhD.

Do you think you are safe and in good hands when you enter a hospital these days? If so, this article may change your mind by citing the number of deaths and injuries caused by "modern" medical care.

Benefits of Honey

I think it pays to be skeptical of what a lot of nutrition authors write about, especially when they don't have any studies to back up their claims. In many of my health books the authors warn people to avoid both honey and sugar and claim that neither one has any health benefits. Recent research shows this may not be true. Study subject who ate honey everyday were found to have higher levels of antioxidants.

Honey may have sweet health benefits

In folk and traditional medicine, honey is often used as a tonic and antibiotic.

Mad Cow Disease: There are other things to worry about

Some food for thought about health issue and real versus perceived risks -

I've been reading a lot about the risks of mad cow disease lately, and it seems like it is more of a media event that a true risk. How many people have actually died from mad cow disease compared to the number of people who have died from smoking? Oddly, there are bans on beef imports from countries where mad cow disease has been found, yet have these same countries banned the importation of cigarettes?

The media distorts the real risks of many condition by over publicizing relatively rare events and under publicizing common event that are so common they are not newsworthy.

Medical Errors Can Be Deadly

The Food and Drug Administration today proposed a new format for prescription drug labeling that will help reduce medical errors, which according to the National Academy of Sciences may be responsible for as many as 98,000 U.S. deaths annually.

98,000 deaths a year from medical errors - that statistic sure makes a statement. I think it pays to be cautious whenever one receives medical care. I've gotten vastly different opinions just by seeing differnt doctors for the same medical condition.

Voltaire Quote on Medicine

Another cute quote I came across recently:

Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little to cure diseases of which they know less, in human beings of which they know nothing.
Voltaire

Okay, so it's not a totally fair quote. There are a lot of great doctors out there. I'm happy with the doctors we have right now. But we had to go through a lot of old school doctors like the ones described above before we found a few good ones. Everyday I get letters to my CTDS site from people who go to doctor after doctor getting prescriptions that seem to cause more problems then they cure.

Welcome to My Alternative Health Blog

Hello and Welcome to My Blog!

Please visit my main web site at The Connective Tissue Disorder Site

Here are some of my favorite quotes about health -

When diet is wrong medicine is of no use.
When diet is correct medicine is of no need.
Ancient Ayurvedic Proverb

He that takes medicine and neglects diet, wastes the skill of the physician.
Chinese Proverb

Those who do not find time for exercise will have to find time for illness.
Earl of Derby

The treatment is really a cooperative of a trinity--the patient, the doctor and the inner doctor.
Ralph Bircher

We chat together; he gives me prescriptions; I never follow them so I get well. - Molière

Medicine is a collection of uncertain prescriptions, the results of which taken collectively, are more fatal than useful to mankind. Water, air and cleanliness are the chief articles in my pharmacopeia. - Napoleon Bonaparte