And the Hype Goes On

This morning’s headline yells “19 Children Dead from H1N1 Virus!” and I admit it raises some fear even in my mind but I have to take a deep breath and remember a few vital details.

First, it is true that more people are adversely affected by the flu vaccination than by the flu itself. According to an article by a Bill Sardi on Lew Rockwell.com “in 1993 the federal government hid a deadly flu vaccine that killed thousands of nursing home patients.” “The vaccine related mortality was so large that this set back the life expectancy of Americans for the first time since the 1918 Spanish flu!” This article, which is a must read, also points out that the vaccine administrated to children at the moment is a nasal spray of live virus. These children then go home and spread live virus amongst their family members and Bob’s your uncle, everyone has the flu. I’ll be damned.

Secondly, not one media source that I have listened to (and I admit I turn it off as soon as they start the vaccine hype) discusses what one can do to build up your immune system and thus avoid the flu. It is known that Vitamin D3 is very effective and I can tell you there is nothing easier to swallow than a D3 capsule or it even comes in a peppermint wafer that can be chewed. I personally meditate for 10 minutes every other day in front of my Sunsplash Renew Vitamin D lamps thus exposing my body to the benefit of Vitamin D producing rays.

If you don’t have the advantage of living near the equator or of possesssing a Sunsplash Renew Vitamin D lamp you need to take Vitamin D3. Generally the recommended amount of Vitamin D is 400 iu but this is simply inadequate to fight disease and increase your immunity to the flu and you should actually take 35 IU’s of Vitamin D3 per pound of body weight. That is for a child weighing 40 pounds about 1400 IU’s of Vitamin D3 and for an average adult male weighing 170 pounds the dose would be 6000 IU’s. When you expose your skin to summer sun 20,000 IU’s of Vitamin D are produced and there is no danger of overdose as your body can easily assimilate the unnecessary Vitamin D and or get rid of it. When taken in prescription form it is often Vitamin D2 which is much less effective and thus given in large doses in the range of 30,000 IU’s and 50,000 IU’s. In these cases the person has extremely low levels of Vitamin D3 and to prevent illness must get their levels up to at least 40 ng/ml. In any case, you need to have your Vitamin D levels checked with a simple blood test and then you want your levels to be between 50ng/ml and 65 ng/ml. If you are fighting cancer or a debilitating disease your levels should be closer to 90ng/ml.

Vitamin C is known to be very effective in building up your immune system. Vitamin C can be taken in large doses (to bowel tolerance) as what you don’t need will be removed in your urine. I know the joke about “all it does is produce expensive urine” but we know it helps you fight disease and if some is excreted so be it. I take 2500 mg of Quali-C every morning but it is a heart formula that also has L-lysine and L-proline. The Vitamin C Foundation sells a very high quality Vitamin C that is not sourced from corn and is made in the USA.

Selenium, is a trace mineral that if taken can  prevent the worst forms of H1N1 where the lungs fill up with fluid and you literally drown in your own fluid. Selenium can be found in nuts such as Brazil nuts but can also be taken in supplemental form. You want to closely monitor how much Selenium you take in any given day as it can have adverse effects if taken in excess of 250mg.

Lastly, when they scream “19 children have died” you must ask at least two other questions. “Were these children in any way compromised?” and “Were all these children from one state or from across the United States?” The favorite statement to make now is “and there were no underlying health problems”. Perhaps the child didn’t have asthma, or cancer or diabetes all of which could weaken their immune system but one they never like to talk about is that children fed a diet high in sugar, trans fats and simple carbohydrates (like Wonder Bread) have weakened immune systems and are unable to fight off simple illness much less H1N1 viruses. Perhaps they should inquire about the child’s diet to be totally accurate when reporting “no underlying causes”. Not to mention asking if they had been given Tamiflu and/or the H1N1 vaccine.

While I hate the thought of children dying  just like anyone else does the facts are children die. Children do die of side effects of the flu. 19 children isn’t even one per state and that is a death rate that is not considered abnormal or alarming and definitely not of pandemic proportions. When the media go on and on about such mundane statistics they are simply attempting to create a panic and they are most certainly pandering to the federal government because it is known that our government has invested billions of dollars in developing a vaccine and they don’t want those dollars wasted.

I think it is undoubtedly time to turn off the hype. If you want to be informed read your news, read it online, read it in the newspapers and magazines. Then open a dialogue with intelligent well informed people and discuss the pros and cons of vaccination. We do not become informed citizens by listening to McNews and falling prey to their hype. All you really have to do is keep a running tally of the commercials run during the morning and evening news and you will know precisely who has paid for the hype you just heard and then you can dismiss in its entirety.

“Pre-Conception Healthcare”

If you are thinking about getting pregnant having a complete blood panel done BEFORE you get pregnant may be the best thing you can do to assure a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby. In fact, many holistic physicians feel a complete physical should be required before you become pregnant as well as testing for metal toxicity, molds, electromagnetic fields and STD testing.

Let’s start with the most important test first. You should have your Thyroid tested. This does not mean getting just a TSH reading this means getting a complete thyroid panel including Free T3 and Free T4. Hypothyroidism in an expectant mother can lead to miscarriage of the fetus, a lower IQ of the child as they grow and potentially Down’s Syndrome.

Correcting your hypothyroid condition may be as simple as correcting underfunctioning adrenal glands (can be checked with a saliva hormone test) as according to Joe Mercola it is often the cause of an under functioning thyroid gland. If adrenal health is adequate but your T3 and T4 are not normal or your TSH is higher than a reading of 2 (normal is between 1 and 2)then you may need to take Dessicated Thyroid (Armour, Nature-Throid, Westhroid) but under most circumstances do not fall for the advice to take synthetic T4 only (Synthroid, or the generic Levothyroxine) as it has been my experience that that is a slippery slope to taking more and more thyroid medication with no possibility of resolution or improvement.

Next have your Vitamin D3 (25 OH(D)) levels tested. You should have a level near or exceeding 50 ng/ml to stay healthy and provide an environment that is healthy for the fetus to develop in. It is thought in certain circles that low Vitamin D3 levels in the mother could lead to autism in the baby and this would not be noticed until the child is nearing their third birthday.

If your levels are low it may be prescribed by your physician that you take doses up to 50,000 mg until your levels are 50 ng/ml or above. These are hefty doses and are generally only taken over a few months, a week at a time until your levels are normal. If your levels are low do not attempt to get pregnant until your levels are at least 50 ng/ml and do not take these high doses without a physician monitoring your D levels.

Toxins are a very real threat to the health of your unborn child Mercury being chief among these toxins that can harm your fetus.  There are tests for heavy metal toxicity and if you have amalgam fillings you should have these safely removed and replaced before considering pregnancy.

Should tests for metal toxicity show that you have toxic levels you need to know the metals that you have accumulated and then follow detoxification protocol including removal of silver fillings. Taking chlorella, drinking Cilantro tea or taking Cilantro tincture is an easy thing to do and will cause your body to get rid of the heavy metals. Far Infrared Sauna will also aid the detoxification process and allows the toxins to exit via your skin instead of poisoning your already challenged liver.

Dr. Deitrich Klinghardt recommends an Electro-magnetic field test before getting pregnant. This means testing the areas where you sleep and work for EM fields and protecting yourself from the affects of EMFs. He recommends turning the fuses off to the electricity in your bedroom at night, he will not allow cordless phones in the homes of his patients planning on becoming pregnant and feels strongly that exposing the unborn fetus to undue EMF stress is a huge contributor to behavioral problems in children not to mention cancers and other devastating problems. He does recommend a netting that can be put around your bed much like a mosquito netting that will stop the onslaught of EMF waves which sounds exotic to me but I can see the benefit since I have a “techy” husband who will not turn off the cell phones at night and leaves them by his side at all times not to mention the cordless phones that dot our countertops throughout the house.

It all sounds terribly difficult but it is not impossible and going in to your pregnancy with a healthy body could and will save you years and years of problems or perhaps better said, challenges with your as of now unborn, hopefully unconceived child. You really must dare to conceive the inconceivable.

Boning Up on the Facts

I hope my friend Carla won’t mind if I take a cue from her for today’s blog but she was pondering osteoporosis and its affects on her aging mother. I have osteopenia which means when I had my Dexa scan done there was some thinning of my bone but not enough for my functional medicine doctor to concern himself with. To quote him ” it is a normal thinning of bone”. My mother had osteoporosis and this was evidenced by the change in her general height. That said, she really never did break a bone until she was 90, and she fell more than any other person I know. When she did tumble from her walker at the nursing home she fell right on her left elbow and it did break. It was surgically corrected, and once they took the darned pin out it healed and she acted like she had never had a break. Mother started taking one of the Pharma drugs in her 80’s and it may have helped but it also may have contributed to some wasting in her jaw bone that caused her to lose some teeth. I guess we will never know and that is what the Pharma world counts on. I am left pondering my mother’s osteoporosis thanks to Carla and here are my ruminations.

I believe that my osteopenia and my mother’s osteoporosis were primarily caused by undiagnosed Celiac’s disease. We were a family of bread eaters and cereals, you name it there wasn’t a grain that wasn’t eaten at our house all in the name of healthy eating. Mother had the ability to clear her colon in seconds as her doctor told her “with any kind of stress”. I think we would now call that IBS and mother had it her entire life but not one person thought to alter her diet. I think of all the nutrients she didn’t absorb and I am no longer in wonder at her osteoporosis or for that matter her dementia. I have blamed my similar issues on anything and everything, that is until I started reading and then took to heart everything that Joe Mercola and others were putting out there about grain consumption. Once I eliminated grain from my diet, allowing for the occasional treat, my digestive issues all but disappeared.

Calcium is supposed to build strong bones. Well milk was huge at our house and mother dutifully drank her glass of milk at almost every meal ostensibly “for her bones”. Mother also took her tums. Pasteurized milk is truly useless and that “healthy” drink, skim milk, is just pure sugar and does little more than cause insulin resistance in the individuals who drink it (my father drank gallons of the stuff but ate no sweets and little bread and died with undiagnosed diabetes). In other words, calcium is not the only answer and most of us get plenty of calcium in our diet from various vegetables and if not lactose intolerant from cheese, cottage cheese, etc. What is often is missing is Magnesium to balance the calcium intake and Ionic Fizz and Peter Gilham’s Calm both easily add magnesium to your diet. I love my raw milk kefir and have some most mornings in my smoothie. By the way, there is no pasteurized milk in my house if I can help it but that is a recent revelation (last 10 years) and pasteurized skim milk used to be a constant in our refrigerator and I, too, took Tums regularly.

Mother exercised in her fifties but only then and it was always walking. She worked harder than anyone I know and had more energy than anyone I know but she didn’t actually do weight lifting or any kind of exercise that would cause percussion of the bone and a pulling of muscle on the bones. Lesson learned is exercise your muscles and pound a little on your bones with exercise like running, walking, climbing stairs, etc. T-Tapp actually does it all and also improves your mirror image.

Mom ate a lot of fish especially in her later years as they lived on the shores of Lake Superior but fish is notoriously high in mercury and she was still eating her oatmeal and bread, so whatever goodness she was supposed to get from her fish was washed down the loo. Omega 3 oils are vital to healthy bones and the best kind of fish oil I know of is Vital Choice Salmon Oil. It is a deep orange it is so rich in astaxanthan from krill, has a pure taste and is undistilled and has undetectable levels of mercury.  Omega 6 oils need to be minimized at least in the summer (we may have increased need for some if we live in the northern climes).

Mother judiciously avoided sunshine. She slathered on sunscreen, put a large brimmed hat on her head and covered every inch of her body with thick fabric. In her last years she was seldom exposed to sunshine and when she was she squinted and asked to go back inside. I never had her Vitamin D levels checked but I wish I would have as it is easy to do and is so important. Vitamin D levels should be at least 50-60 ng/ml and even higher if you have any health challenges like cancer or even a virus. My functional medicine doctor ordered the test for me originally but now you can order your own online at the Vitamin D Council site. It is so cool that at my local Healtheast hospital (Woodwinds) you can walk in to the hospital lab and ask for a Vitamin D3 test without doctor’s orders and for $40 find out for yourself. It may be true of a lab near you and it pays to ask. Once you know your D3 levels you may need massive amounts of D3 to get your levels up (up to 50,000 mg temporarily) but you might just need daily exposure to midday sunshine. Sunshine prescription: 15-20 minutes midday sun on as much exposed naked skin as you can decently manage. In the north our sunshine is only effective from May-September unless you live at high altitude so another option is the Sunsplash from Mercola not only will it help your body produce its own Vitamin D all year you will also walk around with a healthy glow.

Lastly, Mom took a daily multiple vitamin but we know now those really aren’t adequate and with her digestive issues it was mostly a waste of her time and money. What she really needed were a host of minerals and vitamins that would have helped her keep her bones strong. Vitamin K2 is vital, selenium, boron, copper, zinc and B12 (a vitamin many of us have unhealthily low levels of) are all necessary to build and keep bone strong. Recently, I found quite by accident a product developed by Jonathon Wright called ProBone-O by Life Enhancement. It has no fillers or magnesium stearate and is easy to use as you just drop it in the vestibule of your mouth, let it sit 20 seconds and then swallow, even the digestively challenged will absorb the nutrients.

I can’t change things for my mom as she died in March at the age of 91 but maybe my ruminations can help you or someone you love. All of the experts I mention have numerous articles about bone health on their websites and they have all proven to be quite reliable. It really is up to you to bone up on your health.

Swine Flu;Benign Flu

Yes, the media is taking the Swine Flu by the tail and beating it to death but you can hardly blame them. If your entire livelihood depended on all the news you could generate in a 24 hour period, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year you, too, would ride this little piggy to market with the same gusto.

There is now quite a bit of speculation that this flu bug was born in a laboratory somewhere and that seems about right. The suspicious part of me thinks that someone in the media or government isn’t above unleashing something like this to create news and deflect concern on to things other than the economy and the war in Afghanistan (oh and now Pakistan). Suspicion aside apparently H1N1 is showing many different characteristics that relate it not to just swine, but bird and human so man MAY have created it and now man MAY have spread it.

What to do, what to do? First panic, no just kidding. First wash your hands thoroughly whenever you have been out and about. I use Tropical Traditions liquid soap in a foamer bottle and then grab my scrub brush to clean under nails and in the cuticle. If you are a songbird like me singing the ABC song is sufficient time to completely clean your hands and make yourself smile while you are at it. Washing hands at least 10 times a day is recommended and then keep your fingers and hands away from your face.

Secondly, get your sleep. 7-9 hours a night is the recommended amount and you should wake feeling fully rested and ready to take on whatever your day presents to you. I think if your night is interrupted a power nap during the day never hurt anyone after all Churchill took a 2 hour nap every day and look at the greatness of that man.

I personally ordered Baseline Nutritionals Viragon just now. It is a tincture full of antiviral compounds including garlic, ginger, onion, horseradish, olive leaf extract, liquid ionic zinc, oil of wild mountain oregano, grapefruit seed and habanero. It doesn’t taste “purty” but that compound should wipe out any virus that even tries to enter my immune system. At my house we are drinking raw milk kefir mixed with wild raw honey to keep our gut healthy and spending 15-20 minutes in the late morning sunshine to keep our Vitamin D3 levels optimum.

It goes without saying, that if either of us starts feeling “under the weather”, if we develop a streaming nasal issue, if our muscles ache or we develop some unusual gastro-intestinal problems we will stay home and keep our problems limited to the walls of our domain. Personally if I had just returned from Mexico I might see it as prudent to isolate my family for 24 hours until I know we all just feel great from those sun soaked hours on holiday.

What we will not do is take Tamiflu in any way shape or form. We will not panic and get a flu shot.. There are reports (none substantiated) that many of the people who died in Mexico had been given a flu vaccine in a vain attempt by their government to stem the spread of the virus. The only thing that vaccine did was weaken their already compromised immune systems and those poor slobs were unable to fight anything much less “swine flu”. I think I can also say we will not be travelling outside the USA until this apparent pandemic is squelched. I do not relish the possibility of being held in a quaratine room with other vaccinated or “Tamiflued” victims. I want to fight H1N1 my way and be assured that I will win.

Vital Choice Salmon Rocks

I wanted to shout out to everyone who checks this blog about my latest find. I have been looking for a good fish oil with no flavor and not in a gelatin capsule (gelatin always contains MSG) and I found one at last at Vital Choice. Or perhaps I should say I found it some time ago but it was out-of-stock.

This fish oil is almost red in color it is so rich in astaxanthan from the krill they eat on a daily basis and it contains natural Vitamin D, A and the necessary Omega 3’s. Wild Alaska Salmon are among the purest of all ocean fish, so the oil is free from hazardous levels of contaminants.

I actually don’t know why I want anyone else to know because they will sell out again and I won’t have a source of this perfect fish oil but I just can’t contain my excitement and had to share it.

Selenium and your Thyroid

Just a brief note regarding Autoimmune Thyroiditis. I was reading “Reducing Thyroid Antibody Titers” this morning on a site at http://www.suite101.com and came upon the following valuable information:

Selenium is deficient in both autoimmune hypothyroidism and hyperthyroidism. Magnesium is deficient in hyperthyroidism and contributes to arrhythmia’s.  Copper is deficient in autoimmune hyperthyroidism. Zinc is decreased in autoimmune hypothyroidism. Calcium can be deficient in both hypothyroidism and hyperthyroidism. Essential fatty acids and oil soluble nutrients such as Vitamin D are deficient in many autoimmune conditions, including thyroid disorders.

I find the Selenium deficiency very interesting because Selenium is crucial in helping the body naturally detoxify all the chemicals and hormones we unnaturally put in it and expose it to. If you have any thyroid disorder it might behoove you to ask your physician about Selenium. If said physician says they know nothing about this deficiency refer them to this article. It is recommended that you include 200 mcg of Selenium a day in the form of Selenomethionine, as that was found to be the most effective in reducing thyroid peroxidase antibodies (TPO). One should not exceed 400 mcg of total Selenium as it can be toxic.

It never hurts to assist your bodies natural detoxification process and Selenium is an essential trace element you shouldn’t be without.