Ki Center Blog

I am not one for conspiracy theories. But if it walks like a duck and sounds like a duck then it must be a duck. Anyone who has followed my column for any length of time is familiar with my views on drugs and vaccines. They can be appropriate but honestly, I believe they do more harm than good.

Government out of Control

Most recently, the CDC has released the 2007-2008 recommended immunization schedules for adults. The schedule includes 11 different types of vaccines including tetanus, HPV, measles mumps and rubella, influenza and herpes zoster (shingles). When you consider the amount of toxic chemicals in these vaccines, it is no wonder that our society is experiencing a dramatic increase in auto-immune types of diseases.

If that is not enough, legislation is being introduced to force parents to immunize their children with a toxic cocktail of drugs during their most formative years. There are documented instances where a parent not choosing to immunize their child has had them taken away and made a ward of the state. Since when have we as a nation given up our right to choose what is best for ourselves and our children?

The HPV immunization for young girls is a perfect example of this type of government control. It (the vaccine) has only been on the market since 2006, with a small percentage of women being immunized. Of those women, 82 serious side effects have already been reported. That of course is only what is reported; many problems do not get reported. This drug is far too new and untested to evaluate the potential for harm over the long term. Frankly it scares me to death that it may be mandatory at some point.

I have had clients that couldn't have their kids in school unless they were medicated for ADD/ADHD. How many stories are out there of adverse side effects for these types of psychiatric drugs? I see more and more physicians, as well as specialists in the field of psychiatry, rallying against the use of powerful drugs for unwarranted conditions. But when you get the pharmaceutical industry, along with their powerful lobbyists and combined support from the insurance industry, you have a recipe for profound abuse of these chemicals.

Any diagnoses of mental conditions carry an insurance code based on a recognized malady. This will qualify the patient to receive re-imbursement from their insurance company, receive a label for their condition, and most likely a drug of some sort to hopefully correct the problem. As an example, here are a few of the new insurance recognized maladies that will be covered by your insurance, along with drug therapy---Mathematics disorder, caffeine disorder, disorder of written expression, telephone scatialogia (I don't even want to know), and malingering! It's no wonder we are nation on Prozac.

The industry is even working on a vaccine for cavities! The CDC has actually defined dental carries (cavities) as an infectious, communicable disease. This is beyond ridiculous! There are many cultures in the world that have no tooth decay whatsoever. And it is a result of eating indigenous foods appropriate for their nutritional type, not processed food and sugar.

In my opinion, and I am in good company on this, nutritional deficiencies are the main cause of most of our disease and illness problems. When you combine a diet devoid of any nutrition from processed foods, toxic chemicals from our environment, an over abundance of toxic drugs and immunizations, what do you expect your body to do? It will revolt and do it's best to get your attention to correct it.

Distorting the facts

We are in the flu shot season now. I have stated before I will not participate in this debacle as there are no statistics to prove efficacy of this drug. What you have heard from the CDC is that in 2005 there were approximately 36,000 people who died of the flu. This is a gross distortion of the facts. There were only 1806 people who died of the flu in that year. The statistics that the CDC sites here is that anyone dying of pneumonia can be classified as having the flu, so when their numbers came out, and rest assured the pharmaceutical industry will grab a hold of this for marketing purposes, it looks as though the flu is a scary problem bordering on an epidemic.

If you are healthy and you have a strong immune system, your body has an amazing capacity to fight off many of the problems we face today. But a continual diet of processed foods, drugs for every little symptom, and subscribing to the fear- based marketing programs that big business throws at us, we will continue on our downward spiral as one of the sickest nations on earth.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could have a lie detector attached to all advertising and marketing programs? How often do we see a new product come out only to find out within a short time that the information was biased or embellished or just flat wrong? Buyer beware has been an old metaphor for quite some time, but when it comes to the really important things—like your health, consumers shouldn’t have to second guess the safety of these products.

If you watch the news you probably are aware that the drug Avandia, a potent diabetes drug, has been recently called into question as to its safety. In fact, Avandia and several other diabetes drugs are now on the hot seat for their contribution to heart attack and stroke–the very thing the drug makers say will be prevented by taking their drugs. It’s interesting to note that Avandia has made billions in profit over the time it has been on the market. There have also been over ten thousand law suits levied against its maker Glaxo, who is now reportedly paying 460 million dollars to settle these suits. It turns out that Glaxo failed to give the FDA a study that showed that Avandia may cause heart attacks.

The same could be said for reports and studies on nutritional supplements. A lot of money has been poured into the supplement industry, both in marketing and testing for effectiveness against illness and injury. Depending on the agency that is doing the testing, and their reason for the study, you can get a wide variety of results. It can be frustrating to hear that vitamin E shows promise in supporting muscle and nerve pain one week from one study, and then the next week you hear from another study that vitamin E hasn’t improved health in the test group. Again, it depends on the agency doing the study and the motivation behind the information. Additionally, these studies never use whole food organic products in their testing. Synthetic, chemically produced supplements are the standard for these studies, and speaking from over ten years of experience, the results will never be as accurate unless true whole food phytonutrients are used.

Too many short cuts, both in manufacturing and testing plague big pharmaceutical companies. Profit is the Holy Grail for these folks instead of real health care, and we are paying the price in dollars and declining health.

Supplements and drugs aside, what about your trip to the grocery store? Organic, certified organic or all natural products are out there but what does that actually mean? Organic should mean that the product was manufactured without chemical processing. That the growing of the food was done without chemical fertilizers, the soil has been tested and is complete in its mineral and nutrient balance. Hand weeding, hand picking—the works. If you go the local farmers market, you would assume that these foods have been produced in an organic fashion, right? Not always the case though. If a company says that their product is “certified organic” that means that for several years, and with government oversight, that the farmers’ soil and end product have been extensively and consistently tested for “organic” growing practices over time. Once this has been done, then, the company can call their product “certified organic”.

What about the phrase “All Natural”? How does that play into our choices of food or products? My understanding is that if a company uses anything from a “natural” source, no matter how much or how little, they can, by definition say that their product contains all natural products. I feel that this is an embellishment on the truth and misleading. A good example of this is vitamin C with rose hips. Go to any store and find a bottle of all natural vitamin C with rose hips and look at the label. You will see a thousand to two thousand milligrams of Ascorbic Acid and a smattering of rose hips for marketing hyperbole. But they get to call it “all natural” because of the labeling laws from the FDA.

My best advice is this: If you need an encyclopedia to read a label, chances are you are buying chemicals and highly processed non-foods. The first ingredient on a label is usually the most prevalent. Become ardent readers of labels and know what you are buying. If you want real food, with real nutrients that work to advance your health, buy organic, certified organic or even grow your own if you can. And as far as supplementation goes, most are synthetic chemical fractions and a waste of money. True organically grown, nutritionally dense supplementation containing all of the phytonutrients found in nature is available.