Flu Shot? or not?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(RobH @ Nov 10 2007, 11:23 PM) [snapback]537928[/snapback]</div>

"Traditional" (what we now call "alternative") medicine was in place when the Black death wiped out a third of the population of Europe; when tuberculosis was a major and frequent killer of people in their 20's; when a cold was likely to turn to pneumonia and pneumonia was often fatal; when a minor physical injury could easily turn to an infection that required amputation or else it would kill you; when childbirth was a major killer of young women; when infant mortality was so high that you were well-advised not to become too attached to a child during its first year.

The "dominant" medical system (modern mainstream medicine) has eliminated smallpox in the wild; has turned most bacterial infections from life-threatening to trivial; has eliminated or nearly eliminated from the industrialized world most of the things that used to kill most people and doubled our expected lifespan; has provided hormone replacements for conditions that were fatal until recently; and has taught us the importance of washing our hands.

Both the above lists could go on just about forever.

It looks to me as though mainstream medicine has worked marvels, while traditional medicine was a total flop.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Nov 12 2007, 05:48 PM) [snapback]538646[/snapback]</div>

Where'd I leave my leeches?

Prediction: 1. No response to Daniel's post. 2. Discussion takes a new "alternative" tack.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Nov 12 2007, 06:48 PM) [snapback]538646[/snapback]</div>

Thank you for giving a reasoned response.

I don't advocate a return to lesser knowledge. My biggest problem with the modern practice of medicine is the glacial rate at which new knowledge is incorporated into practice. The next biggest problem is the blinders that many medical people use.

The vaccination crowd has taken far more credit for our health than they disserve. Modern sanitation and clean water deserve a lot more credit.

The modern treatment of cancer is a disaster. The statistical manipulations would make you think there is progress. The recent reduction in breast cancer is probably due to the recent rejection of dehydrated horse piss therapy (excuse me, the modern name for that is Premarin). Back in the late 80's Dr. John Lee was talking about how wrong traditional HRT was. Here we are 20 years later and it turns out that he was right. But he didn't just dream it up, he learned about the problems from Dr. Ray Peat, a biochemist. Dr. Peat had done a literature search, documented it, and Dr. Lee checked it out. I don't know when the original research was done, but it was clearly more than 20 years before HRT hit the fan.

As an example of medical blinders, I went to a talk by a fellow who had been given a six-month death sentence for an unusual type of cancer. Since the doctor offered no hope, this fellow started his own search for a treatment. He found a macrobiotic healer, and followed the dietary advice of that healer. As you would expect me to say, he got well. He had survived 7 years beyond his death sentence, and appeared to be in excellent health. But this is not an endorsement of macrobiotics. The guy went back to see his doctor some time after he healed. The doctor said that he looked great, but had absolutely no interest in how this dying patient had been cured. A scientifically oriented doctor would have peppered him with questions about how his recovery had happened. Instead he acted like a Ford salesman talking to someone who had just purchased a Chevrolet.

If 5-minute cookbook medicine always worked, then it might be more acceptable. But many medical problems are far more complex. I like to see a variety of opinions and experience with medical situations. I'd like to know the track record of a particular treatment, and not just the amount of money that went into promotion.

Here's a cartoon about big pharma's ultimate goal: http://www.newstarget.com/022086.html

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(RobH @ Nov 13 2007, 12:33 AM) [snapback]538788[/snapback]</div>

Did you have any independent knowledge that the man ever actually had cancer? Sadly, there are people who, for reasons of their own, will make false claims, from miracle cures to faith healing to alien abduction.

Mainstream medicine is far from perfect. But as Churchill said of democracy, all the alternatives are worse. There are things I've learned not to go to the doctor for because s/he cannot help me. All these minor over-use injuries from jogging; they'll just tell me to rest. And the aches and pains of growing older are incurable and unavoidable.

For every person who claims (and I stress the word claims) to have been cured by "alternative" medicine of something "incurable," there are thousands who have actually been cured by mainstream medicine. I'd have died in my 30's of hyperthyroid were it not for radioactive iodine treatment and levothyroxin. Probably 25% of us would have died of tuberculosis in our 20's, and how many would have been killed or paralyzed by polio or killed or disfigured by smallpox?. I tried all the "alternative" herbal remedies for benign prostatic hyperplasia (sp?) before submitting to surgery 4 years ago, without which I'd have died from being unable to pee. And while the atrial fibrillation which was cured by surgery by an electrocardiologist probably would not have killed me yet, it was making life pretty miserable. So in my case, the score is mainstream medicine: 3; alternative medicine zero. And that does not count the illnesses I might have gotten were it not for vaccination.

And it has been many years since my (mainstream) doctors have begun advocating the holistic approach of exercise and good diet.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Nov 13 2007, 10:04 AM) [snapback]538925[/snapback]</div>

While I believe the man was telling the truth, the macrobiotic treatment was not my main point. The main point was that the doctor didn't care about the successful treatment where he had failed. Perhaps the diagnosis was incorrect. Does that make the doctor look any better?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Nov 13 2007, 10:04 AM) [snapback]538925[/snapback]</div>

All medicine is far from perfect. That's why I prefer to exhaust all safe treatments before trying risky ones. Pharmaceuticals and surgery may be necessary, but they are hardly the best first choice for chronic conditions.

I disagree that there is nothing that can be done for growing older. The medical specialty of anti-aging medicine is targeted at reducing the damage and loss of function typically attributed to age. Why does there have to be a separate specialty for something that belongs in the province of the general practitioner?

My anti-aging doctor spent about 10 years in emergency medicine. I think he burned out of treating end stage effects of preventable conditions. One of his pet peeves is the obsession with cholesterol control. He says that more than half of the people wheeled into the ER with heart attacks have perfectly normal cholesterol. The problem is systemic inflammation, best measured with the C-reactive protein test. Not simple cholesterol numbers (although he's happy to order a VAP test for sophisticated blood lipid testing).

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Nov 13 2007, 10:04 AM) [snapback]538925[/snapback]</div>

You go with what you know and have available at the time. These days I'd look into carnitine supplementation before using anything radioactive. And good old Armour Thyroid is a lot smoother than lovothyroxin.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Nov 13 2007, 10:04 AM) [snapback]538925[/snapback]</div>

Polio has been cured with high dose vitamin C. This is not alternative medicine, but what I'd call ignored mainstream medicine. See http://www.megac.org/klenner.htm for a description of Dr. Frederick Klenner's experience with such usage. The main page at http://www.megac.org is an excellent starting point for the scientific data on the medical use of vitamin C.

Vitamin C is terribly underutilized by most of the medical profession. I think it goes back to the politics of Linus Pauling. He advocated peace, and that is obviously unpatriotic. Quite what this has to do with biochemistry, I don't know. But it certainly had a major impact on the acceptability of vitamin therapy.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Nov 13 2007, 10:04 AM) [snapback]538925[/snapback]</div>

Again, you go with what you know and have available. These days I would recommend seeing an andrologist (an endocrinologist who specializes in male hormone modulation). Prostatic hyperplasia is probably due to estrogen dominance, the same condition that causes so much trouble in menopausal women. It can be controlled with Arimidex, progesterone, and probably some extra testosterone. AstraZeneca is really missing out by not getting on-label qualification of Arimidex for use by men. Maybe in another 20 years.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Nov 13 2007, 10:04 AM) [snapback]538925[/snapback]</div>

A friend of mine has had 3 electro-shock treatments over the past 6 years. For him, the treatment only works for about 2 years. I worry about how many more zaps he can take. Supplemental magnesium can go a long way toward managing heart arrhythmia. Dr. Russell Blaylock has a lot to say about the value of magnesium. Web reference is http://www.russellblaylockmd.com

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Nov 13 2007, 10:04 AM) [snapback]538925[/snapback]</div>

I wish there were not the division between mainstream and alternative medicine. I would rather there was just good medicine. But instead there is competitive medicine, with the end consumer severely restricted in choices and information about the options. The fact that most medical news is on the business pages says more about our system than anything else. People's sickness is more of a business opportunity than a calling.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Nov 13 2007, 10:04 AM) [snapback]538925[/snapback]</div>

This is a good start, but hardly as far as would provide good health. It's one thing to say "good diet", and quite another to describe what that diet is. The typical "skin the chicken" diet is essentially worthless as a health tactic. Diets such as the whole food vegetarian diets of Dr. Dean Ornish, Dr. John McDougall, and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn have proven therapeutic value. The CRON diet (calorie restricted with optimum nutrition) is accepted as prolonging the lifespan of many lab animals. There are a number of people who believe that it will extend their own lives. Organic grass feed beef may be a superior replacement for cold water fish (no mercury problem!). Raw food advocates are worth listening to. I've met and talked with a number of people who've gotten well from really horrendous problems with the macrobiotic approach.

You can hardly call me anti-doctor. Most of what I know about medicine came directly from doctors and medical researchers. There are only so many hours in a day, and the quantity of information that a doctor needs to know exceeds human capacity. That said, despite what the insurance industry would have you believe, doctors are not interchangable objects that come in about 10 flavors. There are innovative doctors who know a lot more than many of their peers. And there are others who would be better replaced with a self-service computer program. Hospital administrators, state medical review boards, insurance companies, the FDA, etc. all demand standard treatments for standard problems. Innovation and incompetence are viewed as equivalent.

The FDA actively prohibits the spread of knowledge about nutritional medicine. If vendors of supplements can't describe what their products are used for, then who is going to spread the knowledge? Freedom of speech does not exist for the vendors of supplements, no matter what the constitution says. Americans wishing to exercise their freedom of medical choice have to leave the country for anything not on the official "approved" list. I find it really telling that the Gerson medical center is located in Mexico. A major aspect of their cancer therapy is the use of organic vegetables, which they import from the US. They operate in Mexico for the freedom of choice, but don't trust the purity of Mexican food.

 

Rob, i agree with you on many points. i think we truly ARE what we eat and it probably causes far more ailments than most are willing to attribute to our diet. nutrition was the very earliest stage in the field of biochemistry, and i've come to appreciate it more. however, it can't solve everything. certain types of virus, genetic defects, irreparable injuries, etc all require more than boosting one's immune system or supplementing to allow the body to heal itself.

i also, believe it or not, prefer to avoid the use of drugs that i could find an alternative for. but in a couple of cases, there are simply no ways around me having to take some meds.

i can also testify, through DH's major back pain experience, that there are a lot of doctors who don't give half a damn about thinking outside the box. fortunately, we have eliminated those types from our lives, but they have cost us many thousands of dollars and hardship. not to mention nearly broken spirits toward the end there.

i won't even get started on the "nutraceutical" industry. since when do corporations get free speech? there's a certain liability they have for their products, they can't say whatever they please. they have to be held to certain standards unlike us individuals, who can go spouting off however we like.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(RobH @ Nov 15 2007, 12:57 AM) [snapback]539883[/snapback]</div>

While we are agreed that mainstream medicine needs to be aware of and utilize "alternative" approaches when they work, the fact is that such approaches are researched, and when they do work they become part of the mainstream approach.

I disagree with every one of your claims for how vitamins and herbs have cured all those conditions. Vitamin C instead of polio vaccination??? This is crazy!!! Benign Prostatic hyperplasia caused by hormone imbalance??? I sure doubt it when EVERY man who lives long enough will have it.

As for my heart operation, I apologize for giving insufficient information. I did not have shock therapy to stop my atrial fibrillation. I had sporadic a-fib which started and stopped when it felt like it. There were some identifiable triggers, but sometimes it began without apparent cause. I had a pulmonary vein ablation operation.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(efusco @ Nov 15 2007, 09:27 PM) [snapback]540326[/snapback]</div>

my favorite counter argument to that one is "oh it's natural? so is poison ivy."

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Nov 15 2007, 06:55 PM) [snapback]540314[/snapback]</div>

I didn't say that vitamin C prevented polio. I said that it cured it. This is documented by Klenner in his 1949 paper. The polio vaccines did not exist when he was faced with a number of cases of polio, and he succeeded in curing them with what would be regarded as massive doses of C.

The references I gave above should include a pointer to the Klenner paper. If you want to read it and can't find it, let me know and I'll try to locate the exact web address.

The age of antibiotics is well on its way to extinction, just as is the age of oil. It's not going to be pretty. New genetic and protein therapies are hopeful, but why not utilize the proven effects of high dose vitamin C (actually, the more correct term is ascorbate)? Ascorbate is anti-viral, and does not have to be customized for a particular virus. The primary limitation is the ability to reach high enough levels in the parts of the body where the virus is active. Oral administration is quite limited in the levels that can be achieved. Injection (ouch!) or intravenous administration is required for treating dangerous viral infections.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Nov 15 2007, 06:55 PM) [snapback]540314[/snapback]</div>

The general public knows two things about male hormones. Teenagers have raging hormones, and sports figures use them to cheat. There is considerably more information available. Both men and women have mixtures of the same hormones. Women make a large amount of testosterone, but then immediately convert most of it to estrogen. Men make a similar amount of testosterone, but convert a much smaller amount of it to estrogen. As men age, the balance between testosterone and estrogen shifts toward too much estrogen. Estrogen promotes growth of hormone sensitive tissues, such as the uterus, the prostate, and breast. When the prostate is forced to grow too much by excess estrogen, you eventually get hyperplasia. One solution is to carve out the excess tissue. Another is to keep the estrogen in check so that the excess growth never occurs. Arimidex seems to me like an excellent tool to do exactly that. Less testosterone converted to estrogen means more testosterone (good for vitality), and less estrogen (less feminization of males). There are natural materials such as chrysin that perform the same function, but are much weaker in effect.

 

vitamin c is not proven as a *general* antiviral. for some cases, in high doses it starts to show a trend toward decreasing viral load in HIV, or so i've seen. it decreases time to recovery for the common cold according to another study. but for other elusive viruses like the variants of hepatitis, no such luck. or so i have seen in my 30 minute literature dive.

you're also completely ignoring the DHT aspect of BPH, which is pretty important. i'm seeing no significant correlation between estrogen levels and prostate volume over here. also, testosterone-to-DHT inhibitors are standard treatment. i see zero evidence to indicate that testosterone supplementation will decrease prostate size. the estrogen antagonist tamoxifen has been tried with little success, and an aromatase inhibitor has also been tested, same result. also recall you are dealing with a fluid system that is trying to reach equilibrium... if the body wants to dump testosterone however it can, it can convert to DHT or estradiol. cut out the e2 route and all of a sudden you're shifting equilibrium and making more DHT, which is bad as far as we know.

so it looks like az is keeping their noses out for a reason... you know they wouldn't miss an opportunity for profit without good reason for doing so.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(galaxee @ Nov 16 2007, 11:14 PM) [snapback]540848[/snapback]</div>

Back at the beginning of the AIDs epidemic, Dr. Cathcart had a case where he successfully kept an AIDs patient alive and non-symptomatic while all of the patient's friends were dying. I'm guessing here, but the dosage was something like 60 gm. sodium ascorbate IV, twice a week, for three months. At last report, the patient was still alive 25 years later, still HIV positive, and using triple therapy. The only documentation of the case that I know of is a video of Dr. Cathcart's talk before the Smart Life Forum.

Dr. Cathcart died just last month. He spent most of his medical career in what I guess would be called environmental medicine these days. It's rather ironic that he died of complications of a hip fracture - he developed the first artificial hip in his career in orthopedics. One description of his vitamin C work is that "Linus Pauling had it right, he just didn't use enough". He believed that most (if not all) cases of influenza could be cured if you could drive ascorbate levels high enough for long enough.

Another interesting report he gave was when he had a cornea transplant. There was another man in the hospital at the same time, having the same procedure. Dr. Cathcart was loaded up with vitamin C, and one of the effects was a lack of pain even after the anesthetic wore off. The other guy was in intractable pain, even using Vicodin. Dr. Cathcart described the mechanism as an injury causing release of free radicals. Much of the inflammation and pain associated with an injury is caused by a free radical cascade. Enough ascorbate neutralizes that cascade, and thereby prevents the inflammation and pain. It doesn't mask it, it prevents it.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(galaxee @ Nov 16 2007, 11:14 PM) [snapback]540848[/snapback]</div>

Agreed. I simplified the comments, and really have no idea how much DHT is healthy. Actually, it's the free testosterone component that is important. Maybe something that impacts SHBG would help.

Reducing prostate size is about as difficult as glycation breaking. Unboiling an egg is a tough problem.

Reducing estrogen is going to have to be done before hyperplasia develops, not after. I wonder if men had this problem before the introduction of pesticides and hormone fed animal food. These estrogen mimics sure can't help. And obesity certainly contributes to estrogen overload.

What I'm advocating is hormone balancing to youthful levels starting certainly by age 40. Progesterone (bio-identical, not Provera) is useful for women, and probably equally useful for men. Dr. John Lee did some work using progesterone to treat prostate cancer. The treatment was the addition of progesterone, not blockage of T. No idea how that turned out, and Dr. Lee died a few years ago. I do know a guy who was diagnosed with prostate cancer about 10 years ago, and is probably familiar with Dr. Lee's work. He's doing fine, and certainly didn't have any surgery.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(RobH @ Nov 17 2007, 10:34 PM) [snapback]541145[/snapback]</div>

Aside from the fact that there's no documentation of this case other than Cathcart's verbal claims at a conference of non-scientists, a small number of HIV-positive people never develop the symptoms of AIDS. Therefore, this anecdote is doubly worthless.

 

When older doctors are asked to give an hour-long talk about the highlights of their careers, they don't say things like "I prescribed 325 mg aspirin 50,000 times, and it worked every time". No. They say something more like "I used to prescribe 325 mg aspirin, but it caused GI track bleeding all too often. I tried using baby aspirin instead, and it worked just as well with far less GI track problems". Then they present an assortment of specific cases that demonstrate the point. Since these doctors are in clinical practice, very little (if any) of their experience ever reaches medical journals. Large double blind crossover etc. etc. studies are the business of academic medicine where they cherry pick subjects for the study of a narrow question. Not to depreciate the large studies, but doctors who treat whatever comes in the door sometimes discover important things.

This "career highlight" approach yields a very different presentation than the usual treatment advocacy that doctors do for the press or educational programs. Again, the "eat your veggies" talk is useful, but a "the only time I saw people who ate their veggies is when they got injured" talk is more impressive. Maybe the experience matches cookbook medicine, and maybe it doesn't. It isn't news when a standard treatment produces a standard result. It is news when an exceptional case pops up. I happen to think that exceptional cases should be studied, not buried.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(RobH @ Nov 18 2007, 01:34 AM) [snapback]541145[/snapback]</div>

well... as i was saying, conversion of T to DHT is the problem. blocking that conversion has clinically shown improvement. attempts at blocking estrogen with an estrogen receptor drug were not effective in studies. so i fail to see where estrogen is the issue at all.

but... earlier you wrote a rather un-advocating comment about hormone replacement... how is that different from hormone "balancing" other than use of terms? because it's supposedly "natural" or what?

progesterone inhibits the T to DHT conversion enzyme- (5AR) same way the current treatments work. there are more effective derivatives of progesterone but they have not been evaluated in clinical trials. progesterone also has a lot of side effects- it has its own receptor, you know. and the currently used inhibitor does not, as far as our present knowledge goes, bind to a specific receptor. nonspecific side effects are the useful drug killer.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(galaxee @ Nov 19 2007, 08:29 PM) [snapback]541778[/snapback]</div>

Wow! That explains a lot. Dr. Lee's first use of progesterone was for women with menopausal symptoms. These women, about a dozen, had cancer and thus were not candidates for Premarin therapy. Of these dozen women with cancer, 15 years later they were all alive and cancer free. Dr. Lee did not treat their cancer - I would assume that they had normal treatment by their cancer doctors. Any idea what the probability is of zero remissions out of 12?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(galaxee @ Nov 19 2007, 08:29 PM) [snapback]541778[/snapback]</div>

Objection. Real, bio-identical, progesterone has essentially no bad side effects.

Consider the progesterone level during the third trimester of pregnancy. Certainly you would agree that the levels are quite high. How many of the side effects of "progesterone" are common in these pregnant women? The side effects of Provera and other progestins are extensive and troublesome. Provera is not progesterone.

Carrying a baby to full term is cancer protective. The flood of progesterone would seem to clear out a significant amount of cancer burden.

Katerina Dalton, a British doctor, has researched the supplemental use of natural progesterone for pregnancy.

http://www.acupuncturecenteraa.com/pdf/inf...rojesterone.pdf

Quoting "She found that the children of mothers treated with it actually had faster development of motor skills, higher intelligence, graduated from college more often. They were calmer, better adjusted babies than the babies whose mothers did not take it."

Dr. Dalton was so impressed by the superior achievement of these children as adults that she wrote the book "Progesterone Children". I never actually saw the book, but there is a lot of discussion about it and Katerina Dalton's work available on the web. A google for "dalton progesterone children" is a good start. The book is out of print, so finding a copy would be a real project.




I realize that BPH and estrogen sensitive cancers are different conditions. But they all seem to be closely related to hormone levels. Too much estrogen drives hyperplasia, whether it is in the uterus, prostate, or breast. Perhaps that drive is actually DHT, but it starts with E2, both of which feed from T. Progesterone seems to drive all of these in a healthy direction. Supplementing men with progesterone might help with BPH/cancer, but it has no effect on feminization. Armimidex or similar would seem to be required to protect T and reduce E2/DHT.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(AuntBee @ Oct 24 2007, 11:05 PM) [snapback]530092[/snapback]</div>

Not if you paid me. Too much negative data out there. Spend more time on being healthy and the flu won't be a problem. Ultimately I think it's driven economically, not from health. Follow the money for the answer....

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(lplate @ Nov 24 2007, 12:38 PM) [snapback]543573[/snapback]</div>

Too little negative data to arouse suspicion on my part. While seeing my surgeon for a follow-up to my hernia repair surgery, his assistant asked me if I wanted a flu shot. Of course I got one. A little prick of a needle beats having the flu for weeks.

Harry