Health and Wellness

Hey there. If you are expecting a nice quiet feel good chat on your health and well being, then as Bill Cosby's mother would say: 'You've got another think coming.' Hang on, this might be a rough ride.
You are concerned about your health and wellness. And you all want to lose something. You want to:

-lose some weight
-lose that pain in your back
-lose that chronic disease that is eating up your insides
-lose that need to inject insulin twice a day
-lose all the BS that I will group together as chronic diseases and the associated aches and pains.

Problem is, nothing you do, nothing you take, seems to be solving your health problems. You can't seem to lose - you fill in the blank.

There are lots of people, companies and government departments that profess to be concerned about your health and well being. Let's look at whose job it is to make you a loser, a loser of whatever health issue is your current concern...

Later sheep.

Have a look at this abbreviated list:

1.Medical Practitioners
A) Your family doctor
B) Specialists to whom you are referred by your family doctor
C) Alternative medical practitioners
a) Chiropractors
b) Acupuncturists
c) Message Therapists
d) and many, many more

2.Government Departments
A) FDA - Food and Drug Administration - responsible for regulating food, dietary supplements, drugs, biological medical products, ..., cosmetics etc. from the viewpoint of consumer safety. Part of the FDA approval process requires that the sponsor of the drug prove clinical efficacy of the drug.
B) FTC - Federal Trade Commission - responsible for regulating consumer advertising and marketing, financial products and practices, telemarketing fraud, privacy and identity protection, etc. Also involved in anti-trust issues to ensure fair competition.
C) FCC - Federal Communication Commission - responsible for consumer protection including product liability, privacy rights, unfair business practices, fraud, misrepresentation etc.
D) USDA - U.S. Department of Agriculture - responsible for food safety, nutrition education, etc.
E) Medicare - Federal government health insurance program for people aged 65 or older.
F) Medicaid - State managed health insurance program for people with limited income.

3.Medical Research Companies

4.Private Health Insurance Companies

5.Pharmaceutical companies

6.Diet Supplement and Nutritional supplement suppliers

7.And many many more in narrow categories or areas of expertise.

That's a lot of companies, a lot of people worrying about solving your health problems. It's a wonder anyone is still sick. In fact with trillions of dollars of the Gross National Product being applied to the Health and Well Being of the population, I am past wondering, I am truly amazed. Are you certain you people are really sick?

Well just in case a few of you are truly sick, the Health Jerk will evaluate the existing Health system; tell you what to watch out for; and make some recommendations. Part One was very tame. Like Radar from M.A.S.H. would say, wait for it.

Later sheep.

The Health Jerk Part Two

Hey there. The Health Jerk is back. Have you been thinking about that list of people and companies who are supposed looking out for you and your health. I made a joke of it last time but I gotta ask: Why are there any diseases left? Why are we not all living to 150? The annual budget of just one government department, the FDA, is over 2 billion dollars in 2007. How can there be any unsafe drugs with that budget?

What's worse, most of their mandate is checking the work of others, like research and clinical tests completed and paid for by pharmaceutical companies. The FDA are not doing the actual research or conducting the actual tests, just checking them, 2 billion dollars annually.

OK, I have quite a list to pick from here. I am going to start with the FDA because they are on the labels, they are in the news and most people are aware of them. People may not know what they actually do, but they have heard of them. As I said early, the FDA is primarily responsible for the safety or food and drugs. The official mandate suggests that the FDA is also responsible for the efficacy of drugs. This is a bit of an exaggeration. By the way, efficacy means effective for the stated purpose, the power to produce the intended results. I had to look it up.

To understand the FDA we need some definitions.
DRUGS - Only drugs can be used to treat, diagnose, cure or prevent disease. Prescription drugs can only be authorized through script issued by licensed Doctors. Typically prescription drugs are supplied by a licensed Pharmacist. Note all the licenses involved.

The FDA (your federal government) requires a large number of tests to ensure our safety. In the past, (and probably covertly now) the FDA approval process for drugs often included the LD50 Test. That is, to be classified as a drug, pharmaceutical companies must conduct tests in which they increase the dosage of a new substance during the test period until 50% of the test subjects die - lethal dose 50%.

This test is currently out of favor with the FDA but not because of the toxicity implications of the purposed drug, but because of the publicity the FDA received because of the cruel treatment of the test animals. What is lost in the rhetoric here is that each drug must have proven itself toxic to 50% of the test group before it could earn the classification of DRUG, drug, from the FDA.

I am not happy with that, are you?

A substance must have a toxic dose level before it can be called a drug and as a drug be approved by the FDA. Maybe it's just me, but does that make sense to you?

Consider this, all of the prescription drugs and most of the over the counter drugs that you current use are toxic and probably lethal if taken in extreme dosages? How safe does that make your medicine cabinet? Children and the elderly are not safe. They do not know what is a safe dosage and what is not. This is an example of the logic used by the government and scientific bureaucracies.

Here is another example:

Once the world believed that using the heavy metal, lead, as the supply piping for drinking water was a fantastic choice. Scientists and the government supported this idea as the workability, durability and availability of lead made it the perfect material for supplying water in homes and cities. Gee Whiz, science has moved on from that decision, but it took a while for the government to read the memo. Lead piping was used in Ancient Rome.

The FDA still allowed lead-based paints to be used on cribs in the 1960's. Oops. The list of medical conditions attributed to lead poisoning is more than I can stomach so I am not going to list them here.

Furthermore, science now knows that many toxic substances are stored in the body - good examples being lead, chromium and other heavy metals. Our bodies do not want to store them, we just can't get rid of them. One aspect of medical diagnosis is the identification of toxins which are building up in your fatty tissues, in your bowels or in your bone marrow. Ever seen Dr. House on TV?

Now my question to you is this: How many toxins from 'over the counter' and prescription medicines (remember these are all approved by the your government, the FDA and recommended by your family doctor and HMO) are building up in your body? Toxins which are not in the normal food supply. Building up until they reach a critical level and then they make you really, really SICK. And better yet, no one will even know why you are sick. You will make a great story line for Dr. House on TV as he tries to identify which toxin is causing your death and what is introducing it into your dying body...

Good luck people, keep taking those government approved (and fully paid for by the pharmaceutical lobby) medicines.

I sincerely hope you survive your ability to act like a sheep...led to the slaughter by HMO's, family doctors, and the rest of the Health Industry Establishment.

Later sheep.

The Health Jerk, Part Three

Health Jerk back again. As promised Part Two had a little more bite. In this part we will continue discussing the FDA as we still have some definitions to complete.

Disease:
1) any departure from health
2) a particular destructive process in an organism
3) an evil or destructive tendency.
4) As a verb, to cause disease in, infect, corrupt.

The reason the word disease is so important is that the FDA uses it in the definition of a drug.
Only a drug can be used to treat, diagnose, cure or prevent a DISEASE.
It also uses it to define who can treat, diagnose, cure or prevent a disease, that being licensed doctors and pharmacists and so on.

Hopefully some bells are going off...
Only drugs can prevent a disease? Does that mean I cannot eat unapproved nutritional foods and unapproved dietary supplements because they might make me healthy and resistant to (read prevent) disease. What if I ate some oranges with Vitamin C and prevented scurvy? You get the idea.

Here is a fictional story. It's fictional. Make believe. I do not have a miracle plant and I do not have cancer. Fiction.
Once upon a time%u2026
What if:
I found a plant growing beside some rocks in my backyard.
What if:
I had lung cancer and the doctors gave me 6 months to live.

What if:
I ate one leaf from that plant every day for 3 months.
What if:
I was completely cured of lung cancer.
What if:
You knew me and my medical history.
What if:
You contracted lung cancer and the doctors gave you 6 months to live.
What if:
You asked me how I got better.
What if:
I told you that I ate a leaf a day for 3 months from this special plant.
What if:
You asked me if you could eat a leaf a day for 3 months.
What if:
You recovered from lung cancer.
What if:
Word spread about our recoveries from lung cancer.
What if:
100 people asked me if they could eat a leaf a day for 3 months.
What if:
I said yes.
Then the FDA would put me in jail.
As I have told this fictional story, the FDA would probably put me in jail during my self treatment if they found out about it. I would certainly be in jeopardy when I shared my treatment with you. With 100 patients, the FDA would call out the SWAT team.

I know it is a silly story, but it becomes really silly when you understand the purview of the FDA. I am not a licensed doctor or pharmacist therefore I cannot distribute anything which is intended to treat, diagnose, cure or prevent a disease. Certainly cancer is a disease. Therefore in my story I broke the law even during my self treatment.

Here's one that is non-fiction. What if I burned my hand. I wanted to treat it with aloe, a widely known natural remedy for burns. Under one interpretation of the FDA regulations, my treatment of the burn with aloe would break numerous rules: non licensed treating and diagnosing of the burn, non licensed curing of an injury, use of a non-FDA-approved natural substance to treat and cure an injury. This is getting silly but it gets even better.

OK, what's a disease anyway? Well no one would care if the FDA was not running around classifying and renaming every simple ache and pain as a disease. For example, simple indigestion, our parents called it heartburn, now it's a disease - acid reflux disease. The pharmaceutical industry has over the counter and prescription drugs to address and cure that disease. Please save me from the TV ads. The point being made here is that indigestion is now a disease which means that per FDA regulations, it can only be treated, diagnosed, cured and prevented by an FDA approved drug. That is a drug which when taken at extreme doses will be toxic per Rule LD50.

How did we get caught in this catch 22? Stay tuned for the next part as we continue to discuss the government and our Health.

Later sheep.

Health Jerk Part Four

Hey there, Health Jerk here, I could do twenty parts of the government and your health, but just I'll do just one more part for this series, then we will move on to doctors...

-The FDA is there to keep us safe from unsafe drugs and dietary supplements.
-The USDA is there is keep us safe from tainted food.
-The FTC is there to keep us safe from unfair and misleading trade practices like false advertising, fraud and cartels.
-The FCC is there is keep us safe from products which make false claims in their advertisements in the various media.

The federal budgets set aside to keep us safe is immense. The 2007 FDA budget alone is over 2 billion.

It is the function of the PRESS to inform the public of the news, especially news which may impact our lives, our safety. It is also entertainment. I for one do not believe all that I read or see or hear. But here are a few interesting questions:

-Why do the Japanese refuse to buy our beef?
-How do Chinese products enter our marketplace without effective inspections, or at least as effective as those required for American made products? Mattel toys, pet food recalls...
-How did Vioxx slip through the FDA approval process?

I am not going to beat a dead horse here but I find it entertaining in a macabre way to witness the warnings on products these days. Often the potential side-effects are worse than the symptoms of the original health complaint.

Finally, how can MEDICAL MISADVENTURE be the four leading cause of death in the United States today? And that assertion comes from the AMA, the American Medical Association.

I must ask the question.
But first one more fact, do you realize that with approval and research costs today, that the cost to introduce a new drug into the American consumer marketplace is typically measured in tens of millions of dollars?

Ask we why health costs are out of control?

I just barely touched on health insurance which brings up Medicare and Medicaid. It brings up the concept of Universal Health Care. Is our good health for sale to the highest bidder? Is proper medical treatment only for those that can afford it? Let's not go there, we will be here for a week.

OK, I have spent some time talking about some of the issues which relate to the government and the responsible departments as they apply to your health, your well being, your safety. Let's move on to the Medicine and the doctors. Surely with all the modern medical schools in this country, our doctors must be the best educated and trained in the world?

Later sheep.

The Health Jerk - Part Five

Welcome back, this is part five of the Health Jerk series. So far we have listed the many contributors to your good health. Parts 2, 3 and 4 were dedicated to the FDA and trying to understand exactly how the government is keeping us safe. On my scorecard, they come up a little short.

Let move our focus over to medical doctors. These poor souls spend half their lives in school trying to master the ever-increasing body of knowledge known as Medicine. All sarcasm aside, this has become a truly impossible task in recent decades. The body of knowledge is expanding exponentially and even with the help of high speed computers, no one can stay current.

There is one disturbing thing about all doctors older than say 30. That being, 10 years ago and earlier very little or no attention was given to nutrition at med school. This has changed and is changing more. What I mean by that is actual class time and courses are now dedicated to the advantages and effects of good nutrition. Also you may have noticed that the government recently modified the recommended food chart.

I can not talk about doctors without talking about health insurance and HMO's. Today health insurance is so important to the earnings of a doctor that almost all doctor offices have a person totally dedicated to completing the forms and interfacing with the health insurance companies. Have you gone to the doctors recently? You cannot get by the receptionist until you provide your valid health insurance card and make your co-payment.

Today's discussion is from my personal health history.

15 years ago, I started to lose the feeling in my right hand all the way down from the right shoulder. Not my left hand...angina, my right hand. I went to my family doctor and he decided it was joint damage in my shoulder from my misspent youth on a pitcher's mound. Whatever. The orthopedic specialist saw me and confirmed that it was shoulder damage and got out the big needle with cortisone and shot me up. Hurt like Hell. After a week it was probably worse and certainly not better.

My wife stepped in and insisted that I go to a chiropractor. I dragged myself into the quack's office and sat down. He insisted on an X-ray of my back and neck. I argued that the doctors, people with MD after their name, had said it was an injured shoulder. He ignored me.

The next day he called me asked me to come in. I did. He said he had good news and bad news. But first he wanted to ask me a question. He asked me if I had had a collision to my back about a year before in a car wreck or while playing a sport. I answered that I had collisions all the time, I play ice hockey in the local amateur league and about a year ago some one had crashed me into the boards from the back in our nice no contact league.

Moving on. He said that made sense and the good news was he could fix me. The bad news was I had a broken neck. Well that's an exaggeration. I had a hairline fracture in my third vertebrae which had calcified up and was impeding the nerve transmissions to my right arm. The third vertebrae is where the nerves to the right arm start. I guess they don't teach that at med school. Three weeks later I was good as gold and have never had that problem since. So much for the wisdom of traditional medicine and specialists.

This example is not meant to condemn medical doctors. It simply points out that paradigms distort everyone's judgment, even the judgment of the 'gods who walk the earth', uh, medical doctors. Well that's how they expect to be treated. Ever asked someone to try a homemade remedy for an ache and pain. You almost always hear back later, my doctor said that it wouldn't work and might even hinder my treatment.

Closed minds. Sheep, being led to the slaughter by the Traditional Health Establishment.

Later sheep.