Health Tips
The following article was released last week by a well known Medical Doctor. I felt this was important for most people to read who don't know much about the Flu Vaccine. Since the media won't report on this aspect of the topic, I felt it is my responsibility to offer this information to all who are visiting my site and look to me for help about staying healthy.
The video by Thinktwice Global Vaccine Institute offers a good summary of what every person should know about the seasonal flu vaccine; how it’s made, and its effectiveness.
Signs and Symptoms of Influenza
As most of you probably know, influenza is a contagious viral respiratory infection. Symptoms include:
Fever
Chills
Runny nose
Sore throat
Cough
Muscle aches
Fatigue
Decreased appetite
Typically, the condition will improve after two to three days of bed rest, although some symptoms may persist for about a week.
What many people do NOT know, however, is that death caused directly by the flu virus is very rare. The vast majority of so-called “flu deaths” are in fact due to bacterial pneumonia – a potential complication of the flu if your immune system is too weak.
Other complications can include ear- or sinus infections, dehydration, and worsening of chronic health conditions.
The elderly and people with other pre existing medical conditions such as asthma, diabetes, or heart disease, are at higher risk of developing pneumonia after a bout of the flu.
The Flu Vaccine Does Not Prevent the Flu, nor Protect Against the Vast Majority of Flu-Related Deaths
The conventional treatment for bacterial pneumonia is an antibiotic, not a viral flu drug, so to think that taking a flu vaccine will prevent death from pneumonia doesn’t really make sense.
“But the vaccine will prevent the flu, which will prevent the possibility of developing pneumonia,” some might say.
That sounds good in theory, but the statistics simply do not support this assertion.
Because study after study, and master studies that compile the results from several studies to get a more objective result, keep coming to the same conclusion: Flu vaccines DO NOT WORK, and in many cases do more harm than good.
In fact, one shocking statistic brought to light in this video is that BEFORE the CDC advocated vaccinating children under the age of five, the number of children dying from the flu was very low, and on the decline.
Then, in 2003, just after children aged five and under started getting vaccinated, the number of flu deaths SKYROCKETED. The death toll was enormous compared to the previous year, when the flu vaccine was not administered en masse to that age group!
How anyone can consider a strategy that yields a higher death toll to be a “success” is a mystery to me.
The Problem with Flu Death Statistics
However, as frightening as much of this may sound, it’s important to keep things in perspective. According to the statistics shown in the video above, more Americans die from asthma, and even malnutrition each year, than the flu.
Unfortunately, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) grossly distort the facts about flu deaths, making the flu virus seem far more dangerous than is warranted. On the CDC’s main flu page, they state that about 36,000 people die from the flu in the United States each year. But if you search a little harder, you can find the actual number of people who died from the flu in 2005 (this is the most recent data that’s available) was 1,806. The remainder was caused by pneumonia. In 2004, there were just 1,100 actual flu deaths. The statistics the CDC gives are skewed partly because they classify those dying from pneumonia as dying from the flu, which is inaccurate.
How is the Flu Vaccine Made?
This is another area that many people do not understand or take into consideration before getting a seasonal flu shot.
In January or February of each year, health authorities travel to Asia to determine which strains of the flu are currently active. Based on their findings in Asia, they assume that the same strains of viruses will spread to the U.S. by fall.
At this point, U.S. vaccine manufacturers start making that season’s flu vaccine, which will contain the strains found in Asia. However, if the viral strains circulating in the U.S. that season are not identical to those in Asia, the vaccine you receive is a complete dud.
And to add insult to injury, you’ve just been injected with a laundry list of harmful ingredients.
What’s in the Seasonal Flu Vaccine?
The flu strains selected are cultivated in chick embryos for several weeks before being inactivated with formaldehyde, which is a known cancer-causing agent. Then they’re preserved with thimerosal, which is 49 percent mercury by weight.
Even many health care professionals are confused about this and are not aware that the preservative thimerosal is mercury. As a quick side note, one of my chief writers told me that, “the doctor’s office told me the vaccine does not contain mercury, just something called thimerosal.”
Please, don’t be fooled by this incredible ignorance. If you have carefully studied this issue there is a great possibility you may know more than your physician about this topic. Don’t back down if they tell you something you otherwise know to be true.
According to the CDC, the majority of flu vaccines contain thimerosal. Some contain as much as 25 mcg of mercury per dose. This means that it may contain more than 250 times the Environmental Protection Agency’s safety limit for mercury.
By now, most people are well aware that children and fetuses are most at risk of damage from this neurotoxin, as their brains are still developing. Yet the CDC still recommends that children over 6 months, and pregnant women, receive the flu vaccine each year.
In addition to mercury, flu vaccines also contain other toxic or hazardous ingredients like:
Aluminum -- a neurotoxin that has been linked to Alzheimer’s disease
Triton X-100 -- a detergent
Phenol (carbolic acid)
Ethylene glycol (antifreeze)
Betapropiolactone - a disinfectant
Nonoxynol - used to kill or stop growth of STDs
Octoxinol 9 - a vaginal spermicide
Sodium phosphate
How Safe is the Flu Vaccine?
Serious reactions to the flu vaccine include, but are not limited to:
Life-threatening allergies to various ingredients
Guillain-Barre Syndrome (a severe paralytic disease that is fatal in about 1 in 20 cases)
Encephalitis (brain inflammation)
Neurological disorders
Thrombocytopenia (a serious blood disorder)
How Effective is the Flu Vaccine?
Remember that the potential effectiveness of a flu vaccine is dependent on the ASSUMPTION, made nearly a year in advance, that Asia’s viral strains will be the ones hitting the U.S. When they guess wrong, the vaccine is worthless from the very start.
But does that mean they withdraw the flu vaccine when they discover it contains the wrong strains? NO! They just keep giving it out anyway.
But even if they were to overcome that hurdle and actually select the correct strains, there’s still no evidence that it does anyone any good to get a flu vaccine.
Study after study comes back showing the same dismal results: the flu vaccines are not an effective method of prevention of the flu, and they do not save lives. As mentioned earlier, they may even be responsible for an increased death rate in some groups.
Sometimes determining efficacy is as easy as reading the information coming straight from the vaccine manufacturer.
How about this quote taken directly from the flu vaccine FLULAVAL’s package insert (which you likely never see when getting the flu shot) for the 2009-2010 formula:
" FLULAVAL is an influenza virus vaccine indicated for active immunization of adults 18 years of age and older against influenza disease caused by influenza virus subtypes A and type B contained in the vaccine. This indication is based on immune response elicited by FLULAVAL, and there have been no controlled trials demonstrating a decrease in influenza disease after vaccination with FLULAVAL.”
That’s right, NO controlled trials demonstrating ANY decrease in your risk of contracting the flu at all after vaccination! (It also states that each dose contains a total of 25 mcg of mercury.)
For those of you who are still unconvinced, know that there’s plenty of scientific evidence available to back up the recommendation to avoid flu vaccines. In addition to studies mentioned in the video, here are several other examples showing that flu vaccines do not work for any age group:
A study published in the October 2008 issue of the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine found that vaccinating young children against the flu had no impact on flu-related hospitalizations or doctor visits during two recent flu seasons.
The researchers concluded that "significant influenza vaccine effectiveness could not be demonstrated for any season, age, or setting" examined.
A 2008 study published in the Lancet found that influenza vaccination was NOT associated with a reduced risk of pneumonia in older people.
This supports an earlier study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine.
Research published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine also confirms that there has been no decrease in deaths from influenza and pneumonia in the elderly, despite the fact that vaccination coverage among the elderly has increased from 15 percent in 1980 to 65 percent now.
In 2007, researchers with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious
Diseases, and the National Institutes of Health published this conclusion in the Lancet Infectious Diseases: “We conclude that frailty selection bias and use of non-specific endpoints such as all-cause mortality,have led cohort studies to greatly exaggerate vaccine benefits.”
A large-scale, systematic review of 51 studies, published in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews in 2006, found no evidence that the flu vaccine is any more effective than a placebo in children. The studies involved 260,000 children, age 6 to 23 months.
Last but not least, I think it says a lot that 70 percent of doctors and nurses, and 62 percent of other health care workers do NOT get the yearly flu shot.
The reasons why they opted to not get vaccinated were:
They didn't believe the vaccine would work
They believed their immune systems were strong enough to withstand exposure to the flu
They were concerned about side effects
Might Influenza be Little More Than a Symptom of Vitamin D Deficiency?
Vitamin D, “the sunshine vitamin,” may very well be one of the most beneficial vitamins there is for disease prevention. Unfortunately it’s also one of the vitamins that a vast majority of people across the world are deficient in due to lack of regular exposure to sunshine.
Published in the journal Epidemiology and Infection in 2006, the hypothesis presented by Dr. John Cannell and colleagues in the paper Epidemic Influenza and Vitamin D raises the possibility that influenza is a symptom of vitamin D deficiency.
The vitamin D formed when your skin is exposed to sunlight regulates the expression of more than 2,000 genes throughout your body, including ones that influence your immune system to attack and destroy bacteria and viruses. Hence, being overwhelmed by the “flu bug” could signal that your vitamin D levels are too low, allowing the flu virus to overtake your immune system.
At least five studies show an inverse association between lower respiratory tract infections and 25(OH)D levels. That is, the higher your vitamin D level, the lower your risk of contracting colds, flu, and other respiratory tract infections:
A 2007 study suggests higher vitamin D status enhances your immunity to microbial infections. They found that subjects with vitamin D deficiency had significantly more days of absence from work due to respiratory infection than did control subjects.
A 2009 study on vitamin D deficiency in newborns with acute lower respiratory infection (ALRI) confirmed a strong, positive correlation between newborns’ and mother’s vitamin D levels. Over 87 percent of all newborns and over 67 percent of all mothers had vitamin D levels lower than 20 ng/ml, which is a severe deficiency state.
Newborns with vitamin D deficiency appear to have an increased risk of developing ALRI, and since the child’s vitamin D level strongly correlates with its mother’s, the researchers recommend that all mothers’ optimize their vitamin D levels during pregnancy, especially in the winter months, to safeguard their baby’s health.
A similar Indian study published in 2004 also reported that vitamin D deficiency in infants significantly raised their odds ratio for having severe ALRI.
A 2009 analysis of the Third National Health andNutrition Examination Survey examined the association between vitamin D levelsand recent upper respiratory tract infection (URTI) in nearly 19,000 subjects over the age of 12. Recent URTI was reported by:
17 percent of participants with vitamin D levels of 30ng/ml or higher
20 percent of participants with vitamin D levels between 10-30 ng/ml.
24 percent of participants with vitamin D levels below 10ng/ml
The positive correlation between lower vitamin D levels and increased risk of URTI was even stronger in individuals with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Another 2009 report in the journal Pediatric Research stated that infants and children appear more susceptible to viral rather than bacterial infections when deficient in vitamin D. And that, based on the available evidence showing a strong connection between vitamin D, infections, and immune function in children, vitamin D supplementation may be a valuable therapy in pediatric medicine.
How to Prevent the Flu without Getting a Flu Shot
For most people the flu shot does not make you healthy; it does just the opposite and weakens your immune system.
If you follow a healthy lifestyle, you will not have to worry about getting the flu. Take it from me -- I’ve never received a flu shot, and I haven’t missed a day of work due to illness in over 20 years. The key steps that I follow to stay flu-free, which I suggest you follow too, include:
-Get plenty of sunshine, safe tanning bed exposure or supplemental vitamin D3
-Eat right for your nutritional type, including avoiding sugar
-Exercise
-Get adequate sleep
-Address emotional stress
-Wash your hands regularly
------------------------------------------------
Tips to Raise Energy & Increase Vitality:
By: Dr. Tom Jones
-Exercise at least 30 minutes a day. It's as easy as taking a walk around the block during your lunch break. Walk and then eat a nutritious lunch. This will also help in preventing you from feeling sleepy after lunch. Researchers agree that performance scores plunge when people miss lunch.
-Stop drinking sodas and start drinking water. Drinking soda is a great way to increase calories, gain weight, and stress your internal organs. The pH of soda is around 2. When your body's pH is too acidic, it creates a breeding ground for bacteria, fungus & viruses. It will deplete your stores of natural energy. The best way to increase your health is by creating an alkaline environment for your body.
-Limit refined sugar intake: Refined sugar or simple sugar gives you instant energy, but a few hours later, and in the long term, it will only make you more tired and cause other health problems. These simple sugars stress your pancreas to release greater amounts of insulin in order to remove the sugar from your blood. However, within a couple of hours, the insulin has removed all of the simple sugars and you now do not have any new sugars coming arriving into your digestive tract. If you eat foods that contain complex carbohydrates, it takes the body a longer time to break this down and your body will have longer sustained amounts of sugar coming into your blood. This is less stressful on your body therefore will lead to greater amounts and duration of energy. An easy way of looking at it is consuming simple sugars equals a big one time short burst of energy and stressful on your body. Consuming complex carbohydrates equals sustained energy and less stressful on your body.
-When you feel stressed, focus on your breathing. Remember – in through your nose and out through your mouth. Concentrate on bringing the air into your belly and expanding your belly instead of your chest. Take Slow and deep breaths. Also, concentrate on relaxing your neck and shoulders while you do this.
-Drink Green Tea instead of Coffee – caffeine saps your natural
sense of vitality. This leaves your body dependent on other products to get through the day. The contents found in coffee and other energy supplement drinks are not providing true energy. It’s an effect that’s impacting your nervous system. These effects can impact an individual’s body in both the short and long term. Short-term effects of these drinks can include irritability, dehydration, insomnia, nervousness, increased heart rate and blood pressure. For avid consumers of coffee, withdrawal symptoms, such as headaches and shakes can result for quite some time after cessation of caffeine.
-Getting adequate sleep is vital for energy. Although everyone is different and require different amounts, most people do need between 6 to 8 and a half hours a night.
-Stay away from Hydrogenated Oils. Most partially hydrogenated oil is partially hydrogenated Soybean oil. The problem with this is soybean oil depresses the thyroid--which lowers your energy levels, inhibits your willingness for exercising, and generally makes you fatter!
-Be positive. Studies show that optimistic outlooks are linked to more energy compared to pessimistic ways of thinking.
-Eat fruits with your breakfast and eat vegetables with your lunch and dinner.
-Listen to your favorite song whenever you need a pick-me-up.
-Eat breakfast. It will increase your energy and productivity at work. It also decreases the amount of stress on your body and will limit chronic release of the hormone cortisol.
-Take short breaks throughout the day. Get up from your chair and take a little walk. Stop looking at the computer screen. Stretch. Go get a cold drink of water. Short breaks help you refocus and re-energize. They also help with reducing the amount of mechanical stress on your body, which can cause fatigue.
-Eat protein at every meal: One of the most important ways to keep your blood sugar balanced and energy levels high is to include protein at every meal, breakfast and snacks included. The best protein sources include fish, organic meat, chicken, eggs, yogurt, and whey protein powder.
-Make sure you're getting enough key nutrients, such as magnesium, B-complex, and Omega 3s for optimal energy and health levels.
-Maintaining proper joint function has been shown to increase energy. Proper maintenance of joint function either through effective Chiropractic Adjustments or Osteopathic Manipulation has been proven to improve function of spinal joints, which in turn allows the Nervous System to work at a greater efficiency thus providing increased energy levels.
-Check for yeast issues in the intestines: Gas, bloating, and carbohydrate or sugar cravings are often caused by yeast growth which in turn causes low energy levels.
-Check for food intolerances or allergies: Most people with low-grade food allergies and sensitivities are unaware that they have them because the symptoms are as subtle as low energy and difficulty losing weight.
-Make sure you do not have any medical conditions that can cause fatigue. These include low thyroid function, low iron, high iron (hemochromatosis), and a range of other ailments, which can be determined by blood tests.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Understanding the Chiropractic Adjustment
By: Dr. Tom Jones
Science continues to progress and unveil what we, as practitioners have known to be true. There has been a flood of research recently confirming what both practitioners and patients have known to be true. If you are or have been a chiropractic patient and wondered how this manual treatment works so effectively or if you have never been treated by a competent chiropractic physician but you are curious about how this care could help you, then I have some of the most up to date information on how chiropractic works.
Relieving the Pain
Pain seems to be the single most motivational factor for patients to search for help. Since that is what brings most patients into the office, we will begin here. Spinal, Rib, and Extremity adjustments relieve pain by eliciting a reflex in the spinal cord that inhibits pain from reaching the brain. The thalamic and cortical regions of the brain are what alert you when there is pain. Adjustments are also known to cause the release of enkephalins and endorphins, which are natural opioids. They are natural painkillers that our body’s make. Therefore, an adjustment is allowing your body’s natural inborn mechanisms to self-correct and self heal. This is a huge advantage over synthetic pain medications which although will block pain, come with a price by side effects which cause excess stress on the body.
Restoring homeostasis to the Nervous System
Restoring pain relief is only the beginning. Chiropractic adjustments go beyond this area and affect further complex areas of your nervous system. The adjustment takes a healthy domino effect by continuing to address other areas of your body. This includes relieving stress of an overtaxed adrenal system. It thereby promotes an increase function of the parasympathetic portion of your nervous system. This is the part of your nervous system that controls the function of your internal organs such as all the organs that are involved in digestion. It also works by improving the function of your respiration and pumping of your heart. It improves the efficiency of your immune system and enhances its function in detoxification and cleansing of your body. It helps with the relaxation of your circulatory system thereby lowering and improving the function of your blood pressure. This simple adjustment when delivered properly allows for the increased stress and tension that is held in your joints and muscles dissipates while at the same time restores a balance to the various portions of your nervous system thereby allowing your body to function at an efficient level. This ultimately means a healthier you.
Without the distractions of stress, pain, tension, etc., your body is allowed to focus on proper function without impairment. For this reason, chiropractic patients usually experience freedom from common ailments such as hypertension, asthma, digestive problems, irritable bowel syndrome, and other chronic disorders.
Addressing Muscle and Joint Imbalances
Both the short and long term benefits of care include improving your overall joint function as well as the proper movement of the surrounding muscles. These tissues have a memory to them and over the course of treatments, this idea of muscle and joint memory are continuously being addressed. Since these tissues have a memory, your overall daily activities and posture influence these tissues. Improper postural habits and stress placed on these tissues will cause breakdown of your tissues, increased load on the joints, and loss of muscle elasticity, which facilitates degeneration of the joints. Periodic stretching and routine exercise are required to combat the effects of improper postures of sitting, standing, or repetitive movements. Additionally, chiropractic care and addressing muscle imbalances and adhesions helps restore balance and range of motion in our muscle and skeletal systems. This in turn will lead to an improvement in our quality of life as we age.
Putting it All Together
Your brain controls everything your body does whether you control it or it is an automatic reflex. In order for it to make any and all decisions, your brain requires input from your body in order to make an appropriate response. It does this by receiving sensory nerve messages from all over the body that report to the brain. Once your brain is alerted, it can then make the appropriate response. Therefore your brain has floods of information being sent to it. It processes this information and then responds by making the best possible decision.
The majority of information that reaches your brain comes from the somatic tissues, which are the muscles and joints. This is known as proprioception. This information is approximately 85 to 90% of the information that your brain is continually receiving and processing. The remaining 10 – 15% of information will be from every other system of the body. This includes any conscious thoughts, reading, and studying that you may also be doing. Now, the majority of outgoing messages in the brain do not head back to the muscles and joints. The majority of outgoing information goes to your internal organs including the heart, lungs, immune system, digestive system, etc. This goes on constantly without our conscious control, thereby, allowing us to work, play, and enjoy life.
Chiropractic adjustments have an amazing ability to activate muscle and joint receptors that have fallen into a dormant state due to inactivity or lack of stimulation. The adjustment at the same time will awaken portions of the brain that were previously dormant for the same reason. Basic neurology shows that awakening these tissues and improving their function will allow greater input to the brain and creates greater output to your internal organs. This means that a healthy functioning brain leads to a healthy functioning body.
Your Chiropractic Physician is one of the best sources for your ongoing search for improved health.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Deadly Dangers of Aspartame
By: Dr. Thomas C. Jones
Aspartame is the technical name for the brand names NutraSweet, Equal,
Spoonful, and Equal-Measure. Aspartame is, by far, the most dangerous
substance on the market that is added to foods.
Out of all adverse reactions to food additives reported to the FDA, over 75
percent are due to Aspartame. Many of these reactions are very serious
including seizures and death. There are over 85 different documented
symptoms, which are caused by aspartame. The most common are as follows:
Headaches/migraines, dizziness, seizures, nausea, numbness, muscle spasms,
rashes, depression, fatigue, irritability, tachycardia, insomnia, vision
problems, hearing loss, heart palpitations, breathing difficulties, anxiety
attacks, slurred speech, loss of taste, tinnitus, vertigo, memory loss, and
joint pain.
How Aspartate (and Glutamate) can cause damage
Aspartate and glutamate act as neurotransmitters in the brain by
facilitating the transmission of information from neuron to neuron. Too much
aspartate or glutamate in the brain kills certain neurons by allowing the
influx of too much calcium into the cells. This influx triggers excessive
amounts of free radicals, which kill the cells. The neural cell damage that
can be caused by excessive aspartate and glutamate is why they are referred
to as "excitotoxins." They "excite" or stimulate the neural cells to death.
Research has been conducted at the Medical University of Mississippi, making
use of 500 scientific references to show how excess free excitatory amino
acids such as aspartic acid and glutamic acid (about 99 percent of
monosodium glutamate (MSG) is glutamic acid) in our food supply are causing
serious chronic neurological disorders and a myriad of other acute symptoms.
Aspartame is made of the following three compounds: 40% Aspartic Acid, 50%
Phenylalanine, and 10% Methanol.
When the temperature of Aspartame exceeds 86 degrees Fahrenheit, the
Methanol found in Aspartame breaks down into formic acid and formaldehyde in
the body. Formaldehyde is a deadly neurotoxin. An EPA assessment of methanol
states that methanol "is considered a cumulative poison due to the low rate
of excretion once it is absorbed. In the body, methanol is oxidized to
formaldehyde and formic acid; both of these metabolites are toxic." They
recommend a limit of consumption of 7.8 mg/day. A one-liter (approx. 1
quart) aspartame-sweetened beverage contains about 56 mg of methanol. Heavy
users of aspartame-containing products consume as much as 250 mg of methanol
daily or 32 times the EPA limit.
How Aspartame's effects are linked with Disease and Chronic illness
The excess glutamate and aspartate slowly begin to destroy neurons (brain
cells.) The large majority (75 percent or more) of neural cells in a
particular area of the brain are killed before any clinical symptoms of a
chronic illness are noticed. A sample of the many chronic illnesses that are
known to be contributed to by long-term exposure of excitatory amino acid
damage include:
* Multiple sclerosis (MS)
* ALS
* Memory loss
* Hormonal problems
* Hearing loss
* Epilepsy
* Alzheimer's disease
* Parkinson's disease
* Hypoglycemia
* Dementia
* Brain lesions
* Systemic Lupus Erythematosis
* Neuroendocrine disorders
In the cases of systemic lupus, which is triggered by Aspartame, the victim
usually does not know that the Aspartame is the culprit. The victim
continues its use aggravating the lupus to such a degree, that sometimes it
becomes life threatening. When we get people off the Aspartame, those with
systemic lupus usually become asymptomatic. Unfortunately, some of the
damage caused cannot be reversed.
On the other hand, in the case of those diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis,
(when in reality, the disease is methanol toxicity), most of the symptoms
disappear. There have been cases reported where their vision has returned
and even their hearing has returned. This also applies to cases of tinnitus
(a constant ringing in the ears.)
In a few lectures I have presented on this subject, I explained that "If you
are using Aspartame (Nutrasweet, Spoonful, Equal, etc.) and you are
suffering from Headache / Migrane, shooting pains, spasms, dizziness,
vertigo, joint pain, cramps, numbness in your legs, depression, tinnitus,
symptoms of fibromyalgia, and/or memory loss - you may have a neurotoxicity
due to Aspartame Disease. I had people and students both show great concern
saying "I suffer from this and I have this, is it reversible?" It is
prevalent and is a serious health concern. My recommendations are to be
vigilant when grocery shopping by reading the ingredients on the labels of
the food products you purchase. Making little changes now will have a huge
impact on your quality of life in the future.
Beachwood Chiropractic & Rehab
212 Atlantic City Blvd. Suite 1
Beachwood, NJ 08722
Phone: 732-814-2200
Fax: 732-608-0408
www.BeachwoodChiropractic.com