A History of Bad Medical Advice

“Trust your doctor” or so goes the saying. You wouldn’t blindly trust a car salesman. You’d ask a lot of questions to see if a car is right for you. But most of us have been conditioned to believe our doctors are infallible. To question their judgment is akin to blasphemy. Students of medical history know better.

Bloodletting

Bloodletting was a popular treatment for all manner of ailments, widely used for more than 3,000 years. In 19th century Europe, bloodletting reached the height of its popularity.

In order to understand the rationalization of bleeding patients in order to “get them better” a (somewhat) convincing argument for the practice was made by the father of medicine, Hippocrates.

Hippocrates believed illness was caused by an imbalance of one or more of the four humors: blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile. To correct the imbalance, bloodletting, purging, catharsis, diuresis, and other treatments were utilized. Bloodletting became the most popular means of balancing the humors and “restoring health.”

Famous bleedings (Quoted from The History of Bloodletting)

When Charles II (1630–1685) suffered a seizure he was immediately treated with 16 ounces of bloodletting from the left arm followed by another 8 ounces from cupping. Then he endured a vigorous regimen of emetics, enemas, purgatives, and mustard plasters followed by more bleeding from the jugular veins. He had more seizures and received further treatment with herbs and quinine. In total he had about 24 ounces of blood taken before he died.

After riding in snowy weather, George Washington (1732–1799) developed a fever and respiratory distress. Under the care of his three physicians he had copious amounts of blood drawn, blisterings, emetics, and laxatives. He died the next night of what has been diagnosed retrospectively as epiglottitis and shock. His medical treatment aroused significant controversy, particularly the bloodletting.

The tools used in bloodletting included various cutting instruments, lancets, fleams, and the medicinal leech, Hirudo medicinalis.

Presently, bloodletting is rarely seen as beneficial and it is used in only a select few instances, such as severe cases of hypertension.

Smoking Cigarettes is Good For You

It is common knowledge that smoking is bad for your health. This knowledge is so commonplace now that many of us take it for granted. For decades, tobacco companies used doctors, and actors portraying doctors, to raise confidence in the safety of their products.

These promotions were very successful, and many doctors, especially throat doctors, were not only assuring the public that cigarette smoking wasn’t bad, they claimed smoking was healthy and could even be used as a treatment for throat irritation. Beyond recommendations, doctors were also hired to do pseudoscientific studies, studies paid for by the tobacco industry that consistently produced unrealistic results that supported smoking. When physicians and science are for sale, lies can be perpetuated for a very long time.

According to Stanford,

The list of recruitments who served as experts testifying on behalf of tobacco interests includes a virtual who’s who of leading otolaryngologists in the 20th century, including many leading head and neck cancer surgeons,” Jackler said.

In 1949, the average physician income was $11,058. In that era, a $5,000 payment — which was common from tobacco companies to otolaryngologists — represented a major inducement.

Even after the Surgeon General’s Report of 1964 definitively linked smoking with cancer of the voice box (larynx), the otolaryngology departmental chairs of four major universities testified before Congress in opposition to the findings.

Despite the fact that doctors are ethically bound to put the health of their patients before corporate profits, we have numerous historical examples of how industry can corrupt science. This kind of practice continues to this day.

Eat a High Carb Low Fat Diet

The USDA food pyramid was a low fat, high carbohydrate diet that was far from healthy. Our bodies are not designed to eat like this, but the government and many medical doctors still recommended it. The food pyramid was based on very expensive, highly flawed science.

During the 1980s, nearly a million Americans a year were dying of heart disease. Something had to be done. Problem is, what was done was worse than doing nothing at all.

Low-fat options are everywhere. In lieu of real ingredients like natural fats, highly processed or synthetic chemicals are added to boost flavor and appeal such as artificial flavors, artificial colors, high-fructose corn syrup, amino sweet (aspartame), MSG, and so on. Food-like products are marketed as food, and the differences between good (healthy) fats and bad (unhealthy) fats are lost on many people.

Healthy fats were discovered when anthropologists noted that arctic people, such as the Inuit and Yupik, ate high protein, high fat diets and yet had very low rates of heart disease. This called into question the demonization of fat.

According to Harvard:

Your body needs some fat from food. It’s a major source of energy. It helps you absorb some vitamins and minerals. Fat is needed to build cell membranes, the vital exterior of each cell, and the sheaths surrounding nerves. It is essential for blood clotting, muscle movement, and inflammation. For long-term health, some fats are better than others. Good fats include monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats. Bad ones include industrial-made trans fats. Saturated fats fall somewhere in the middle.

…Omega-3 fatty acids may help prevent and even treat heart disease and stroke. In addition to reducing blood pressure, raising HDL, and lowering triglycerides, polyunsaturated fats may help prevent lethal heart rhythms from arising.

Replacing fats with carbohydrates may indeed slightly lower heart disease, but its close cousin, cardiovascular disease, often afflicts those who follow high carb diets along with countless other health problems such as obesity and diabetes. The pyramid and the new program, choose my plate.gov dietary guidelines (which is almost as unhealthy), point Americans in the direction of chronic disease and an early grave.

Mercurial Medicines

Mercury is a neurotoxin, but in the past medical professionals didn’t understand how toxic it is to all forms of life. It was included in elixirs and ointments for thousands of years.

Qin Shi Huang, the man credited with unifying China, will probably always be best remembered for his military conquests. He was also obsessed with cheating death. Ironically, his efforts to extend his life drastically shortened it. It is believed that he died of mercury poisoning, an unintended side effect of his “immortality treatments”. His memorial was built with rivers of mercury, and an army of intricately crafted terracotta soldiers.

Mercury has been used to treat all manner of diseases, none of them successfully. Mercury is 500- 1,000 times more toxic than lead. It was the active ingredient in quicksilver, an ointment that was used as a remedy for a number of skin diseases. Mercury was later used as a treatment for syphilis and used in many other ointments, in steam baths, pills, and other concoctions. Mercury treatments often caused mercury poisoning, a condition that if not fatal could also manifest as tooth loss; mouth, throat, and skin ulcerations; or neurological damage.

Today, mercury, under the name thimerosal, can be found in hundreds of prescription and over the counter medicines. It continues to be used in lotions, creams, eye drops, eardrops, and nasal sprays. Mercury is widely used in dentistry and it is still used in many vaccines. Mercury also has many names, making it harder for consumers to identify.

Mercury is also known as:

  • Thimerosal
  • Phenylmercuric acetate (PMA)
  • Phenylmercuric nitrate (PMN)
  • Mercuric acetate (MA)
  • Mercuric nitrate (MN)
  • Merbromin (MB)
  • Mercuric oxide yellow (MOY)

Chemotherapy Kills Faster Than No Treatment At All

There is no finer example of bad medical advice than advising patients to undergo chemotherapy. Most people dismiss the idea that you can cure any cancer naturally with over a 90% success rate. Generally speaking, people do not put much faith in alternative medicine or natural cures. Even those who ascribe to the idea of a natural and organic lifestyle tend to dismiss natural cancer treatments, thinking that cancer is too big, too strong, and too deadly for alternative medicine.

New research is confirming what the most committed natural practitioners already knew. It is likely that the radiation and chemotherapy that are used as treatments are too deadly, too heavy handed for cancer.

Dr. Jones’s study published in the journal Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences shows chemotherapy is killing cancer patients four times faster than no treatment at all.

Conclusion

Bad advice is everywhere, and it can stem from every profession, even the medical profession. History has taught us that there are times the experts are nearly unified in their advice and are still dead wrong. The reasoning has always been the same, that the benefits outweigh the risks. When you’re given bad medical advice, you run the risk while the benefits belong to the physician. Ultimately our health is too important to trust the experts without doing our own research.

Suggested Reading:
Sources:



4 Steps to True Health

So you’ve decided it’s time to get healthy, but you’re not sure where to start. You know you need to lose weight. And maybe, just maybe, you should stop being a couch potato.

So what now? Prepackaged meals? A gym membership? Less caffeine, chocolate, and alcohol?

There are a hundred things you can do to be a little bit healthier. There are 4 things you can do if you want to become truly healthy.

  • Eat a truly healthy diet
  • Detox
  • Exercise
  • Get good sleep

The Healthiest Diet

A truly healthy diet isn’t found in a package. It doesn’t have a fancy name. It is a diet that eliminates artificial flavors, colors, preservatives, MSG, trans fats, and GMOs. Stop eating sugar. A full 80% of the diet consists of fresh, raw, organic produce – more vegetables than fruit. It does not include processed, boxed, packaged foods. It is a diverse, organic diet filled with nutrient dense foods and plenty of clean water.

Eat salads. Make big salads (at least 6 cups) with at least 10 different vegetables. Add fresh garlic, turmeric, and fresh cracked pepper.

Detox

It is not enough in this day and age to simply eat the best food. Though diet will always be the foundation of health, our toxic environment requires us to cleanse our bodies of chemicals, heavy metals, parasites, and pathogens twice a year (or more) if we are to achieve optimum health.

Although a full cleanse involves the entire body, the gut is the first and primary focus. The goal is to cleanse the intestinal tract of bad bacteria and Candida and repopulate it with good bacteria. Candida feeds on our body’s tissues as well as our nutrients as does bad bacteria. Both exude toxins. Cleaning up the gut also aids the immune system. Two of the best things you can do to aid in a detox is to drink a lot of cranberry lemonade sweetened with stevia, and eat salads with garlic.

Exercise

Exercise is crucial for a healthy body and a healthy immune system. If you are a couch potato, start slow. Walking and rebounding are gentle exercises that help the lymph circulate in the body. There is no pump for the lymphatic system.

Do bodyweight squats. It’s likely the best exercise there is. We are naturally built to squat. It does much more than just build leg muscles.

For those who cannot squat, “get ups” are a wonderful exercise that works out the whole body. Simply lie down on the floor on your back. Now roll to the left and get up. Lie back down. Roll to the right and get up. Each time be sure to use the other leg to push off the floor. Each day, do as many as you can. You will find the number rises quickly. This is a great work out for the beginner. If that’s not possible try getting in and out of a chair repeatedly. A chair that you can lower as you progress is great for this. As you get stronger, try using as little momentum as possible.

Sleep

Is coffee what gets you through he day? How many hours of sleep do you need? If you sleep more on your days off, catching up on lost sleep, you are not getting enough. How many hours do you need to sleep a night when you are on vacation? For most adults, eight hours is the absolute minimum. If possible, get off of any and all drugs, and that includes caffeine.

Recommended Supplements:

Further Reading:               

 




Four Steps to Feeling Well for Those New to Natural Health

If you’ve made the decision that you are truly ready to change your lifestyle and claim your birthright of vibrant health, these are the steps to achieve your goal:

Eat Right

If you drill down health to its most critical and essential element, diet plays the most important role. We’ve all heard the old adage, “You are what you eat.” Once you understand the critical role diet plays in health, you will understand the absolute truth of this statement. Your diet provides every single building block your body uses to create cells, to repair tissue, to move, to breathe, to exist.

Common sense tells us, the better your diet, the better your health. But what is the best diet? Hopefully we all know the traditional American diet ranks at the bottom of the list. But which of the many alternative diets hold the top position? Vegan? Vegetarian? Paleo? There are many to choose from. But I suggest, you don’t choose.

We are all individuals with particular likes and dislikes. Unfortunately, we are habitual creatures who seem hell bent on getting stuck in the same patterns and the same ruts. But this is a time of change, so… Take the first step–clean out your cupboards and pantry. Toss out all of your processed foods. Get rid of anything with artificial flavors, colors, or preservatives. No MSG. No trans fats. No high fructose corn syrup. No foods that could be GMO, and that includes refined sugar. Toss it ALL out.

Next, you shop. A healthy diet consists of a wide variety of whole, unadulterated, unprocessed, organic foods. Meat and eggs should be free range AND organic. If you choose dairy (know that goat milk and cheese may be a better choice) be absolutely sure you choose organic. Milk is actually good for you if it is not pasteurized, but good luck finding it. And as far as meat goes, remember if you choose to eat meat, you are eating off of the top of the food chain. If that animal was fed GMO grains, you don’t want to eat it.

Vegetables should be the basis of your diet. A full 80% of your diet should consist of raw, organic, whole vegetables and fruits, more vegetables than fruit.

Grains should be whole. Why lose most of the nutrients? Remember, this new lifestyle of yours is all about nutrient dense foods.

Avoid the trap of becoming a vegan, vegetarian, or other “good” diet follower who has simply found a new way to be a junk food junkie. Processed food is processed food. Choose a great homemade smoothie instead of “healthy” cookies.

Get To Know Your Local Farmer’s Markets! 

A good farmer’s market (not a boutique gathering where they sell jellies and such) will carry the freshest food at the best prices.  Find one that sells organic meat as well as organic fruits and vegetables. Even if you have to drive across town or out into the countryside, the trip is worth it.

Detox

Good stuff in, bad stuff out. Your body has been accumulating parasites, yeast, heavy metals, and a full array of chemicals your whole life. It’s time to cleanse your body and help it to flush out all of these unwanted substances while cleansing your colon to aid in both digestion and elimination. All of those wonderful foods that you will be putting in your body need a fully functioning digestive system to extract the nutrients that will provide your body with the building blocks it needs to repair and grow tissue, to create neurotransmitters, to create hormones, to maintain and build your immune system, and more.

Detox twice a year for the greatest benefit. And always kill excess candida and balance the gut when you do.

Check Out These Detox Articles:

Exercise

Just move. Your lymphatic system needs you to move in order for your lymph to circulate through your body. It has no pump, no other means than the movement of your muscles to circulate your lymph fluid. Try yoga, Tai Chi, walking, rebounding, anything that gets you moving. It’s okay to start off slow and gentle. You don’t need to push it. Once you achieve vibrant health you’ll want to move. It’s one of the signs that you are on the right path.

Supplements

Ideally, your nutrition will come from your food. But let’s be honest, we live in an imperfect world with farming soil stripped of its minerals. Even if the soil was rich, food loses its vitamins and minerals as it makes the journey from farm to table. So unless you are growing your own food in great soil, we suggest you consider supplementation. You may want to consider a nutritional supplement to add to your daily smoothie as well as vitamins, minerals, and supplements to aid in your detox. Source them well. You want only the best. We recommend Shillington’s Total Nutrition Formula as a nutritional supplement to add to your smoothies. For your detox, you need a supplement to kill the candida, a supplement to rebuild the flora, one to MicroDefense – Pure Encapsulations, and one to clean the intestines.

Recommended Supplements:
Further Reading:
Sources: