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Sunday 28 December 2014

Use Homeopathy and stay healthy for a long time!

People who use Homeopathy to keep themselves healthy, and help them recover from illness, stay healthy over the long-term. This has been the experience of many people who rely on this highly effective, and completely safe, medical therapy for over 200 years.

Now, what so many of us have believed and experienced for so long, to our benefit, has been reinforced by academic research. And Homeopathy has been found to have a long-lasting benefit.

The question the researchers asked was "How healthy are chronically ill patients after 8 years of homeopathic treatment?" and they set up a long-term observational study to discover the answer. A total of 3,709 patients were studied, and their perceived change in both complaint severity, and quality of life was analysed. The conclusion was simple, concise and extremely clear.

"Patients who seek homeopathic treatment are likely to improve considerably" and "these effects persist for as long as 8 years".

To read more about this research, see these links:

Claudia M Witt, Rainer Lüdtke, Nils Mengler, and Stefan N Willich
and
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1298309/

So if you suffer from an illness, especially if it is a long-term illness, and despite ongoing conventional medical treatment; or if you just want to stay healthy, you no longer have to believe the 'there is no evidence' school of thought, so loved by our mainstream media!

There is plenty of evidence that Homeopathy works, safely and effectively.

And the main evidence comes from people who use it!

Friday 19 December 2014

New 'Game-Changing' Heart Drug. Or new threat to our health

Pulse announced today (19th December 2014) that a new 'game-changing' heart drug was to be fast-tracked through the drug approval system. The drug is called LCZ696 and is being developed by Novartis. It is a combination of two 'antihypertensive' drugs, Valsartan (Diovan), an 'angiotension II receptor blocker, and a new drug, Sacubitril, a 'neprilysis inhibitor'.

So, as with most conventional medical drugs, the purpose and function of the new drug is to 'block' and 'inhibit' bodily functions

As a result, I predict danger, and massive harm to the patients who will be given this drug, probably as soon as September 2015. But, of course, I could be wrong! This could be a first for the Big Pharma industry - a safe drug - that actually works.

But this is not the usual process. Normally, drugs are introduced by pharmaceutical companies as 'game-changing', and doctors, the NHS parrot these hopes, and the media comply with such assessments, without question. Then, reality begins to dawn!
  • Soon, 'side-effects' are noted. Then 'adverse reactions'. These are downplayed, balanced by some game of 'risk-benefit' analysis.
  • Then, when the harm the drug is causing becomes more obvious, drug regulators place them under restriction, and place 'black-box' warnings on the packaging. But the drug is too profitable, and doctors who have prescribed it are reluctant to admit that they may have damaged their patients. So it is kept on sale, and the suffering continues.
  • Then, the harm caused by the drug begins to clearly outweigh any possible benefits, which it has been found anyway, have been severely over-hyped.
  • So the drug is withdrawn, as quietly as possible. Or on some occasions, drug regulators will actually ban it.
I have described this process elsewhere. Will this new 'wonder drug' fit into this regular, too predictable pattern? I intend to follow and report on the progress of this drug on this blog over the next few years - so we will see!

But the signs are not good. Both drugs restrict, interfare and meddle with the normal functioning of the body. Fast-tracked drugs have had, in the past, an even worse record then those that go through the normal process. And Valsartan, one of the drugs used in this new combination, already has a record of serious 'disease-inducing effects'.

Valsartan (Diovan).
Shortness of breath, pounding heartbeat (or weak pulse and slow heart rate), fluttering in the chest, weakness, confusion, rapid weight gain, fainting, muscle weakness, headache, dizziness, flu symptoms, nausea, stomach pains, diarrhoea, back pain, blurred vision, skin rash - et al.

And as Wikipedia has already pointed out, tests on this new drug have already identified that the problems are likely to be similar to all antihypertensive drugs.

               "Common adverse effects the main study were cough, hyperkalemia (high potassium levels in the blood, which can be caused by valsartan), renal dysfunction, and hypotension (low blood pressure, a common side effect of antihypertensives). 12% of the patients withdrew from the study during the run-in phase because of such events."

Yet the European Medicines Agency (EMA) are happy to fast-track new drugs if "the medicine is expected to be of major public health interest particularly from the point of view of therapeutic innovation".
In the Pulse article it outlines what Novartis are saying about the new drug, prior to launch.
               "Treatment with LCZ696 was shown to significantly reduce cardiovascular deaths and heart failure hospitalisations when compared with 'gold-standard' treatment....." with other drugs.
Pulse report that 'GP experts' have told them that the "drug could be a ‘game changer’ in the management of heart failure, because it appears to be so much more effective than established treatments".

So LCZ696 is really something for us all to look forward to! It is already being proclaimed as another triumph for the conventional medical establishment, who cannot get it to us quickly enough! And naturally, nowhere in the article is anything mentioned about side-effects, adverse reactions, or disease inducing reactions to the drug!

So, just watch this space over the next few years, and we will see whether the hype of the conventional medical establishment, backed by Big Pharma funding, is correct. Or whether my more mundane prediction is more accurate!



Thursday 11 December 2014

The rise of Superbugs. The failure of conventional medicine

It has been reported that 'drug-resistant infections' will kill an extra 10 million people a year worldwide by 2050 - more deaths than currently caused by cancer apparently.  Already, it is estimated that they are causing about 700,000 deaths per year.

Jim O'Neill, who was appointed by the Prime Minister to review the problem of antimicrobial resistance, has also estimated that the costs of this disaster would be around £63 trillion.

The deaths would be caused by the many new Superbugs, and by resistance to drugs once thought capable of treating diseases such as Malaria, E-Coli and TB. As a result he predicts serious population reduction, and a large reduction of economic output. But many surgical interventions, such as joint replacements, transplant surgery, Caesarian sections, et al, will also be affected as they rely on antibiotics to prevent infections.

So what is the conclusion reached about this pending health disaster?

More and better drugs, and using these drugs in a way that will reduce the rise of resistance! Yes, the very cause of this potential disaster is seen as its solution! Indeed, some might say that this is a triumph of hope over experience! O'Neill has apparently said that some scientists were more concerned about this problem than they were about climate change.

Presumably, in order to tackle climate change, the strategy of these scientists will be to burn more fossil fuels, and to increase the amount of carbon and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere!

So if antibiotics has led to the creation of superbugs, we just need new antibiotics. The warfare waged between our bodies and the chemicals we have developed to fight and destroy many different organisms (that mostly live quite happy around and within our bodies) is to be intensified! The assumption must be that we can develop drugs so powerful the bugs and bacteria and viruses that attack us will not be able to resist anymore.

The problem with such a bellicose medical strategy is quite simple - will we ourselves be able to survive such an onslaught by Big Pharma chemical?

The lesson we need to learn is quite different - that the maintenance of health, and the recovery of good health, is not a battle between what is happening within our bodies and the efforts of the conventional medical establishment to control it. The bugs, the microbes, the viruses which the pharmaceutical companies have fought to destroy are actually part of us. We have, I believe, always lived quite happily and peacefully with MRSA until antibiotics sought to destroy it. Now, it would seem, it has evolved in a ways that can destroy us!

This is the main lesson that alternative medical therapies teaches us. Homeopathy, Herbalism, Acupuncture, Reflexology, et al, all recognise that life, and good health, is not a battle, a declaration of war against the elements that surround, and are part of us. It is all a matter of co-operation and balance. We don't need drugs that are 'anti-' anything. We don't need drugs that 'suppress' or 'block' or 'inhibit' the natural functions of our bodies.

Whatever it is that we attack with drugs will resist, adapt, and change, to such an extent that we will no longer be able to live in harmony with them. What conventional medicine has sought to do for centuries, but particularly over the last 100 years, is a road leading to inevitable disaster.

So more of the same will not help us prevent the impending disaster being predicted. What is necessary is to recognise why conventional, drug-based medicine, has been a mistake, a wrong turn, and the cause of the disaster, not its solution.

The science that has transformed our world, in terms of travel, communications, technology, and much else over the last 100 years and more, has failed to transform our health. Why? It has failed disastrously because it has never recognised the basis of illness. It studied the sick body, analysed meticulously what was happening within it, but then mistook the body's reaction to disease with the disease itself! It was, and continues to be, a fundamental mistake.

What science has so brilliantly observed was the body trying to heal itself! Fever, for example, is in most cases a defence mechanism, not a threat to health. In many similar ways, particularly with the bacteria and viruses that live alongside us, what medical science observed within the sick body was not necessarily an enemy, but a friend that should not have been attacked and destroyed. Effectively, conventional medicine has made an enemy from what should have been an ally.

In the years to come, good health is likely to become the preserve of those who recognise the difference between working alongside the body, and its incredible ability to heal itself through its immune system, and a now dominant medical system that sees illness and disease as something that has to be fought and destroyed.

The failure of antibiotics, as with the failure of all conventional drugs over the last century, is not a disaster. It is an inevitable consequence of conventional medicine's failure to understand that to live in harmony, and in good health with our world, we have to stop attacking it!

The solution to drug resistance is not more drugs. It is to discard drugs, to recognise their failure, and to move towards adopting gentler, safer, more effective medical therapies.





50% of population now on drugs that cause disease

The Health Survey for England seeks to monitor trends in the nation’s health. It has carried out a Health Survey for England each year since 1994. For their 2013 survey 8,795 adults and 2,185 children were interviewed. This year's survey, recently published, comes to these amazing conclusion, highlighting the amount of drug taking now prevalent within the UK.
  • "43% of men and 50% of women reported that they had taken at least one prescribed medicine in the last week. 
  • 22% of men and 24% of women reported that they had taken at least three prescribed medicines in the last week. 
  • This proportion increased with age, with more than half of participants aged 65-74 and more than 70 per cent of those aged 75 and over having taken at least three prescribed medicines.
The Conventional Medical Establishment (led by the NHS, and our GPs) agree that each of these drugs cause side-effects and 'adverse reactions'. What is not admitted is that these 'side-effects' and 'adverse reactions' are, in truth diseases. Let's reflect on what this means.
  • Pharmaceutical drugs are causing 'side-effects' (that is, creating disease) in 43% of men, and 50% of women. 
  • That percentage of people taking multiple drugs are likely to be suffering from more 'side-effects' (disease) not just from each drug, but from the unknown consequences of taking more than one drug - polypharmacy.
  • Older people, those whose bodies are less likely to withstand the assault made on them by these drugs, are most at risk of polypharmacy.
One doctor, interviewed by the BBC Today programme this morning (11th December 2014) said that this was a good thing, because the drug were 'preventing future disease'. Naturally, the BBC allowed him to get away with this bland re-assurance, a subterfuge so often practiced by conventional medicine.
  • Drugs and vaccines are good for us!
  • We are healthier, and living longer, because we have access to pharmaceutical drugs!
  • There are no dangers to taking prescribed drugs!
The dangers of conventional drugs and vaccines are rarely, if ever discussed. So it is small wonder that so many people take them, thinking (as they have been told) that they keep them health, and not knowing the full enormity of the harm they cause.

So we now experience disease at epidemic proportions, some of them diseases that have only been known since pharmaceutical drug taking took off with the NHS in the late 1940's, 1950's onwards.

Autism, Alzheimers, Arthritis, Asthma, Cancer, Crohns, Diabetes, Depression, Eczema, Epilepsy, Heart Disease, ME, Ulcerative Colitis, and so many more.

And for each of these diseases, one of the known causes are the prescribed drugs that so many people are now taking. Some of these known causes are admitted by the Conventional Medical Establishment. Some are actually named after the drug that caused the disease - see, for example, Steroid Induced Diabetes. Most, of course, are denied. 

But it is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the 'disease-inducing-effects', or DIEs of pharmaceutical drugs. One of the commonest drugs being prescribed are Statin drugs. Doctors continue to tell us they are 'entirely safe', and our media will not question this; but these drugs are  known to cause:
  • Muscle damage
  • Diabetes
  • Cataracts
  • Kidney damage
  • Liver failure
The Health Survey showed that 40 million prescriptions of Simvastatin, the most 'popular' Statin drug, were made in one year. What proportion of these patients would need to develop any of the above DIEs before it caused an epidemic? How many of these would then need some other form of drug to correct the 'side-effect'? And what 'side-effects' would these drugs cause?

We are not told! We do not know because we do not ask. Our mainstream media is asleep, content to parrot the excuses of the conventional medical establishment. Big Pharma are never challenged. Perhaps they are too big to fail, to powerful to challenge.

So the NHS is in financial difficult, once again. GP's need more money. Hospitals need more money. And the political parties are once more in the process of out-bidding each other before the General Election. "We will spend more than they will!" So more money will be spent on more drugs and vaccines, and the additional DIEs this creates will, in a short time, create another funding crisis, with more demands for more spending.

Until, that is, we begin to recognise the the Conventional Medical System is failing, failing badly, and is making us sicker the more it medicates us.