Everybody's
the Same, and Everybody's Different
Recent stories in the news have sounded
an alarm against nutritional supplements. These articles are
interpretations of Consumer Reports material that has
questioned their safety. The articles imply that nutritional
supplements should have approval from the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA).
The articles, and original reports,
seem to imply that nutritional supplements in general are dangerous.
A more careful inspection reveals that the issue is with specific
substances in non-nutrient products promoted for easy weight loss,
better sex, improved athletic performance, and so on. Consumer
Reports articles propose greater FDA oversight and regulation to
protect consumers from harmful effects of all dietary supplements.
But, according to its web page
fda.gov/food/dietary/supplements, FDA does regulate "both
finished dietary supplement products and dietary ingredients."
FDA assigns manufacturers of supplements the responsibility for
evaluating supplement safety. But if FDA finds a problem it "is
responsible for taking action."
These recent articles appear to be a
part of a years-long campaign to bring the nutritional supplement
industry under the authoritarian control of the FDA and the
pharmaceutical industry. But, as many of us know, greater FDA
oversight will not make anything safer; and this strategy may result
only in the pharmaceutical industry increasing its profits and power.
Mercola.com ("Consumer Reports Joins Pharma Campaign Against
Dietary Supplements", August 09, 2016) provides a fairly good
view of the controversy. Andrew Saul at orthomolecular.org reminds us
that there have been "No Deaths From Vitamins. Absolutely None".
Orthomolecular's August 12, 2016 "Supplements Are Safe: Who is
Lying to You Now?" addresses Consumer Reports' study,
also.
FDA scorecard
It's no secret that FDA-approved,
doctor-prescribed drugs are a major cause of death in the U.S. each
year. Many of these deaths are the result of patients taking drugs as
prescribed by the doctor. In 2000 an article appearing in the Journal
of the American Medical Association estimated that prescription
drugs kill 106,000 people annually. Recently an article in the
British Journal of Medicine written by researchers at the
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine claims that medical error, including
the use of prescription drugs as prescribed, kills 251,000 each year
and is the third leading cause of death in the U.S. after cancer and
heart disease. In 2010 researcher Robert Wachter wrote that
diagnostic errors, which get no attention, contribute to many medical
errors. A study published in January 2016 in Anesthesiology
found that half of 277 surgeries observed involved medication errors
and adverse drug events and that "there is a substantial
potential for medication-related harm" in the surgical setting.
And we should not forget the overuse and abuse of antibiotics that
has induced antibiotic resistance in bacteria, a phenomenon known to
FDA, which did nothing about it, since at least 1970.
Also noteworthy in this context is the
outbreak in 1989 in the U.S. of a disease called eosinophilia-myalgia
syndrome (EMS) that caused over 37 deaths. When it was determined
that the amino acid tryptophan was associated with EMS, the FDA in
1991 banned its sale. Closer epidemiological study found that a
specific batch from a Japanese company using genetically engineered
bacteria to make the tryptophan was responsible for a deadly impurity
in the amino acid. The FDA, however, whose expressed policy was to
promote biotechnology, attempted - successfully - to obscure the fact
that an impurity from genetic engineering was the cause of EMS.
Interestingly, in 1991 Michael R. Taylor accepted a newly created
post at FDA, "Deputy Commissioner for Policy". He authored
the FDA's guidance that appeared in 1992 on genetically engineered
food. To accept this FDA position, Taylor left his job as a lawyer
and lobbiest for biotech giant Monsanto. In 1996 Taylor left the FDA
and returned to work for Monsanto as Vice President for Public
Policy.
We should not forget the letter written
in 2009 by nine FDA scientists to then President-elect Obama alleging
that the agency was "fundamentally broken" and that "there
is an atmosphere at FDA in which the honest employee fears the
dishonest employee...." The letter further alleged "systemic
corruption and wrongdoing that permeates all levels of FDA." The
letter said that FDA scientists were "ordered, intimidated, and
coerced... to manipulate data in violation of the law" (wsj.com,
"FDA Scientsts Ask Obama to Restructure Drug Agency", Jan.
8, 2009). Following on this, in 2012, six FDA whistleblowers filed a
lawsuit against FDA for unconstitutionally targeting and monitoring
them. The lawsuit alleged that FDA "converted private emails...
initiated searches and seizures..." violated their "right
to free speech..." and so on.
The FDA/conventional
medical/pharmaceutical sector has serious, deep-rooted problems that
need to be corrected before it points a finger at the nutritional
supplement industry.
Redefining "Expert"
The FDA, however, was not responsible
for the Consumer Reports atricles. Consumer Reports
chief medical advisor and medical editor, Marvin Lipman, M.D.
probably was. He's written articles such as "The dangers of
dietary supplements", and recommends that - to be safe - one
should research supplements on "trustworthy sites such as
ConsumerReports.org." Another expert on the Consumer
Reports panel was pediatrician Paul Offit, M.D. who famously
called Linus Pauling, Ph.D. a quack for recommending high doses of
vitamin C, even as he, Offit, recommends high doses of vaccines for
infants. A July 26, 2016 Consumer Reports article claims that
"an expert panel of independent doctors and dietary
supplement-researchers" created the report, but the panel was
stacked with people who oppose even the proper use of nutritional
supplements.
In fact, some of the "supplements"
Consumer Reports warns against in its report do have
potential for harm without contributing benefit. But compared to the
number of nutritional supplements produced and marketed responsibly
that are beneficial and have little or no unwanted side-effects, the
Consumer Reports picks are hardly mentionable.
Quick and Easy
Advertising that promotes a quick and
easy fix for our health problems, whether by dietary supplements or
prescription drugs, usually is too good to be true. But sometimes we
might go for it anyway, maybe because we've been tricked, or because
we haven't been responsible for our health and we want to get back
what we think we've lost. Marketing is the poblem here: some products
that claim to be dietary supplements do contain ingredients that are
potentially dangerous for some people. Furthermore, our culture,
fragmented and specialized as it is, encourages us to rely on "the
doctor" for our health care because we're performing our own
specialized tasks and we don't have time to be better informed. This
detachment makes us dependent on doctors and questionable
"supplements", and makes us externally dependent on the
dangerous inefficiency of the diagnosis-drug match game: "I need
someone or something 'out there' to be healthy."
An example of how this
perception-reversal is maintained is in the concept of diagnosis. A
medical diagnosis is the process of using a patient's symptoms,
history, and medical tests to identify or name her/his apparent
disease. Diagnosis is important to match the disease with a developed
drug or medical procedure. (And it's important for insurance
companies.) With a diagnosis, "the doctor" can write a
prescription that the patient will need to take possibly
indefinitely, because "health depends on it".
But diagnoses usually do not address
underlying causes. Conventional medical practice deals in
symptom-based diagnosis and treatment. It is not equipped to provide
support for biochemical, nutritional, or metabolic imbalances - just
the idea is met with scorn and acqusations of quackery.
Reputable nutritional supplement
companies that produce very high quality products also will promote
their products relative to a diagnosis. In some cases, this is useful
and effective. However, relying on the diagnosis-nutritional
supplement matching game, even when it is successful, obscures the
likelihood that the diagnosed disease is merely a manifest symptom of
deeper nutritional, metabolic imbalance. In order to compete with the
conventional system, nutritional supplement makers must use the same
approach.
In fact, there is no reliable way for a
doctor to know a patient's nutritional insufficiencies. Hair, blood,
urine, saliva, feces, and so on have only a relative value in
determining what can be recommended or prescribed to the patient.
There is no reliable way, except for one.
Doctor, Diagnosis, Drugs
You're not feeling right - you don't
know why - so you go to the doctor's office. The doctor looks you
over, arrives at a diagnosis, prescribes medicine, and bills the
insurance company.
Usually the medicine is a toxin that
interrupts a metabolic pathway or interferes with a normal process in
the body. Calcium channel blockers, cholesterol lowering statins, and
proton pump inibitors are examples of these toxins. These "medicines"
are among the most prescribed in the U.S.
And yet each of these three has a very
good "natural alternative" (a phrase that demonstrates the
reversed perception: why is the doctor's first choice in
re-establishing the patient's health a toxin with harmful
side-effects that may extend the patient's poor health?) Health
imbalances for which the doctor prescribes potentially dangerous
"medicines" may be caused by dietary, nutritional
insufficiencies and lifestyle stresses that may be specific to the
patient. Instead of first addressing basic nutritional needs to
support normal physiological function, the doctor prescribes a
substance that further compromises normal function, a substance he
prescribes to everyone with the same apparent symptoms, as if the
cause of the diagnosed disease is the same from patient to patient.
Calcium channel blockers are usually
prescribed for high blood pressure and hypertension. Magnesium is
known as the natural calcium channel blocker and calmative. It's also
the consensus that a majority of the U.S. population is magnesium
deficient. Heart disease is one of the top three causes of death each
year in the U.S. Insufficient magnesium is associated with
cardiovascular (as well as all-cause) mortality. Magnesium is
critical for many important metabolic reactions in the human body.
Your doctor may discover that your
cholesterol numbers are higher than the established quantified
standard conventionally agreed upon by the experts. And even though
this has nothing to do with your original purpose in going to the
doctor, he may want to prescribe a statin drug that blocks the body's
normal and natural production of cholesterol.
Cholesterol is one of the most
important molecules in the body. It is essential in the structure of
human cell membranes. Stress and gender hormones and vitamin D are
metabolites of cholesterol, and it is necessary in tissue repair and
other functions. Except for a small number of people who may be
genetically predisposed to maintaining very high blood cholesterol,
inhibiting the cholesterol metabolic pathway can produce health
problems. The use of niacin, a B-complex vitamin, to moderate
cholesterol, as pioneered by psychiatrist Abram Hoffer, M.D., has
been the safe "alternative" for many years. Increasing
one's daily fiber consumption and improving one's food choices also
might be helpful in modulating blood cholesterol that's considered
high. Since cholesterol is one of the body's ways of controlling
inflammation, eliminating the causes of inflammation (food
sensitivities, mental and emotional stress, poor sleep, and so on)
will be helpful.
One of the deadliest doctor-prescribed
medicines is the proton pump inhibitor. These drugs are designed to
reduce acid production in the stomach, which is identified as a cause
of "acid reflux disease". But when we understand that, in
most cases, acid reflux is the result of too little hydrochloric acid
production possibly from too little chloride in the diet, we get a
glimpse of the tragic folly that is conventional medicine and drug
prescribing in America. Proton pump inhibitor use has been associated
with poor magnesium absorption and bone fractures, among other
things.
If, on your visit to your doctor, he
finds that you have high blood pressure, he may prescribe a calcium
channel blocker and tell you to avoid table salt. Table salt is
sodium chloride, a main source for the body's chloride dependency.
However, it is not the chloride that's contributing to your high
blood pressure, it's probably the sodium. And though sodium is
necessary for normal health, medical scientists have identified it in
certain amounts as causal in high blood pressure, and they tell us to
limit our salt intake. Magnesium and potassium supplementation can
help normalize blood pressure.
If you've been using table salt that
contains an aluminosilicate anti-caking agent, this may represent
another layer of complexity to your health. Aluminum is a very good
acid neutralizer. Sodium aluminosilicate is approved by FDA as a
"generally recognized as safe" food additive. But aluminum
is a neurotoxin and continues to be explored in research as a causal
factor in the development of Alzheimer's disease. Aluminum has no
biological function in the human body. It is toxic.
Once you begin taking proton pump
inhibitors the pH of your stomach juice will become even less acidic.
Normal stomach pH should be very acidic, roughly 1.5 to 2.5. This low
pH is necessary to begin digestion of protein foods and activation of
the very important enzyme, pepsin. Without this and other proteolytic
enzymes, you will limit absorption of amino acids from the
gastrointestinal tract into your body.
If your high cholesterol is the result
of chronic, generalized inflammation, a contributing factor may be
poor glutathione production. Glutathione is the body's endogenous
anti-inflammatory enzyme - possibly the most important in-cell enzyme
in the body. The body's cells make glutathione from three amino acids
absorbed from the gastrointestinal tract into the liver. Therefore,
the proteolytic enzyme action on dietary proteins, with glutathione
production in view, is very important.
Glutathione neutralizes reactive oxygen
species that are produced in cells as a result of normal energy
production. That is, energy production in the body's cells always
occurs with free radicals as a by-product. Glutathione, along with
other enzymes, neutralizes those free radicals. Without glutathione
these free radicals may lead to generalized inflammation, which is a
cause of many of our chronic diseases such as cancer and heart
disease.
The signs of nutrition deficiency
diseases (rickets, scurvy, pellagra, and beri-beri for example)
represent the end stage of the disease process that likely has been
ongoing for some time in the form of other noticeable, or
not-so-noticeable, imbalances. For example, Linus Pauling believed
that athersclerosis was a hidden or overlooked sign of scurvy and
suggested high-dose ascorbic acid and the amino acid lysine to
correct the problem. We want our food to provide us with all of the
nutrition materials that we need for good health, and this may be
possible for a few of us, but not for all of us. Conventionally
trained nutritionists give us information based on the current
medical dogma but they resist new, better information. And since
everybody's the same and everybody's different it's hard to
determne appropriate requirements for essential vitamins and minerals
with accuracy for every person. But it can be done.
In addition to harmful dietary aids,
over-the-counter drugs, and prescription drugs, there are relatively
safe supplements that have a desired effect but do not benefit the
highest potential of human function, and do have hidden side-effects.
If these supplements are consumed for a specific purpose and they
achieve that purpose, then they should be in the category of drugs,
not nutritional supplements. Their side-effect may not be as
pronounced as that experienced from prescription drugs or hyped
weight-loss formulas, but if they take something in exchange for
whatever they give they are not nutritional. Fish oil supplements
fall into this category. But this is not to say that these should be
controlled by the pharmaceutical industry or medical doctors.
Indicator Muscle Testing
The only way to determine if this
specific nutritional supplement in this specific dose is beneficial
and without side effects for this specific patient is to obtain
immediate feedback from the bodymind of the patient. This kind of
feedback can be obtained using indicator muscle testing.
Indicator muscle testing is not a
muscle test to determine the quantitative strength of a muscle. A
young weight lifter's deltoid muscle is much stronger than the
deltoid muscle of an elderly, sedentary woman. Both the weightlifter
and elderly woman should be able to demonstrate that the muscle works
properly, however. That is, the normally healthy muscle contracts and
sustains a contraction against a moderate force, and weakens, or
demonstrates inhibition, with specific challenges. Once this proper
function of an indicator muscle is established, the muscle can be
used as an "indicator" for imbalances in the whole
bodymind.
This muscle testing is a test of a
specific muscle, the right deltoid muscle for example; it's a test of
the nerve that supplies motor and sensory function to the muscle; and
it's a test of the polarized electrical current in the perineural
tissue that surrounds every millimeter of neuron in the body. The
muscle will not function properly without its nerve supply, but the
motor and sensory neurons in the nerve will not function without the
direct current (DC) in the perineural sheath. In fact, the neuron
will die without the perineural DC.
The "imbalances" found in the
bodymind using indicator muscle testing relate to specific loci on
the body that have a specific electromagnetic frequency that
resonates with the electromagnetic frequency of a nutrient - a
vitamin, mineral, amino acid, or fatty acid. In the electromagnetic
body, these imbalance-loci are called "currents of injury",
in general. In other words, there is not a place on the body labelled
"vitamin C" but there is a place that has a high resonance
value with vitamin C. If that place, when specified, causes an
indicator muscle to weaken, we say that there is a current of injury
there, and that supplying vitamin C will correct that current of
injury and help in balancing the body's electrical-energy system.
With the knowledge and practical
application of the muscle test as a feedback mechanism that provides
the bodymind's reaction to specific nutrients and drugs, our
understanding of the use of these substances changes. We begin to
have a more basic and comprehensive perception of the human bodymind
as electromagnetic and not simply as mechanical or chemical. In fact,
our rigid belief that the bodymind is purely mechanical or chemical
limits and inhibits the holistic perception of its electromagnetic
nature. Indicator muscle testing reinforces the idea that the body is
an irreducible whole organism. In this view, we see that all
substances taken into the body have an impact on its energy system
and, therefore, that all medicine is energy medicine - some
contributes to and supports the body's energy, while some compromises
the body's energy.
Dr. William Conder
September 2016