How much do pharmaceuticals spend... to get your money?

Going to the mailbox today I found a letter - sorry, an advertisement - addressed to my mother-in-law, who currently lives with us. Knowing she wasn't going to be opening this junk mail, I was curious to see what exactly was inside. You see, it was from Walgreens and the only thing it seemed to be advertising was the flu shot. This, of course, is not really unexpected. One can find ads for the flu shot pretty much everywhere one looks at this time of year, and it's only going to get worse. I'm certain I will soon be seeing the ubiquitous, massive billboards by the local hospitals again telling us all to cover when we sneeze, wash our hands constantly, and oh, oh oh - don't forget your flu shot!

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What's the difference between a licensed doctor and a quack?

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It's hard to tell, sometimes. What does elevate doctors of modern medicine above those who make up medical treatment procedures willy-nilly? It seems that a lot of people believe the licensed doctor of modern medicine has more skill and talent for no other reason than that some accredited school said so.

But what is the solution to this kind of thinking? Should we go back to the days of snake oil and medical lies? Thinking about it that way, is "go back" actually an accurate term to describe where we're at now? It would imply that we're actually on the right track, and that life is good and everyone's either healthy or well cared-for. Even a quick glance around will tell you that's just not true.

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Quick Get-Healthy Checklist: Ten Things to Fight a Cold

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Okay, so you've got that sniffle-tickle-scratchythroat feeling approaching. It is unsurprisingly common in this day and age, at this time of year. I see all sorts of friends, family, and co-workers out of the office, staying at home with the sick kids, just trying to recover for days and days. But when given the proper environment, the body can resist instantly or fight off a cold in about a day or so. What do you do? Run through this checklist and make these part of your get-healthy quick routine:

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7 Ways to Preserve Fruits and Vegetables

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  When it was autumn the fathers gathered the barley and wheat and corn that they had planted, and found that it had grown so well that they would have quite enough for the long winter that was coming.
  "Let us thank God for it all," they said.

THE FIRST THANKSGIVING DAY by Kate Douglas Wiggin and Nora A. Smith

In modern America, foods such as cheese, sauerkraut, picklets, jellies, jams, and smoked meat are prepared more for their taste than for their natural ability to keep long on the shelf. In fact, store-bought preparation of these types of foods can sometimes even include artificial preservatives so that their shelf life is extended even further in an attempt to gather more dollars for the manufacturer. Along with the loss of the skills for putting aside food, activities such as bee-keeping, maple syrup creation, and so on have been delegated to hobbies - something a very few people do (and love doing), but is also forgotten by most.

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Let's Broaden Our Minds... About Cosmetics

Image by Gilberto Viciedo via Flickr

Whenever I consider beauty aids or makeup, the nerd in me always reaches out to the original Batman movie - you know, the one where Jack Nicholson did such a fantastic job as the Joker? I think about how the entire city stopped using beauty supplies because they didn't know what secret combination of chemicals in the cosmetics would kill them.

Ironically, life imitates art as much as the opposite is true when we're sold a bunch of poisonous preparations in lieu of makeup, perfumes, and skin cream. The huge difference between what we have and the fiction of Batman is that our deaths come slowly with diseases like cancer.

While coconut oil is still one of the healthiest and easiest treatments you can give to your skin, I thought I'd take a look at even more comparisons and solutions to this problem.

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MSG in your H1N1 vaccine?

H1N1 virus via Wikipedia

As perhaps further evidence, if it is needed, that pharmaceutical companies' primary interest is not in your optimal health but in your wallet and what they can extract from it, here is a small peek into one of the recent swine flu vaccines available to the public, revealing some of its unexpected and hopefully uncommon ingredients.

TruthInLabeling.org has a headline at the top of their page as of this writing that reads:

MedImmune’s H1N1 vaccine contains monosodium glutamate, hydrolyzed protein gelatin, and various forms of phosphates. See section 11, page 13 of the package insert.

If you don't want to pull up the PDF at the end of that link, here's a screenshot of what you'd be looking for, with some fun highlights:

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Airborne vs. Cold and Flu?

Although fewer people seem to be complaining that they are sick or have the flu already this year, that doesn’t mean the “season” is over. It’s important to remember that the best treatments for colds and flu are natural and may already be in your kitchen. However that is not going to stop major corporations from compiling their own unique blend of drugs, herbs, and/or vitamins into an easy-to-swallow pill or effervescent formula.

Enter Airborne.

You probably already know it. It was introduced on the sly to groceries like Trader Joe’s and billed as a new and natural medicine “invented by a teacher.” The logic, of course, being that teachers are around many sick kids and must therefore be experts on staying healthy.

Around our house, we tested Airborne in the early days when it first came out. What can you say? It was fizzy and had a strong Vitamin-C kick to it. We couldn’t really tell whether when we got better it was due to taking Airborne or just… because. However it stuck around the household for a good long while because something was better than nothing, because we didn’t know better, and because we at least didn’t want to use any drugs.

It would appear that most proponents of the medicine testify that it works to fight colds simply because of their belief that it does. To be fair, believing that you are going to get better will actually help – that idea has been proven elsewhere. But $20 for three plastic tubes of belief is a pretty high price point just to cure a cold.

By now, of course or hopefully, you have heard about the class action lawsuit about the bogus clinical investigation originally claimed as proof by Airborne. It was settled out of court, and possibly-maybe some people cashed in on the refund. No, it was not right for Airborne to essentially stage a clinical study – not at all. But mostly, they were (are) very careful to make you think it cures colds, so they were just smart enough to have found ways to sell through the loopholes in American law.

Even after all this, you may still have some Airborne left over, or are still buying and using it today. You should really stop. Not only is it a really expensive way for you to get a few vitamins and herbs that you could be more economically purchasing in other methods, but it can actually harm you.

Taking Airborne according to its instructions could land you with acute Hypervitaminosis A, which is a fancy way of saying an overdose of vitamin A. You’ll probably recover, but it’s still nothing to play around with. While we’re on the subject of Vitamin A, you should also know that you should really be consuming it along with Vitamin D, and vice-versa. The Weston A Price foundation explains how these two vitamins have a cooperative effect on each other.

Airborne contains added glutamine. Not being an expert on gluten-free living, I can only say that it is a precursor to the excitotoxin glutamate. Simply put, you should not be in a position where you need to supply additional glutamine to your diet; it should be provided naturally by the foods you choose.

There are at least three sugar substitutes in this product. Did you find them? Much like their deceptive packaging which might lead you to believe Airborne is effective against colds, finding the sugar substitutes is something you really have stop and search for. There is Acesulfame Potassium – that is, Acesulfame K, sorbitol, and sucralose (or Splenda). Depending on the type of chemical, artificial sugars should either be avoided, or avoided at all costs.

Finally, or hopefully finally, even the Vitamin C in Airborne could pose a problem. The National Council Against Health Fraud explains that adult version of Airborne has 1000 mg of vitamin C, which at the recommended dosage contains enough vitamin C to increase oxalate and urate excretion and thus may cause kidney stones.

So the next time you feel a cold coming on, skip the Airborne, and just go eat a few cloves of garlic. You’ll be better off in body as well as in pocketbook.

A special thanks to YourGlutenFreeRecipes, DO, and GC for advice and links about this article.

Additional Resources:

Who Has Time for This?

Go Ask Alice

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The Amazing Cabbage

Last weekend while attending the Weston A Price Foundation's 2009 Wise Traditions conference, we were delighted to see a wide array of healthy food offerings. There were many fermented products, and naturally one of the most prevalent was fermented cabbage, or sauerkraut.

The lunch on Saturday was served in buffet style and it was hard to choose with what to fill one's plate. Fortunately for my palate the first option was a sauerkraut that I had never encountered before. I say fortunately because never in my life have I ever tasted a better kraut. While I can only guess at the ingredients my impression of it would describe it as an "Apple Cinnamon Sauerkraut" -- strange, but delicious.

With that in mind, I would like to remind you about your vegetables, and how eating them can really keep the doctors - and their drugs - away. Cabbage, in particular.  It's such a plain, boring vegetable if you just look at the raw produce. I'll readily admit and agree with that. But it is, to me, practically the soul of umami - that strange fifth sensation that is hard to exactly describe.

A cup of raw, shredded cabbage will give you calcium, phosphorus, iron, sodium, potassium, vitamin A, vitamin C, and a little B-complex. It also has a high amount of sulphur - an often overlooked mineral.  At least, until the cabbage is digested, of course; most people are probably familiar with its sometimes-inconvenient but natural after effects!  But sulphur is very good for you; members of the Brassica family such as cabbage, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and broccoli inhibit the growth of harmful chemical carcinogens within the body.

That's right. That means anti-cancer.

If that miraculous property of cabbage weren't enough to make it a daily staple of your diet, it is also been determined to neutralize toxic effects of excess cobalt, nickel, and copper in your body. It lowers serum cholesterol, calming agitated nerves and anxiety - thus it's an anti-depressant and can help you get to sleep at night. Oh, and cabbage is also effective at breaking down stools.

But we're not done yet. Cabbage juice, and fermented sauerkraut juice has been recommended to help expecting women get over their morning sickness very quickly. It's a fantastic and natural antacid - much cheaper and more natural than over-the-counter ulcer/heartburn medication. It has even been verified in treating hangovers.

Now is a great time to look to some old-world recipes for solutions to new-world problems. Bring on the borscht and sauerkraut!


For more information, read John Heinerman's Encyclopedia of Healing Juices.


This post is part of Prevention Not Prescription Tuesdays on the Kathleen Show.

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