An Ounce Of Prevention Blog

Our society actively promotes excessive drug use. Powerful brainwashing techniques are imposed on us every day to encourage more drug consumption. In addition to the problems from recreation drugs, like alcohol, tobacco, cocaine and cannabis, a deadlier threat looms from the extraordinary increase in the use of prescription and non-prescription medication.

Benjamin Franklin once said,   "The best doctor gives the least medicines." I would add "Less medicine, more health."  This is what might be called an inconvenient truth.

With the seemingly unending list of new infectious diseases, many people have developed a great fear of germs. Health authorities spend a lot of time and resources waging wars and campaigns against these hostile foes. I think we need to rethink these strategies. Germs may actually promote health.

In 2010, researchers discovered an amazing organ that doctors had failed to recognize before. They realized that the human body is crawling with hundreds of trillions of microorganisms, mainly bacteria plus fungi, viruses and parasites. It is estimated that for every single human cell in your squeaky clean body, there are at least ten bacteria in residence. This collection of organisms living outside and inside your physical structure is an actual organ, a functioning system called the microbiome.

Up until recently, mainstream medicine openly discouraged healthy people from taking vitamin supplements. Now this position has changed, as studies now show that vitamin supplements could reduce the risk of several common diseases. Some doctors however continue to tell their patients that vitamin supplements are unnecessary if they eat a ‘balanced’ diet.

In April 1998, the editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine was entitled ‘Eat Right and Take a Multi Vitamin’. This article declared that certain vitamin supplements could reduce the risk of heart attacks and

The World Health Organization claims that one third of all adults has elevated blood pressure and that nine out of ten of us as we age will eventually have high blood pressure. Amazingly, conventional medical wisdom states that 90% of all cases of high blood pressure have no known cause and label this disease essential hypertension. Just imagine this situation: billions of people worldwide have been diagnosed with a very mysterious, killer disease!

Doctors declare the condition incurable and insist that their patients must take medication indefinitely. I believe that high blood pressure is not a disease in and of itself but rather a symptom with known causes. We should address the underlying cause and not just treat the numbers on the blood pressure machine, as is customary.

The skin of the average person is embedded with from two to five million sweat glands and humans can produce as much as three liters of sweat per hour.

We have two different types of sweat glands: eccrine and apocrine. Eccrine glandsproduce a watery sweat and are found all over the body but more on the face, hands, and feet. This sweat, mostly water also contains sodium, some potassium, chloride, calcium, and magnesium as well as traces of copper, zinc, iron and other chemicals

The term 'gut' refers to the intestinal tract, a passage about 30 feet long, which starts at the mouth and ends at the anus. You are not just what you eat. You are what you eat, digest and absorb. No matter how good your diet is, the food must first be digested in and absorbed from your gut before the nutrients can be transported to the organs and tissues of the body to nourish your cells.

Without a properly functioning intestinal tract, much of the nutrients in your food may end up in the toilet bowl. That is why some people complain that they notice no difference in their health and wellbeing even when they eat well and take supplements. I actually recommend a program called Cellular Nutrition, to ensures that you not only take in the right nutrients, but that they are readily available to fuel your cells.

In today’s world more people are displaying mental instability. Depression, violence, suicide, homicide, abusive, irrational and anti-social behavior has become all too common in our society. Did you know that there is actually a connection between our diet and our mental and emotional stability? Yes foods can heal and they can also harm.

HARMFUL FOODS

It serves little purpose merely to be scared by viruses.

But it serves a good deal of purpose to understand them.

The World Health Organization has announced that there are now more overweight than underweight people on the planet. Most of us are well aware that there are many health problems associated with excess body fat, as health authorities everywhere are encouraging everyone to get to their ideal body weight. But the truth is that your body shape and body composition are actually more important than just your body weight.

Body Shape

By the end of the festive season, most of us would have done our fair share of feasting. But the heavy consumption of food and drink can take its toll on our bodies. It would be healthy to consider doing some detoxification and cleansing at the very start of the year. This would be a great way to focus on our health and wellbeing for 2016. Juicing is a wonderful way to begin and here is a great detox recipe.

Detox Juicing

If you found a medicine that was free and powerful, that cured many ills and was readily available, would you not use it? Well laughter may just be that medicine. And it’s infectious, as the sound of a loud laugh can be more contagious than a groan, a cough or a sneeze.

Psychologists say laughter is a powerful antidote to stress, pain, and conflict. It can quickly bring your mind and body back into balance lighten your burdens, renew hope, reconnect you to others, and keep you grounded. When shared, it binds people together and increases happiness and intimacy.

The word ‘wellness’ and ‘holistic’ have become increasingly fashionable  these days. Sadly however it seems that these conceprs are still poorly understood and applied in a very superficial way. Most ‘wellness’ events are still stuck in a very outmoded approach to health care.

The term Holistic comes from a Greek word, ‘holos’, which means‘whole’ or ‘complete’. (The popular spelling ‘wholistic’ is an American innovation). The holistic doctor focuses his/her attention on the total patient and not just on a particular symptom or illness.

The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.  By~William James

Since 2009 World Sickle Cell Disease Day has been observed and thankfully Sickle Cell Disease is now being given the global attention it both needs and deserves. Sickle cell disease is an inherited disease in which hemoglobin, the oxygen carrying pigment found in our red blood cells, is abnormal.  Hemoglobin is the substance that makes your blood red. Over 10% of my fellow Jamaicans have the sickle cell gene.

Greetings. Please share the following Health & Wellness tip from the leading Complimentary & Alternative Specialist in the Caribbean, Dr Tony Vendryes, with your audience.  Please Click Read More for more info on this week's radio show

Thank you.

Painful menstruation, referred to as dysmenorrhea by doctors, is one of the commonest health problems from which women suffer. As many as 90% of women experience this problem at some stage in their life. For over 10% of females the problem is so severe that they are unable to function normally while menstruating.

This problem translates into millions of dollars of lost wages and productivity as well as a significant decrease in women’s quality of life for several days each month. One medical textbook estimated that painful periods cause the loss of over 140 million work hours each year in the United States. At the same time billions of dollars are spent on ‘pain killing’ drugs which do nothing to address the underlying cause of the pain.

Less than a century ago it was not uncommon or doctors to advised patients to use cigarette smoking as an aid in weight control. The idea that inhaling tobacco smoke was harmful was regarded as alarmist, ridiculous and almost superstitious. Now smoking is universally recognized as deadly, causing lung and several other cancers, heart disease and other serious diseases. In hindsight we now shake our heads at our earlier stupidity.

In a short time, a technological and cultural revolution called the Wireless Age has exploded worldwide. In 2011 there were over 5.6 billion cellular telephones in use by almost 80% of the worlds inhabitants. Not to be left out, Jamaica ranks high in its addiction to the use of this electronic marvel. Here, everyone seems to have at least one cell phone. But are cell phones safe or are they the cigarettes of the new millennium?

Since their arrival in medicine, the cholesterol lowering drugs called statins have been among the most prescribed of all drugs. In the US an estimated 30 million Americans now take them daily. In the UK, almost one in four adults over age 40 are taking a statin drug.

A similar trend continues worldwide as doctors struggle with the global epidemic of obesity and diabetes. Some physicians now prescribe statins on a preventive basis to their all too trusting patients. The common statin drugs include simvastatin, or Zocor, atorvastin marketed as Lipitor, and rosuvastatin the generic name for Crestor.

We have become a culture of excessive drug use. In addition to the dangers from using recreation drugs, like alcohol, tobacco and cannabis an even greater threat has arisen from the unprecedented increase in the consumption of more prescription and non-prescription medication than ever before. Is this a healthy sign? I think not! It was Benjamin Franklin who said,   "The best doctor gives the least medicines." My perspective is, "The healthiest patient needs the least medicines." 

Though modern medicines sometimes save lives and alleviate suffering, many of these drugs create unwanted side effects, new illnesses, toxicity and even death. Drug induced disease is now a common everyday reality. One study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found that each year in American hospitals over two million patients suffered serious drug reactions, resulting in over 100,000 deaths. However, another article in JAMA estimated that only 5% of drug reactions are actually reported and that in reality over 400,000 people are killed every year by these dangerous chemicals.  Some experts now consider adverse drug reactions to be the number one cause of death in the US.

Modern drugs have benefitted mankind in many ways. However, while pharmaceuticals can save lives, many of them have serious side effects, like heart attacks or suicide. It is very important to remember that all drugs - every single one of them, have side effects. Many drugs are known to actually have toxic effects on various organs like the liver or the kidneys or the brain. But did you know that many other side effects result from the ability of these drugs to rob the body of important vitamins and minerals.

Experts estimate that about 30% of the side effects of pharmaceuticals are the direct result of these drug-induced nutrient deficiencies. In other words, a drug steals nutrients from your body, and this lack of nutrients causes additional side effects. The drug acts like an “anti-vitamin pill,” taking away the substances you need for good health. Thus, nutrient depletion caused by the drugs is often directly responsible for many of the side effects associated with pharmaceuticals.

With the invention of the microscope, early scientists were able to observe minute organisms called germs and the germ theory of disease then evolved.  The germ theory of disease stated that microorganisms are the cause of many diseases. It became a fundamental part of modern medicine and this lead to important developments such asantibiotics and better hygienic practices.

But by thinking of all microbes as the enemy, that must be destroyed at all costs, man has fought an uphill battle with germs. It turns out that germs are an unavoidable and important part of our inner and outer environment and may well be more our friends than our foes.