Positive Health Online

This PH Online April Issue 169 publishes outstanding Editorial features encompassing the disciplines of Mind / Body / Emotion / Spirit.  From the highly scientific and original Cover Story The Importance of Blood Flow and Evening Primrose Oil in ME by Dr Leslie Simpson PhD, the informative bodywork features about Health and Fitness,  Osteopathy, and Scar Tissue Release Therapy professional features regarding Vertical Reflexology, How to Survive a Family Holiday, Thinking Yourself Well, to the more personal articles such as How I Met Bhagwan Shree Ragneesh, Blame-the-Patient' Syndrome in ME, My Love Affair with Coffee and IVF Treatment Roller Coaster Ride.

In reviewing the above authors' research and clinical work with patients, it also brings me to highlight the book reviewed in this issue – Toxic Dentistry Exposed by Drs Graema Munro-Hall BDS FIAOMT and Dr Lilian Munro-Hall BDS.

The authors go through in meticulous detail the poisonous sources used in dentistry. We are, most of us, aware of mercury amalgam and its existence as an extreme neuro-toxin. However the authors provide evidence regarding the implication of mercury in diseases including Alzheimer's and autism. The authors then proceed to list all the various dental metals used in dentistry – over 1000 different alloys on the market, which are being used in fillings and crowns. The list includes gold, nickel, titanium, silver, platinum, palladium, copper, chrome...

At present all the major dental authorities support the use of amalgam. Hopefully this will change soon.  After all, it has only been shown scientifically to be detrimental to human health since 1927 by Dr Stock. Mercury amalgam is the most commonly used dental filling material and has been so for nearly 200 years. Amalgam is a mixture of 50% mercury and the other 50% being tin, silver and copper with a few trace elements depending on the manufacturer. The mercury content of the filling is not stable leaks out constantly 24 hours a day, especially after eating, drinking hot drinks and brushing teeth. Mercury is one of the most toxic metals naturally occurring on the planet and significantly is a known potent neurotoxin. Mercury damages nerve and brain tissue..

And the letter Multiple Sclerosis: Magnesium, Selenium, Iodine and Mercury Connection by Mark Sircus Ac OMD  carries the links between mercury and magnesium even further:

It is difficult to treat any disease today without paying attention to the profound magnesium deficiencies that exist in nearly 100 percent of sufferers of chronic disease. We could easily say the same for bicarbonate and iodine, and when we pay attention to all three at the same time our work in helping people recover from their suffering and pain is greatly eased. This is especially true when it comes to neurological diseases...

Toxic substances, such as mercury, which the body is chronically exposed to, accumulates in the brain, pituitary gland, CNS, liver, kidneys, etc. and can damage, inhibit, and cause imbalances at very low levels of exposure. Heavy metals can cause major neurological, immunological, and metabolic damage...

Magnesium protects the cells from aluminium, mercury, lead, cadmium, beryllium and nickel. Evidence is mounting that low levels of magnesium contribute to the heavy metal deposition in the brain that precedes Parkinson´s, multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer´s. Research has shown that the symptoms of MS are very similar to Mercury poisoning.[2] Mercury is a primary cause of inflammation in our bodies. The rate of relapse in multiple sclerosis was found to be decreased with dietary magnesium supplementation

It has become a nauseatingly familiar ritual to be regaled nightly by the scandal of the latest 'nose-in-trough' scandal, either of politicians fiddling their expenses, flipping their houses, profiting by the taxpayer's largesse, or else swanning off on holiday junkets funded by foreign governments and returning to lobby on behalf of these, without registering their [conflict of] interest.

It is galling that politicians and many civil servants are well paid - at least £60k salary, plus expenses, inflation-proof pensions and other perks, whereas ordinary practitioners are struggling to attain even an average wage of perhaps £25-30k. Certainly many vital health professionals such as nurses, paramedics, firemen and teachers aren't paid as highly as  politicians. Do I think this is fair? Do you?

These revelations really put into focus the question of who is valued in our society, when the  New Zealand blood cell research unit of scientist Dr Leslie Simpson (author of The Importance of Blood Flow and Evening Primrose Oil in ME) was forced to close due to a failure to find further funding. Or, that the grant for the National CFS/ME Observatory, Project Coordinator Dr Derek Pheby has finished; the scientists are now in the process of writing grant proposals to continue their funding into CFS/ME.

As the for the rest of us, running colleges, presenting courses and seminars, selling herbal, nutritional or homeopathic supplements writing books, treating patients, publishing magazines - we are all subject to market forces, i.e. if our income is not sufficient to meet our expenses, we simply go bust and cease to exist.

It has been a revelation for me to have been reviewing books about corruption in the pharmaceutical companies and the medical profession, affecting the lives of all of us. Please see reviews of Side Effects  by Alison Bass and Death by Medicine by Gary Null PhD. In the world of conventional drugs and medicine, where money is no object, researchers may be paid up to $20,000 per patient recruited into a research study, quite apart from their tenured salaried positions. According to http://mdsalaries.blogspot.com/, hospital doctors in the USA are paid between $150k - 300k, depending on their location and position.

We are regularly told that politicians' salaries of £60k in the UK are not really high enough, as they work hard and do a very difficult job; doesn't this simply highlight that all the rest of the highly skilled workforce who do the vital work of nursing, medicine, teaching, etc. are worth less, or should I say worthless?