Positive Health Online

Harvard Study Finds Fluoride Lowers IQ ? Published in Federal Gov’t Journal

Harvard University researchers’ review of fluoride/brain studies concludes “our results support the possibility of adverse effects of fluoride exposures on children’s neurodevelopment.” It was published online July 20 in Environmental Health Perspectives, a US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences’ journal (1), reports the NYS Coalition Opposed to Fluoridation, Inc. (NYSCOF)

“The children in high fluoride areas had significantly lower IQ than those who lived in low fluoride areas,” write Choi et al.

Further, the EPA says fluoride is a chemical “with substantial evidence of developmental neurotoxicity."

Fluoride (fluosilicic acid) is added to US water supplies at approximately 1 part per million attempting to reduce tooth decay.

Water was the only fluoride source in the studies reviewed and was based on high water fluoride levels. However, they point out research by Ding (2011) suggested that low water fluoride levels had significant negative associations with children’s intelligence.

Choi et al. write, “Although fluoride may cause neurotoxicity in animal models and acute fluoride poisoning causes neurotoxicity in adults, very little is known of its effects on children’s neurodevelopment. They recommend more brain/fluoride research on children and at individual-level doses.

“It’s senseless to keep subjecting our children to this ongoing fluoridation experiment to satisfy the political agenda of special-interest groups,” says attorney Paul Beeber, NYSCOF President.  “Even if fluoridation reduced cavities, is tooth health more important than brain health? It’s time to put politics aside and stop artificial fluoridation everywhere,” says Beeber.

After reviewing fluoride toxicological data, the NRC reported in 2006, “It’s apparent that fluorides have the ability to interfere with the functions of the brain.”

Choi’s team writes, “Fluoride readily crosses the placenta. Fluoride exposure to the developing brain, which is much more susceptible to injury caused by toxicants than is the mature brain, may possibly lead to damage of a permanent nature.”

Fluoride accumulates in the body. Even low doses are harmful to babies, the thyroid, kidney patients and heavy water-drinkers. There are even doubts about fluoridation’s effectiveness (2).  New York City Legislation is pending to stop fluoridation. Many communities have already stopped

Infant formula when mixed with fluoridated water delivers 100-200 times more fluoride than breastmilk. (3)

More information on fluoride’s impact on the brain is here.

Further Information 

Contact: Contact: Paul Connett, PhD, Executive Director, Fluoride Action Network pconnett@gmail.com or

Paul Beeber, JD, 516-433-8882 nyscof@aol.com

http://www.fluoridation.webs.com

http://www.FluorideAction.Net

SOURCE:  NYS Coalition Opposed to Fluoridation, Inc.

NYSCOF News Releases
Follow NYSCOF on Twitter or Facebook

BMJ Cares More about Headlines than the Science

Hannah Sutter

Please find a below a press release regarding a recent epidemiological study published in the BMJ a few weeks ago, which has been widely covered in the media. I am also referencing a story from Forbes magazine which is the only piece of mainstream press coverage to have examined the original research’s scientific validity

www.forbes.com/sites/larryhusten/2012/06/27/good-sciencebad-science-contrasting-papers-on-dietary-compositon-in-jama-and-bmj/ 

BMJ cares more about headlines than science

Journal risked patients worldwide by misreporting study as low carb diets scape-goated in flawed research

Over the last few weeks a cohort study from Sweden - that was first published in the British Medical Journal[1] and accompanied by an editorial piece - has gained worldwide coverage, unreservedly claiming that “low carb diets increase the risk of cardiovascular disease”.  As the comments on the BMJ’s own website from clinicians and nutritional experts worldwide testify, this has been a hugely ideologically driven study with very little actual scientific validity. Worryingly, these findings have been given added credibility by the BMJ and have gained worldwide media exposure in National newspapers and consumer sites, often perpetrating these assertions as causal, and presented as fact. This is a poor use of the BMJ’s trusted position and brings the magazine’s credibility greatly into focus - it is one thing to publish a cohort study, yet quite another to then write an editorial piece supporting these findings as fact! 

To misrepresent the data to this extent and give credence to an epidemiological study with virtually no controls, constants or hard facts is a poor reflection on this prestigious magazine’s past rigour. For example, the only evidence base for this study was conducted nearly 15-years ago via self-reported questionnaires, which are notorious for being unreliable. Further and more concerning was the scoring system used to compare diets. It was fundamentally flawed – i.e. with low protein scored 1 and high protein 10, low carbohydrates 10 and high carbohydrates 1, and any number of different combinations in the middle, which causes hugely different diets to be scored on the same value.

The BMJ have then used the headlines of these findings to draft a short editorial piece; the problem with the shortened research findings and subsequent conclusions is that it has provided consumer headlines worldwide that have virtually no credible evidence. Whilst it might make good PR for the journal itself and hundreds of subsequent column inches, the BMJ has a responsibility to make sure it is helping provide the most accurate information to clinicians and supporting the best advice ­ based on robust evidence - for the general public.

The BMA conclusions about the Atkins and low carb diets amounted to little more than at best attention grabbing headlines, and at worst unfounded propaganda; especially since the actual study did not look at ‘low carb’, but rather, ‘lower carb’ which is a considerably different proposition. Surely the time has come for a proper clinical evidence based debate on the growing obesity epidemic rather than random epidemiological studies, which love quantity and not quality.

What is even more confusing for any obese consumer now fearful of low carb diets is the fact that in the same week a clinical study was published (JAMA[2]), which showed that low carb diets would appear to provide a better solution for weight loss than the currently recommended low fat options.

It is a shame the BMJ has not shown the same dedication as its readers[3] to properly examine the evidence and I can only hope these concerns are published half as widely as the original findings.

Hannah Sutter

CEO of Natural Neutraceuticals Limited and author of Big Fat Lies

The top ranked comments left on the BMJ’s website…

“So this study is just like rolling dice and trying to make statistics out of it. It is definitively not science.” Björn Hammarskjöld, Pediatrician

“The headline should have been "The older women get, the more incidence of cardiovascular events they experience”, but then that wouldn't have been headline news.” Zoe Harcombe, Author & obesity researcher

“In sum, this study does not allow us to conclude anything about low carbohydrate diets, for or against. It is just another partisan shot in the long-running ideological war between the proponents of low fat and low carbohydrate diets.” Jack T Winkler, Professor of Nutrition Policy, London Metropolitan University (Retired)

“Unfortunately the corresponding editorial by Floegel and Pischon[2] adds more speculations and misconceptions about low carbohydrate diets (e.g. low vegetable consumption and therefore low intake of fibre, vitamins and minerals) which might mislead the medical and nutritional community about diet and cardiovascular health” Nicolai M Worm, Lecturer Ulrike Gonder

“This medical paper has both a very low quality and a lot of major biases, therefore it shouldn’t be published because its flaws not only have a confounding effect in nutrition science but can generate emotional shock in people under these kind of diets" Álvaro campillo-Soto, General Surgeon & Scientific Metodologist

About Natural Neutraceuticals:

Natural Neutraceuticals Limited is a UK company that specializes in the development of whole natural foods for the complete management of certain diseases and health issues including obesity, diabetes and PCOS. Lead by clinical science and whole food innovation, free from all artificial ingredients, it is leading the way in holistic health innovation for the-management of diseases and a healthy lifestyle through real food.

References

1. www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.e4026 

2. http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1199154 

3. www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.e4026?tab=responses

Source: Tristan Jervis: Tel: 0207 861 3019. Mobile: +44 0771 363 8396. t.jervis@defacto.com 

Hospitals Don’t Have a Clue: Intravenous & Transdermal Vs Oral Nutritional Medicine

It is not going too far to observe that the medical industry is in the grip of madness. Modern medicine has lost its balance making hospitals one of the most dangerous places to be. They are often places that increase our chances of death through medical negligence and ignorance. Certainly they are places that threaten most patients and even countries with bankruptcy because most people and governments can ill afford a form of medicine that is in and of itself a mistake.

Hospitals have served as the cornerstone of modern healthcare systems around the world. Most people today are born in hospitals. Hospitals are those places that touch us most intimately during episodes of severe sickness or disease. Hospitals are predominately where our loved ones go to die and where the rest of us go to see our loved ones suffer agonizing deaths.

Hospitals in America are in a process of disruptive change - changes that will lead to one in three hospitals closing over the next 10 years. The crippling and unaffordable cost of healthcare is driving the decline but so also is the fact that statistically speaking hospitals are hazardous to our health. The Journal of the American Medical Association reports that nearly 100,000 people die annually in hospitals just from medical errors alone! Another 100,000 die from properly prescribed medicines!

The situation at hospitals is deteriorating very quickly as drug-resistant germs are leaving doctors helpless. Also, if you go to a hospital, the odds are increasing dramatically that the drugs you need will be unavailable. The growing scarcity of sterile, injectable drugs is one of the biggest issues confronting hospitals across the country.

Health officials blame the shortages on industry consolidation that has left only a handful of generic manufacturers of these drugs, even as the number of drugs going off-patent is growing. Some medicines have been periodically short in the past, doctors and pharmacists say, but the number of drug shortages has escalated in recent years, jumping from 56 in 2006 to 250 last year, according to U.S. Food and Drug Administration figures.

A clinical nutrition group, the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition, found that 70% of the 800-member nurses, doctors and pharmacists who responded to an online survey said they had seen shortages of adult injectable multi-vitamins used for basic nutrition for patients with intestinal issues. More than a quarter were not giving their patients multi-vitamins because of the shortages, placing them at risk of severe vitamin deficiencies that can lead to issues like anemia due to a lack of folate or scurvy due to a lack of vitamin C. In extreme cases, a deficiency of a type of B vitamin called thiamine can lead to cardiac arrest or death.

Anesthesiologists like Jason Soch, who hears about a new shortage nearly every week during his rotations at several surgical centers in Philadelphia, says that the drug shortages are often “workhorse” drugs such as fentanyl, midazolam and propofol used every day during surgery.

Nutritional Medicine

The sickest joke in the world of medicine, besides vaccines, is professional nutritionists. One of the biggest crimes in progress is these professional nutritionists’ attempts to corner the market on nutritional advice. The truth is if you take their advice you will probably end up dead before your time. Hospital nutrition is a mirror of the profession’s ignorance. These nutritional “experts” insist that the best way to get vitamins is through a healthy diet?that is why their professional addvice is so unwelcome to both patients and doctors alike. This is simply not true because food is not what it used to be in terms of nutritional value.

Dr. Michael Janson says, “The standard American diet does not provide even the RDA. Two-thirds of all meals are eaten outside the home, and nearly half of them are in fast-food joints. You can’t expect this to provide all the necessary nutrients, and many studies show that it does not. A large number of people admitted to hospitals are found to have deficiencies, and the problems worsen once they’re in the hospital. Just about everyone who needs hospital care for chronic illness is malnourished.”

It is pathetic that neither doctors nor hospitals have gotten their heads straight about the benefits of quality nutrition. Nutrition in hospitals is terrible and that goes for the actual food they serve, whether they feed through the stomach or use intravenous administration of fluids.

We know that those who are given or are already taking supplements have a lower rate of complications, are discharged sooner from the hospital and are much less likely to die. All forms of surgery are safer if patients are given magnesium before, during and after surgery. Intravenous infusion is particularly useful when re-establishing nutritional health during or after intense treatments, with magnesium being one of the most important substances to use.

Many people are losing faith in the medical profession because most doctors are unwilling to accept what is becoming common knowledge: Nutrition and nutrient therapies are safer, cheaper and more effective than most other medical treatment. Too many doctors incorrectly reject the idea that there are large-scale nutritional deficiencies in the general public. How can they be so short-sighted or narrow-minded?

The vitamin and mineral deficiencies so prevalent in modern society are due to the fact that these nutrients are removed from our foods by industrial food processing. The foods that most people eat are high in sugar and are processed and denatured of essential nutrients.

Patients need adequate nutrition, not drugs, to recover from any illness, and sometimes they need that really fast. Patients who are critically ill have high nutritional requirements that need to be addressed and ER doctors know that it is often a matter of life or death. Nutritional feeding is critical to patient outcome and if death is near, intravenous and cutaneous injections are the proper emergency approaches to nutrition.

The New York Times printed a story about how in 1965 an impoverished rural county in the Mississippi Delta, the pioneering physician Jack Geiger helped found one of the nation’s first community health centers. Many of the children Geiger treated were seriously malnourished, so he began writing ‘prescriptions’ for food, stipulating quantities of milk, vegetables, meat, and fruit that could be “filled” at the grocery store. The grocery stores were instructed to send the bills to the health center where they were paid out of the pharmacy budget. When word of this reached the Office of Economic Opportunity in Washington, which financed the center, an official was dispatched to Mississippi to reprimand Geiger and make sure he understood that the center’s money could be used only for medical purposes. Geiger replied: “The last time I looked in my textbooks, the specific therapy for malnutrition was food.” The official had nothing to say and returned to Washington.

Atrocious Hospital Foods for the Sick & Dying

“There were five items given to my mother. Chicken broth from bouillon, diet sorbet, decaffeinated coffee, diet Jello, and something labelled fruit ice. You would think that a post-surgery patient, in the hospital, would be given healthy food to help heal the body. You can see what they gave my mother to eat was far from healthy. In fact, I would say what they tried to feed my mother would inhibit healing. There was nothing nutritious in any of the items they served her.”

Granted, this type of diet is called a clear liquid diet and is the first thing offered to post-surgical patients to ensure that the intestines that have been paralyzed by anesthesia are ‘waking up’ and able to move the liquids through the intestinal tract. But surely there are better choices than diet Jello that contains, in part: aspartame (yikes!), acesulfame, potassium, salt, red 40 and artificial flavour. Wouldn’t gelatine made with REAL juice and without the toxic artificial sweeteners be better? (And the same can probably be said for the diet sorbet.)

It is tragic to realize that food itself is no longer a sufficient therapy for malnutrition. Fifty years ago when Dr. Geiger prescribed food, it was food that packed considerably more nutrition per gram than it does today. The nutritional profiles of foods have been steadily dropping and even an orange is not what it used to be in terms of vitamin C.

Hospitals need to get creative and come up with better diets for the patients as well as better intravenous solutions and more nutritious ingredients for the feeding tubes.

Intravenous Medicine - Fast-Track Nutrient Delivery

Oral supplementation and a healthy diet alone may not achieve the desired medical muscle to resolve diseased conditions. “When vitamins are delivered intravenously they reach the blood faster than when taken orally. Many people who receive the infusions report feeling healthy immediately afterward,” said Dr. Robert Graham, an internist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York.

Intravenous medicine provides a method of increasing nutrient absorption so that the body can become healthy enough to heal itself. Intravenous medicine is a safe and effective therapy using natural substances in high quantities, which enables accelerated healing for optimal health. Much higher nutrient concentration levels can be achieved by the intravenous route without the side effects that occur by the oral route.

There is a therapeutic catch-22 in cellular health: The cells need to be healthy enough to have enough energy to bring in the nutrients required for repair, but a sick cell may not be able to do so even if those nutrients are around. In order to have a therapeutic effect, nutrients need to be adequately absorbed and delivered to the cell. Intravenous administration of nutrients provides a “kick-start” by making nutrients more readily available and easier to transport inside the cells. By providing higher nutrient concentration in the blood than what can be achieved orally, cells are no longer reliant on energy-dependent mechanisms to transport nutrients inside. Nutrients can enter cells via “passive transport” requiring less energy than “active transport.”

When foods and supplements are taken orally, the gastrointestinal track breaks them down to release the core nutrients and transport those nutrients to the blood for delivery to the cells requiring them. This requires many steps and is dependent on numerous variables being intact, including optimal enzyme activity, proper acid production, healthy gut flora, healthy gastrointestinal lining free of inflammation and irritation, absence of ‘bad’ bacteria, healthy peristaltic tone (pumping action of the GI tract), and others.

After nutrients are transported to the blood, they are then delivered to the liver. A compromised liver can make certain nutrients inactive, ineffective, or bound for excretion before given the opportunity to have their effect in the body.

Administering vitamins and minerals intravenously helps avoid many of the problems of taking large doses by mouth. IV therapy helps correct low nutrient levels more quickly and without the potential side effects like diarrhoea and heartburn that often accompany oral doses of vitamins and minerals.

Glutathione is a powerful antioxidant found
predominately in the brain and liver. When given
intravenously it improves liver and brain function

Though nutrients may have numerous effects on the body, some of these effects are attained only after reaching very high levels. For example, vitamin C has been demonstrated to have an antiviral effect at high serum concentrations of 10-15 mg/dL. These levels are not achievable via the oral route even in a healthy individual. The highest plasma concentration achieved through oral administration of vitamin C is 9.2 mg/dL. This means that no matter how much vitamin C someone ingests, they will be unable to raise their blood levels beyond a certain point.

A high dose of 2.5 grams/day of vitamin C will raise the serum concentration to only about 1.2-1.5 mg/dl. Even if we could achieve higher serum concentrations from super-dosing of vitamin C, such high oral dosing often causes disagreeable gastrointestinal side effects such as diarrhoea and nausea. A similar effect is found with magnesium supplementation, where oral supplementation has a peak serum concentration beyond which even super-dosing with oral magnesium cannot surpass.

Nutrients delivered intravenously provide high enough concentrations to elicit a pharmacological (drug-like) effect on cells, which can only be achieved at such high levels. For example, vitamin C can have a viral killing effect but only at very high plasma concentrations. Thus, IVNT (intravenous nutrient therapy) allows for natural substances to have a drug-like effect without the side effects and dangers of using synthetic and toxic drugs!

Amino acids, glutathione, vitamin C, Myers’ cocktail (B complex, vitamin C, magnesium, dexpenthanol B5, calcium, B12, B6), phosphatidylcholine, chelating agents, sodium bicarbonate, minerals, multi-vitamins, antioxidants, herbal and homeopathic medicines all have been applied intravenously. IV infusion is an effective way to administer nutrients and other medications when disease or treatment side effects limit your ability to swallow pills or liquids.

Seawater Workhorse IVs

When we start to dream of the perfect IV we have to think about the sea. Ocean water has had an illustrious history in medicine. Seawater has many therapeutic uses based on the concept of renewing, purifying and regenerating the internal fluid environment, as well as maintaining vital equilibrium. According to a story told on many different websites (yet legitimate documentation appears to be unavailable), Dr. Rene Quinton, French biologist/physiologist, proved that pure seawater is virtually identical to mammalian blood plasma. With the assistance of many eminent physicians, he successfully used seawater as a healing agent on thousands of patients in France and Egypt in the early 1900s. Navy doctors successfully used seawater during the Second World War when blood serum supplies ran out. Many conditions responded to injections of ocean water because re-mineralizing the sick body, normalizing pH and balancing electrolytes work together to correct the underlying cause of many disease conditions by regenerating the “internal terrain.”

Marine-based therapy encourages cellular regeneration and cellular nutrition and this was used to great effect a century ago. Babies were brought back from near death from cholera and other causes; cadaver-like bodies filled out to healthy plumpness; raw, weeping skin from eczema became smooth and lesion-free, all by the power of seawater.

Downside

Any IV treatment carries a risk of bruising, infection and vein inflammation. That is why they are best administered by professionals. Doctors, nurses and naturopaths are trained to routinely administer nutrients and medicines this way, and in emergency situations this is essential medicine. Many seem attached to the idea that the best way to absorb nutrients is through the gastrointestinal tract and that an IV drip should be used only if a person has a real medical condition that prevents him from taking vitamins by mouth.

Dr Gilbert Ross is one who cannot fathom intravenous medicine. He says, “Unless patients suffer a specific type of malnourishment due to GI absorption problems, vitamin drips are nothing more than complete quackery.” He was also quite concerned to learn that people were administering such IVs at home. “Only licensed health professionals should be allowed to perform IV drips,” he says. “And in this case, state medical boards should intervene by informing the public that infusing various vitamins or electrolytes provides absolutely no medical benefit but is fraught with many risks—including death, if components such as magnesium, a cardio-toxin in excess, is administered without supervision.”

Dr. David Seres, director of Medical Nutrition in the Division of Preventive Medicine and Nutrition at Columbia University Medical Center, says, “Time and again we have learned that vitamin supplementation has no positive impact and is, in fact, frequently harmful. Until chemical infusions like this are tested in a randomized, controlled setting, it must be assumed that the infusion is harmful. This is the way we would approach any medical therapy.”

In my view, Dr. Seres is not talking about real medicine, he is talking pure arrogance, the kind that kills people. Reading his words reminds me of that famous case of the New Zealand farmer Allan Smith. His family sued and won a court order that forced a hospital to administer high-dose vitamin C intravenously and it saved the man’s life. Intravenous vitamin C is a well-researched and proven antiviral and is a registered medicine in New Zealand.

The mainstream medical media has been showing off its most unintelligent side by writing up bad copy about intravenous medicine saying, “There’s little evidence the practice has any health benefits.” They like to point out, for all the wrong reasons that, “In addition, the invasive IV method poses more risks than taking vitamins by mouth.” The fact is, many celebrities practice intravenous medicine.

All of these sources might as well be saying that we should trash emergency room and intensive care medicine. The truth is there are alternatives to this kind of medicine and they can be practised at home without medical supervision. Through intense oral and transdermal administration (a topic thoroughly addressed in many of my other essays), a person can do almost everything necessary to bring himself back from the edge, but there are times when an IV is what will save the day.

Dr Mark Allan Sircus Ac OMD DM(P)
Director International Medical Veritas Association
Doctor of Oriental and Pastoral Medicine
http://publications.imva.info
http://blog.imva.info