WHO head backs role of traditional medicine in primary health care – Two Years Ago – So what happened?
Saturday, October 24th, 2009WHO head backs role of traditional medicine in primary health care – Two Years Ago – So what happened?
BEIJING, Nov. 7, 2007 (Xinhua) — The role of traditional medicine in primary health care should be highlighted,
Thirty years ago, the WHO Alma-Ata Declaration recognized the role of traditional medicine practitioners within the primary health care system at the community level, Chan said at the opening ceremony of the WHO Congress on Traditional Medicine. “As a result, the significance and use of traditional medicine has increased in the past three decades.”
For millions of people living in rural areas of developing countries, herbal medicines, traditional treatments and traditional practitioners were the main and sometimes the only source of health care, she said.
”This is care that is close to homes, accessible and affordable. In some systems of traditional medicine, such as traditional Chinese medicine, traditional practices are supported by wisdom and experience acquired over centuries,” she said.
Traditional medicine has been proven as cheap, effective and acceptable in many developing countries’ primary health care systems, Chan said.
She noted, however, that an undesirable trend had also occurred in affluent societies, in the popularity of treatments and remedies that complement orthodox medicine or sometimes serve as an alternative to conventional treatments.
In North America and Europe, traditional medicine has become a multi-billion-dollar industry that was expected to continue growing rapidly, Chan said.
”This is not the poor man’s alternative to conventional care; this trend has some dangers.”
Chan called for all WHO members to bring traditional and Western medicine together in highly effective ways in the primary health care system. She said the two systems need not clash.
The three-day congress, hosted by the Chinese Ministry of Health and the State Administration of Traditional Medicine, has drawn more than 1,100 participants from 80 countries and regions.
A legacy of the congress will be the “Beijing Declaration”, which is scheduled to be published on Nov. 8 after it is agreed on by participating WHO members
Why Frequent Blinking is Essential for Healthy Eyes and Optimal Vision
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009Why Frequent Blinking is Essential for Healthy Eyes and Optimal Vision
Are you interested in taking optimal care of your eyes and experiencing your best vision? If so, we encourage you to get into a habit of blinking softly as often as possible.
Frequent and gentle blinking is essential to the health of your eyes and vision because it allows your eyelids to regularly coat your eyes with three beneficial layers of tears:
- The first layer of tears lies right up against the whites of your eyes, and provides an even coat of protein-rich moisture for the second layer to adhere to.
- The middle watery layer helps to wash away foreign debris. It also nourishes the cornea of your eyes with minerals, a variety of proteins, and moisture.
- The third outer layer of tears is somewhat oily. It serves to prevent the middle watery layer from evaporating quickly, and provides needed lubrication between your eyes and your eyelids.
If your eyes are not regularly coated with the three layers of tears described above, they will be deprived of ongoing nourishment and cleansing, and they will be unnecessarily strained.
One of the reasons why many of us don’t blink as often as we should is that we don’t see frequent blinking in mainstream media. Actors and anchor-people are typically trained to blink as infrequently as possible, so when we take in mainstream media, our subconscious minds learn that it isn’t normal to blink frequently.
To optimally support your eyes and vision, it’s best to blink softly every two to four seconds, which translates to about fifteen to thirty blinks per minute. By consciously making an effort to softly blink at this rate, over time, your body will turn your conscious efforts into a subconscious habit.
Here are some notes on blinking to promote optimal eye health and vision:
- A soft and natural blink should occur like the light flap of the wings of a butterfly – this is a good image to visualize as you make an effort to blink softly every two to four seconds.
- You should blink regularly during all activities, including reading, working on the computer, and viewing a TV program or film.
- Contact lenses can discourage frequent blinking because the back surface of your eyelids is not designed to rub over an artificial surface. This is one of several good reasons why contact lenses should be avoided whenever possible.
- Some yoga and meditation instructors suggest doing exercises that involve fixating your vision on one object, such as the flame of a candle, and doing your best not to blink. We encourage you to ignore the part about suppressing your instinct to blink. It’s quite possible to experience inner stillness and peace while blinking frequently.
Since the primary goal of blinking regularly is to keep your eyes well lubricated and nourished, another good tip for eye and vision care is to keep your eyes closed whenever you are thinking about something while you do not need your vision. For example, if you are stuck in the middle of composing an e-mail message, close your eyes while you think of your next sentence.
Healthy Foods that Contain Vitamin A
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009Healthy Foods that Contain Vitamin A
Many plant-based eaters are under the impression that they can obtain all the vitamin A that they need from plant foods that contain carotenoids, particularly beta carotene found in foods like spinach, sweet potatoes, and carrots.
It’s true that some carotenoids like beta carotene can be converted to vitamin A in your body once they make it into your blood. What you may not know is that carotenoids are not always absorbed efficiently into your blood.
Given that vitamin A deficiency is one of the most common nutritional deficiencies in the world and is also a leading cause of death in young children, it’s critical for the general public to know that relying solely on carotenoids in plant foods for daily vitamin A needs may lead to any of the following health problems over time:
Skin Lesions Like Acne and Acne Rosacea: Vitamin A is needed to develop and maintain moist and healthy epithelial tissues, including your skin. Many long time vegans find it difficult to understand why they have acne while on a whole food, plant-based diet. Vitamin A deficiency is undoubtedly a common cause of acne for all acne sufferers, but particularly for people who eat mainly a plant-based diet and don’t include a reliable source of vitamin A in their diets.
Poor Night Vision: Vitamin A combines with a protein in the back of your eye to enable night vision.
Weak Bones, Weak Teeth, and Poorly Spaced Teeth: Vitamin A is needed for proper growth and maintenance of bones and other soft tissues throughout your body.
A Weak Immune System: Because vitamin A is needed for the development and maintainance of all of your body’s barriers to infection like your skin, lungs, and the mucosal linings in your digestive and urinary tracts, a deficiency almost assures you of an immune system that is not as strong as it can be.
Cancer: Since vitamin A is essential to the health of your immune system, a deficiency could increase your risk for developing certain forms of cancer, such as breast, lung, stomach, and cervical cancer.
Anemia and Associated Fatigue: Vitamin A is needed for proper red blood cell formation.
Vitamin A is actually a group of compounds that includes retinol, retinal, and the carotenoids. Retinol and retinal are found in animal foods such as liver, eggs, and butter. Because these forms of vitamin A are ready to be used by your body straight from their food sources, they are often referred to as pre-formed vitamin A.
Carotenoids, in turn, are often referred to as provitamin A since they are precursors to Vitamin A and need to be converted in your body.
The total vitamin A in your diet is therefore a combination of the pre-formed vitamin A and provitamin A in your diet.
It’s important to note that optimal absorption of retinol, retinal, and the carotenoids into your blood requires an adequate amount of healthy fat in your diet. This is because pre-formed and provitamin A are fat soluble compounds that are best absorbed into your blood in the presence of digestive juices that are needed to digest fat. The more healthy fat you include in your diet, the better you will absorb fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K into your blood.
It is not practical to offer a chart that lists specific amounts of useable vitamin A in different foods because the amount of vitamin A that ultimately reaches your blood depends on the variables described above.
So, here are two simple lists of healthy foods that contain significant amounts of pre-formed and provitamin A. I believe that it is best for most people to eat foods from both groups on a regular basis to to meet their daily vitamin A needs.
Pre-formed Vitamin A:
- Organic beef liver
- Organic lamb liver
- Organic eggs
- Organic butter
- Cod liver oil
Provitamin A:
- Sweet potatoes or yams
- Cantaloupe
- Spinach
- Carrots
- Butter nut squash
What About Toxicity?
With the exception of cod liver oil, all of the other foods listed above have virtually no potential to cause vitamin A toxicity in your tissues. So long as you stick to an appropriate dose of cod liver oil, you can rest assured knowing that you aren’t getting too much vitamin A each day.
Every study that discusses the potential for vitamin A toxicity looked at synthetic sources of vitamin A. Clearly, it is best to get vitamin A from the healthy foods listed above and to avoid synthetic sources at all times.
Drinking Coffee During Midlife May Reduce the Risk of Dementia in Later Life
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009Drinking Coffee During Midlife May Reduce the Risk of Dementia in Later Life
In a prospective study involving 1,409 individuals aged 65 to 79 years of age, results indicate that regular consumption of coffee during midlife may reduce the risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) later in life. During an average follow-up of 21 years, 61 cases of dementia (48 with AD) were identified. After adjusting for confounders, persons who consumed 3-5 cups of coffee per day during midlife showed a 65% reduced risk of dementia in later life, compared to persons who drank little or no coffee per day. Thus, the authors conclude, “Coffee drinking at midlife is associated with a decreased risk of dementia/AD later in life. This finding might open possibilities for prevention of dementia/AD.”
Sodium bicarbonate helps to save countless lives every day
Saturday, October 17th, 2009Sodium bicarbonate helps to save countless lives every day
It is our moral and ethical obligation to try to find the best solutions for the gravest and most painful disease of our time. When it comes to sodium bicarbonate in medicine it is an open and shut case. It is already in wide use and has been for decades!
In relation to bicarbonate, millions of people in the world either consume bicarbonate ions in drinking water or have been treated clinically with bicarbonate in hospitals, medical centers, or emergency units for the prevention and treatment of clinical acidosis as well as numerous other conditions. Sodium bicarbonate helps to save countless lives every day. It is also found in the corridors of orthodox oncology where it is used to keep the toxic chemotherapy agents from killing people too quickly.
Sodium bicarbonate is the time honored method to ’speed up’ the return of the body’s bicarbonate levels to normal. Bicarbonate is inorganic, very alkaline and like other mineral type substances supports an extensive list of biological functions. Sodium bicarbonate happens to be one of our most useful medicines because bicarbonate physiology is fundamental to life and health. So helpful and elementary it’s even instrumental in helping sperm swim up and enter the cervical canal. Like magnesium chloride administration possibilities are versatile: intravenous, oral, transdermal, and via catheter; it can be vaporized directly into the lungs and be used in enemas and douches.
Bicarbonate is the least expensive, safest and perhaps most effective cancer medicine there is.
Sodium bicarbonate cancer treatment focuses on delivering natural chemotherapy in a way that effectively kills cancer cells while dramatically reducing the brutal side effects and costs experienced with standard chemotherapy treatments. The costs, which are a factor for the majority of people of this particular treatment, are basically zilch. That’s the only problem with this treatment – it is too cheap. No one is going to make money from it so no one will promote it. Those that do will be persecuted for it. The trouble with doing new studies on bicarbonate is that they are expensive and no drug company is going to fund a study when they can’t profit from the treatment.
For one pound of sodium bicarbonate from one of the best sources (guaranteed aluminum free) is $2.61 plus shipping. At the supermarket you can get it even cheaper. For $2.61 or less one has a nothing-to-lose-everything-to-gain-cancer-treatment. None of us dreamed that sodium bicarbonate is already part of orthodox oncology and is included in many chemotherapy protocols to protect the patient’s kidneys, hearts and nervous systems. Now we find out on top of everything else that bicarbonate is also a world class anti-fungicide and could be responsible for the few cures allopathic oncology manages to come up with.
You will also be given lots of fluids (as a drip) and a drug called mesna with your cyclophosphamide to help prevent bladder irritation. Sodium bicarbonate will be given to you – usually as a drip – before and during your methotrexate treatment, to help protect your kidneys.
Oncologists are using extremely dangerous poisons and bicarbonate at the same time claiming it is the poisons that are helping when there is more than suggestion that it is the bicarbonate that is doing the heavy work. Worse for them, there are no studies separating the effects of bicarbonate from the toxic chemotherapy agents nor will there ever be. Administration of some forms of chemotherapy without bicarbonate would probably kill patients on the spot.
Most thought it was pretty strange when
Sodium bicarbonate is one of the oldest workhorse medicines. So solid is bicarbonate’s position in orthodox oncology it would probably be considered malpractice to apply most forms of chemotherapy without it. It is commonly used prior to, during, and after application of chemotherapy. Some studies actually have already shown how manipulation of tumor pH with sodium bicarbonate enhances chemotherapy again pointing to the possibility that bicarbonate is the main chemo agent saving people from their cancers.
Since the very beginning sodium bicarbonate has been used with the premier chemotherapy agent made from mustard gas. Mechlorethamine also known as chlormethine, mustine, nitrogen mustard and HN2 and sold under the brand name Mustargen was the prototype anticancer chemotherapeutic drug. Use of mechlorethamine gave birth to the field of anticancer chemotherapy. Without baking soda orthodox oncology would never have been able to establish itself for all their patients would probably have died.
These chemo drugs are an analogue of mustard gas and were derived from chemical warfare research. Instructions for its use include: Dilute well with rapidly running IVF flush solution. After infusion is complete, give brisk bolus approx. 200 cc IVF to flush veins. The basic substances used in IVF flushes are sodium thiosulfate5 and sodium bicarbonate. Without the bicarbonate and thiosulfate buffers patients would quickly succumb to the chemo poisons. It’s a picture right out of hell using mustard gas instead of something vastly safer.
Sodium bicarbonate, potassium chloride, and calcium
chloride are used to maintain pH and electrolytes
within normal values in intensive care units.
We are talking about serious medicine when we talk about sodium bicarbonate. Earlier and more frequent use of sodium bicarbonate is associated with higher early resuscitability rates and with better long-term neurological outcomes in emergency units. Sodium bicarbonate is beneficial during CPR. We are also talking about an exceptionally safe medicine when we talk about bicarbonate. Chemotherapy drugs and corticoids reduce the bone marrow production of cells. In addition, these drugs damage the integrity of the skin tegument, and of the respiratory and gastrointestinal tracts, facilitating the penetration of microorganisms into the host. Bicarbonate does none of this.
Sodium bicarbonate lessens the development of polycystic kidney
disease in rats. Chronic administration of 200 mM sodium bicarbonate
to rats inhibited cystic enlargement and prevented thesubsequent
development of interstitial inflammation, chronic fibrosis, and uremia.
On the other hand cancer treatments, including the most commonly used chemotherapy agents as well as the newest biologic and targeted therapy drugs, can harm a patient’s heart – sometimes fatally. Cardiologists at The University of Texas found in their review of 29 anticancer agents that there is no class of cancer drug that is free of potential damage to the heart. It is the organ that seems to be most sensitive to toxic effects of anticancer agents. Even the newest targeted therapies, designed to attack only cancer cells, can cause cardiotoxicity.
Bicarbonate ions and water are two of
the most natural compounds on Earth.
We do not have to fear bicarbonate intake. And in fact, people who live in areas of the world with high amounts of bicarbonate in their drinking waters have a striking decreased mortality rate and a decreased prevalence of disease. Sodium bicarbonate, though often used as a medicine, is unlike pharmaceutical compounds. It is a natural non-toxic substance that does not require clinical trials for an assessment of toxicity. Spring waters contain bicarbonate ions which are coupled mainly with sodium, potassium, calcium or magnesium ions. A deficiency of bicarbonate ions in the body contributes to a range of diseases and medical conditions.
ORPHCAM Project first to look at GP-CAM interface in rural areas
Saturday, October 17th, 2009|
ORPHCAM Project first to look at GP-CAM interface in rural areas |
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NORPHCAM collaborators Associate Professor
Cancer patients and their experiences of using the Internet within disease and treatment processes.
Saturday, October 17th, 2009Cancer patients and their experiences of using the Internet within disease and treatment processes.
University of Newcastle,
This article draws on a study of 80 National Health Service cancer patients and their experiences of using the Internet within disease and treatment processes. It focuses on the role the Internet plays in the context of potential or actual engagement with complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). The results depart from previous conceptualizations of the Internet as a major source of CAM knowledge, and second, as a major pathway to patient CAM usage. Moreover, the results highlight significant anxiety as patients attempt to process vast amounts of complex biomedical diagnostic and prognostic information online. For patients attempting to embrace alternative therapeutic models of cancer care, exposure to prognostic data may pose considerable risks to individual well-being and engagement with healing practices. On the basis of these results we problematize social theorizations of the Internet as contributing to such things as: the democratization of knowledge; the deprofessionalization of medicine; and patient empowerment. We emphasize, instead, the potential role of the Internet in reinforcing biomedicine’s paradigmatic dominance in cancer care.