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Biological Medicine And The Dynamics Of Regulation

Thomas Rau, MD, received his medical training at the Medical School at Berne Universicy, Switzerland. After graduating in 1977, he took the US Final Medical Examination for foreigners in Philadelphia, Pa. Rau then completed postgraduate clinical education in general medicine, rheumatology, and internal medicine at different hospitals in Switzerland, France, Spain and the United States. From 1981 to 1992, he conducted a general and rheumatological practice and began formal education in homeopathy, isopathy, complex homeopathy, darkfield microscopy, thermography, neural therapy, and Chinese medicine. It was during these years Dr Rau began to develop his signature concept, biological medicine.

In 1992, Rau began serving as chief medical director and part owner of the Paracelsus Klinik in Lustmiihle, Switzerland, the first center in Europe for integrative European biological medicine and holistic dentistry. Under Rau's direction, the center specializes in chronic and internal diseases, colitis, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, allergies, and neurological disease, such as multiple sclerosis, neuralgias, and tumors.

Dr Rau has published many articles on biological medicine, darkfield microscopy, isopathy, homeopathy, and holistic dentistry. He is a cofounder and board member of Biological Medicine Network US, an organization that promotes the knowledge for biological medicine, and has conducted educational seminars for physicians and nurses in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, and the United States since 1993.
Alternative Therapies interviewed Dr Rau at Fox Hollow, an affiliate Paracelsus clinic, in Louisville, Ky.
Alternative Therapies: Let's start with the fundamentals of biological medicine. What they are?

Thomas Rau: The expression "biological" is used very differently in the United States than in Switzerland. For me, biological medicine is the integration of different traditional healing methods, such as Chinese medicine, homeopathy, Ayurveda, and the ancient European traditions, like druidic medicine. We integrate these different method into a way of treating patients individually. Biological medicine is individual and solely alternative. But alternative is the wrong expression; it's a natural way of healing patients.

AT: You stared out as a conventional doctor. What inspired you to investigate alternatives?

Rau: I was a rheumatologist- you would call it internist-and I ran a rehabilitation clinic. And I came to this different approach because my patients seemed to get sicker and sicker over the years, especially the rheumatoid patients. Many disease don't respond to conventional treatment. And our patients proved that the orthodox model didn't work because they got worse.
Now, all my colleagues and I are open individuals- open to new and other thinking. So after a while we had to ask ourselves: Is it just the fate of nature that people with these diseases don't get well or do we think wrong?

Some patients came to me and said, "Listen, Dr Rau, I was in your treatment for my arthritis for 5 years and I just got worse. Now I have tried homeopathy or I began a diet or this and that, and I am better." Of course, at first I got angry because all doctors get angry when they are shown that they are not right. But after several patients said things like this to me, I began to ask myself: Shouldn't I integrate all these other methods?

I realized that orthodox medicine has a wrong thinking behind it. It doesn't work on the real dynamic of life. You see, everything rebuilds in the human organism. For this patient who comes now, in 7 years, not a single cell will be the same cell as it was before. For example, blood, which is the energy stream in the organism, renews within 1 month. The white blood cells, which regulate the immune system, renew within 4 weeks; lymphocytes, 3 weeks; granulocytes, 2 months. So it's all renewing.

But what creates the character of these cells that renew all the time? What we give as nutrition, what we give as minerals and proteins and amino acids and so on, determine how a cell rebuilds itself. So in biological medicine we work on the dynamic that change the organs.

Shown here outside the Fox Hollow Paracelsus clinic, Thomas Rau, MD, believes that medicine should address root causes rather than symptoms, and that healing can occur by addressing the dynamic process of cell renewal.

AT: It seems like a slow process. Conventional medicine always wants more immediate results.

Rau: Yes, I know very well about conventional medicine because as a rheumatologist you do fast methods. You give anti-inflammatories, you give anti-immune drugs, you give anti, anti. And it's only treating the symptoms and never treating the cause. So we began to look for causes and ways to remove those causes. The new cells rebuild differently when the cause that made them bad is not present.
So I run my patients on different tracks. I may have to remove a tumor, or whatever, but we also work on the story of this patient. Why did the cells or the tissue go wrong in the first place?

AT: Can you give me an example on an actual patient?

Rau: Yes, we see multiple sclerosis (MS) patients who have myelinsheath decay and who not longer have never functions. In orthodox medicine, this is called a nonhealable disease. But nobody thinks about why the myelin sheaths decay. They just say we can's repair the myelin sheath. But that's not true. So we try to find the cause. The patient has different causes, not one single cause, but together the causes can destroy the neural sheaths or diminish the rebuilding of myelin sheaths.

I am open to new ideas, one of which is that MS is cause by neurotoxicity. Neurotoxic refers to the influences that can bother the nerve cells of the myelin sheaths. When we look at this, we begin to see more and more possible causes that could affect the nerve system. For example, and we see this again and again, root canals are very toxic. The material goes into the mesangium, into the lymphatic system, and from there it goes into the blood and then to the neural sheaths. Body E. Haley, PhD, professor of medical chemistry and biochemistry at the Markey Cancer Center, University of Kentucky in Lexington, has proven that you find the same toxins in a root canal that you find in the myelin sheaths that decay. Exactly the same toxins are there. So the dynamism of an organism that changes all the times is that these substances get into the whole body and they fix on the weak organs. That's one cause.

The other possible cause is hepatitis B vaccination. In Paris, 450,000 children were vaccinated against hepatitis B. five hundred and eighty got MS within 2 years. When I got this information, I asked myself: Shouldn't I look for this in all my MS patients? I have over 100 patients; shouldn't I look for antibodies to hepatitis B? And, in fact, I found them. So now, when an MS patient comes to the clinic, we look for hepatitis B, underground antibodies, root canals, and for mercury or palladium. We look for a deficiency in unsaturated fatty acids because rebuilding a good myelin sheath needs a lot of unsaturated fatty acids. If the renewal process is not working correctly, then the myelin sheaths will be of a lower quality.
So it's a multilevel approach, but it's also logical. That's why biological medicine is called biological, because it's about bios and it's logical.

AT: But if someone has had the hepatitis B vaccine, how do you fix that? You can't undo it.

Rau: That's very good question. And this goes deeper. We have frequently found chronic viruses in degenerative nerve disease such as Parkinson's or fibromyalgia, which is a negative nerve system disease, as is MS, and amyotrophic leteral sclerosis (ALS) and all these horrible diseases that lead to a decay of nerve cells. We found that viruses sometimes create diseases that don't come to the surface. They make an underground load. It's an underground disease that destroys slowly without being noticed. And for these patients, we activate their immune system specifically against this type of virus.

So we make the organism work against the virus. This is done with a nosode, which is a homeopathic remedy made from idle viral cultures of patients who were infected by this virus. We take the blood or the serum or the lymph of the patient and make the nosode. You destroy the virus or the bacterium or whatever you want to use for the nosode. There are no living viruses or bacteria in the homeopathic solution, but the information is still there. Then you give this information to the patient and it begins to cause a reaction so that the unnoticed underground virus now gets noticed. It's like a key and lock-it gives the key to the lock and now it's noticed.

AT: How does the information get transferred?

Rau: The answer to this would be enough for 2 books. This is a deep and difficult question. What is information? This are different approaches. You know, I am not a scientific person, I am only a very open person and I can't explain everything. But you have to see that homeopathy works purely on information and not on material.

It's arrogant to say that homeopathy doesn't work because it works extremely well, and it's been proven over 200 years that it works. But we still can't explain why. There are some tendenciesthat can be explained and some hypotheses on which to base new scientific research. One is that energy makes a change in the organism and is above the material part of the cell.

A good example of what energy can change is a seed. When you look inside a seed you will find amino acids, carbohydrates in the wall, and some fatty acid, and cells, and so on. This material is in the seed and the seed produced a wonderful tree; for example, a nut tree. If you heat the seed up, if you cook it, and then look at what material is inside, it is still cells, amino acids, proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. It's the same composition. But while the seed looks the same, it will no longer produce a tree. So what is the difference? What is the energy, the up-building force within the material, that is changed by the heat? So you see, there is some dimension that is above the material that is in a cell or an organism or a human being. And that is the energy.

AT: That's a beautiful analogy.

Rau: Researchers ask: What makes the homeopathy in the homeopathic solution? And now they have found that even though you have a homeopathic dilution above a potency of 23- if you have a DX30, for example, there are no molecules left of the original substance. So what can make this substance that is not present still have an effect? The answer they found is that the homeopathic remedy changes the water that it is in. So the water molecule changes.

AT: It's reconfiguring the water molecule?

Rau: Yes, Water is the main part of a human being. Sixty percent of what you see here is ware, and water works through every cell and through everything in your body. So the water molecule is changed by the homeopathic solutions. The 17 degree angle of the H2o molecule is changed.
A water molecule is not a single molecule. They are in clusters; 10 to 20 molecules are together. And the homeopathic solution changes the number in the cluster of molecules.
Professor Fritz-Albert Popp, PhD, biophysicist at the Technology Center in Kaiserslautern, Germany, works on test methods to measure how the spectral analysis changes. When you look at work and make a spectral analysis, homeopathic remedies change the water. It makes another spectral field, and it makes another photon emission.

If you feel sympathetic or antipathetic to me or to somebody else, that's something you can't see or describe, but you still feel it. This energy field is caused by photon emission. As yet, we don't. have test methods to prove this photon emission exists. At some point we will develop such tests. Professor Popp was able to prove that photon emissions change when you give homeopathic remedies or biological remedies. So slowly, slowly, there is proof that all this natural medicine can work.

AT: Maybe this is another one of those questions that would take 2 books to answer, but when you're taking some kind of fluid from someone who has a disease and you're reducing it to a homeopathic remedy and then giving it to a person with MS, what is the information that's being passed? What's is it saying to the person's cells that makes the cells change?

Rau: I can't answer that. I can only say it works. It's amazing how intensive the effect of these nosode treatments can be. First, we build up a person's milieu so that the organism can react better. We make the patients stronger with antioxidants, vitamins, alkaline treatments, and infusion. We make them more reactable, because most patients are severely blocked. And then, if we give them a nosode or very specific stimuli, they really notice how intensively it works. Sometimes, in very happy cases, the virus or the toxins get removed. Some little organism in the body noticed that there is a chronic soup- a slow virus, so to say. As the organism works this chronic underground agent, shingles or the flu breaks out, or a fever reaction turns on.

AT: IT most sounds like you are making the organism conscious.

Rau: Yes. As an orthodox- trained doctor, I asked myself: For which diseases are noneffective? And as s rheumatologist or an internist, it is colitis, asthma, MS, and cancer. today, I know that our orthodox treatment thinking is wrong. It doesn't follow the dynamic pathways of the human being. But since I began properly following the different dynamic pathways in treatment, we are effective with these diseases. For example, with ulcerative colitis patients, they not only get better 80% get completely well.

Chronic fatigue patients get well within 6 months to 1 year. We even have had some very bad chronic fatigue patients who were invalids and they got better. And the chronic chemical-sensitivity patients, who really can't live anywhere because they are so sensitive to everything, become stabilized within months.

AT: Tell me about chemical sensitivity. What do you do when a person comes to you who is chemically sensitive?

Rau: Tat disease is actually more rare in Europe, by the way. Many of our chronic chemical-sensitivity patients come from the United States.

But let's speak about chronic chemical sensitivity. Some patients are sensitive to everything and they are really disturbed fundamentally, so much so that they can't go outside. But we have to ask ourselves: Why do some patients react so badly while others who are exposed to the same chemical don't react at all? On the one side, there must be the bad chemicals that they are sensitive to, but on the other side, there must be some individual weakness that makes these patients susceptible.

So we have to work on 2 levels again. We have to work on the detoxification levels and bring out the toxins, the heavy metals. Those are simple to detoxify. But the organic toxins- the ones that bind to the organic substances in the organism, such as preservatives, fertilizers, and insecticides- they are very difficult to eliminate.

AT: Is it a different process?

Rau: It's different process. Somehow there patients have metabolic pathways of detoxification that are blocked. So we work on detoxification and on the changed metabolic pathways, trying to rebuild the patients' detoxifying pathways. This is one track.

The other track is that we try to remove all the things that lower the ability to react and reduce the healing tendency in this patient. We try to change the individual situation of the patient that is making him get sick while others do not get sick from the same toxins. And that's very often due to totally different things, such as energetic imbalances or chronic viruses, which affect the reaction capacity of the patient, or trace-element deficiencies, mineral deficiencies, and so on.

Then there's another item, the meridian imbalance, which is whatever energy is not in balance in the patient. So we work on the individual energetic situation and on the detoxification pathways. And it's amazing. These patients get well or at least much better within 6 to 12 months.
So I take this individual and say to myself: Every cell will be renewed in 7 years. The important parts-liver cells, white blood cells, red blood cells, thymus, thyroid-all these organs that meddle with the chemical sensitivity patients or chronic fatigue patients, rebuild within 2 years normally. If there were no more rebuilding force in this patient, he would die now. So the fact that the patient is alive proves that there is still a rebuilding capacity. Every dynamic in the human being is based on rebuilding and renewing. But these patients renew more slowly or in a wrong way.

So we have to create better conditions for these cells, and we do this by giving trace elements, vitamins, and rebuilding forces. In the anthroposophical way of thinking, we try to give them whatever it is that makes the up-building forces. We try to give that back. And what force is based on internal bacteria, which are the rebuilding elements in the organism. You understand, the bacteria in the small intensive rebuild in 2 days, so they have a giant rebuilding force.

Very often we see that the rebuilding forces in the intestines and in the bacterial layers are diminished because of preservatives, because of antibiotics, because of antiviral substances, and so on. So this rebuilding strength and force has to be given to patients again.

AT: Let's go back to getting rid to toxins. You said that the body eliminates heavy-metal toxins easily, but that the organic ones bind and are harder to get rid of.

Rau: Heavy metals don't leave the organism unless you do a drainage treatment. I would say that nearly all chronic fatigue patients or chronic chemical-sensitivity patients have heavy-metal toxicity. Palladium, mercury, zinc-these metals can be drained, and it's not difficult. There are chelation agents, there are vitamins, and there are amino acids that bind with the heavy metals and eliminate them through stools and urine if you do it correctly.
So that's not so difficult. It can be done with all patients, but sometimes it's very difficult to remove the organic toxins that bind deeply into the tissue.

AT: I'd like to go over the diagnostic technology used in biological medicine. What diagnostic do you use when patients come to your clinic?

Rau: We have to find out about the dynamic and regulation capacity and compensation capacity of an individual. Anatomic investigations like positron emission tomography (PET) scans and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) don't work for functional disease, for diseases that are based on a disturbance in the dynamic process of renewal. Orthodox medical diagnostic methods don't show this. It's like a fisherman who wants to catch sardines. He doesn't use a whale net. And that is what we do in medicine: we take the wrong nets to diagnose a disease. Since these diseases work on a totally different level, we have to have diagnostic methods that cover the other levels.

Rau: The main one that shows the dynamic processes is darkfield microscopy. We also have the dried-layer test that shows us about toxic products and the need for antioxidants. We have a special bioterrain assay that shows us the redux potentials, the membrane potentials, the vitality of fluids, and the amount of free electrons and protons. Then we have the thermal regulation test that shows us the disturbance foci and the disturbance fields in the organism and the connections between different organ systems.
For example, the meridian connections are very important in chronic diseases. In human beings, the thyroid and breast belong together, and the stomach and ovaries belong together, and these connections and their regulation capacity can be found in the thermal regulation test. So these are the main tests. And then we have a new test method for the autonomic nerve system.

Until now, orthodox medicine didn't get into these dimensions of autonomic regulations. Everything that regulates and that adapts itself internally couldn't be diagnosed until now. But now we have methods to diagnose the functions of the autonomic nerve system.

AT: How does that work?

Rau: The heart-rate-variability test is based on the rhythmic functions in an organism. While a patient is standing, we lower the temperature and give him small stimuli. Then we llok at how the rhythmic regulation changes, at how well the organism can react to small stimuli. That is what we want to find out.
We are successful with prostate cancer and with the early stages of breast cancer, much more so than orthodox medicine. But we are not successful with pancreatic cancer, and we are only slightly successful with kidney cancer. therefore, the only patients we try to attract to our clinic are those which we are sure we can do better than orthodox medicine. That's chronic fatigue, chemical sensitivity, breast cancer, prostate cancer, colitis, Crohn's disease, asthma, and allergies. These are functional diseases that deal with a disturbed reaction ability.

AT: Here in the United States, if you have Crohn's disease, they remover your intestines.

Rau: That's the mechanical thinking of medicine. Of course, if you take the intestines out, then you don't' have the disease.

AT: Tell me about darkfield microscopy -what does it do?

Rau : Darkfield microscopy shows a lot. We take I drop of blood and look at it under a very large-scale magnification. The blood is life under the glass. Once it's on the glass, there isn't oxygen or light or heat. This is a giant stress for the blood. So we see how, over a time, the blood reacts to this stress, and how the blood cells tolerate the stress. You can see the changes. So we take a drop of blood that represents the organism and put it under stress and look at how the cells react to the stress, and then we can see the tolerance and the resistiveness of these cells. Do they have a good cell-membrane face? Do they have good energetic behavior? Do they clot together? Is there a change for degenerative diseases? Is there a cancerous tendency in this blood? We see tendencies. And that's what we are interested in, tendencies.

AT: If you saw a cancerous tendency, what would that look like?

Rau: Cancerous tendency is a change in the cells. They get rigid, so to say. They don't react very well.

AT: And how long does blood live outside the body?

Rau: It can live for several days. But after 1 hour, the blood is already seriously changed. For example, a leukemia patient came to my clinic for another disease. But when we did darkfield, I found the leukemia. We saw that his white blood cells were atypical. Look at this slide-the fact that there are so many white blood cells together is absolutely unusual, and the fact that there are atypical white blood cells. This shows me that the patient has myeloid leukemia. The patient had been diagnosed as having theumatoid lung pain, but it was absolutely not true. The real cause of his pain was an infiltration of the spinal bone by these lymphocytes.

AT: Yours is one of the few clinics that integrated dentistry with medicine. Would you talk about that?

Rau: Toxic dental materials are the main factors for decreased regulation. The materials that are used for density for replacement and for root canals create a large amount of toxicity. The most common and best known is the mercury in amalgam fillings. This knowledge is now established in the medical world. It has been proven that mercury is very toxic. But there are other materials, such as tin and copper and palladium, that are used in many filling and crown materials. Even titanium, which is used for implants, is oxidating and can make a lymphocyte transformation and be the cause of autoimmune diseases. Another point is that when you root-canal a tooth, it dies off, but this dead organic material is still inside the canal of the roots and can decay. And this can be the culture for bacterial overgrowth. So in the apex and the bone around root canaled teeth, you always find toxic material. And this material can create other diseases.
There is very interesting book by George Meinig called Root Canal Cover-up. He talks about all the research around this. So, from this viewpoint, I said to myself: I can't create a holistic or biological medicine and honestly detoxify the patient if I don't integrate biological dentistry.

It's amazing, but not a single MS patient-and I have more than 100 MS patients in my care-not a single one was ever tested for toxicity. Parkinson's patients and ALS patients were never tested for dental electricity, for dental focus-disturbance fields, or dental toxicity. And in many cases it was the major cause of their disease.

For instance, we have many neuralgia patients, and when we remove these disturbing factors- for example, a toxic root canal-the trigeminus neuralgia goes away. But we don't do miracles. We just do other approaches.

So in the Switzerland clinic, we have 5 dentists who work wit our patients. They are not only taking out fillings and teeth. They are testing if the teeth are disturbing the regulative capacity of the patient or if the teethe release toxins. And then if there are these toxins, they remove the filling or the tooth or whatever is needed.

The biological dentist is an important instrument. After the toxins are released from the person's body. I can better work to rebuild the dynamics of the metabolic pathways.

AT: When you talk about patient regulation, what do you mean?

Rau: I will give you an example. You have an inside temperature of 37 degree. When you are in the desert and it is much hotter outside, then you have to cool down to maintain your inside temperature. When you are in the arctic and it's very cold outside, you have to heat up to maintain this internal temperature. So what makes you recognize if you have to heat or cool to maintain the inner temperature? This only a very simple example, but it shown how you have to recognize the needs of your organism and be able to react. The relationship from outside to inside, we call this adaption, and the reaction, we call regulation.
Another example: Who tells you that you don't have enough water and that you need to retain fluids or that you have to produce urine? What tells the organism what to detoxify and how to detoxify to maintain the internal milieu? That is what we call regulation-the capacity to adapt to the needs of your organism.
Now comes the important point: there are agents that lower this regulation capacity-for example, heavy metals, hyperacidity, or overproteinization, which block the lymphatic flow and other toxins, such as preservatives from food. Of course, our psychological backgrounds, our life backgrounds, can lower the capacity for regulation. And also very important, electromagnetic disturbances or loads from portable phones or television can lower the capacity. All these things can be tested for, and we can then begin to take away all the factors that block the regulation.

So we look to see how much blocking the patient has and what is it that fills the barrel of disease so that one day the patient will no longer have any regulative capacity. Then, as much as possible, we begin to remove these regulation blockages.

We never treat diagnoses. We never treat against symptoms. We always treat to make the regulation capacity better.

AT: It seems like what you're doing is simply getting everything out of the way so the body can heal itself.

Rau: Yes. It's a way of bringing back the organism to a state in which it compensates and regulates itself.

AT: Can you give me a case history of a cancer patient?

Rau: I have about 150 breast cancer patients in my permanent care. And if they come early enough after the diagnosis, we can nearly always stop the development of the cancer.

We look at why the cell degenerated, why the cell began to produce new cells in a wrong way. First, we remove the causes-free redials, heavy metals, toxins, and so on, cancer cells have a different metabolism from normal cells because cancer cells, as with all degenerative cells, have a low membrane potential. Their surface load is different, it's lower, and therefore the cell can't change or interact with its surroundings. That's why cancer gets a node and only reacts to itself and not to the needs of the organism. it loses contact with the surrounding region. But we can work on this changes metabolism by increasing the cancer cell's membrane potential. And we try to put the cells back to a normal stage of membrane potential. We do this by changing the redux potential through an electrode treatment called local hyperthermia that builds up the membrane potential of the cancer cells so that they interact with the surrounding region again.

We do local hyperthermia on cancer cells. These cancer cells are thermically labile, so they don't support heat as well as healthy cells. When we heat them locally , they fall apart. But the healthy cells around they don't fall apart.

We also use different methods-vitamins and antioxidants, for example-and we have special mistletoe preparations that work even better if combined with catalysts from citric acid.

Now, here is something very interesting. I made a study of breast cancer patients and I found that over 98% had a disturbance on the stomach meridian. (The breast belongs to the stomach meridian.) These patients have a typical psychological background pattern and they have disturbances of their stomach meridian. In about 150 cases of women with breast cancer, we only had 3 patients who did not have a root canal in a tooth that belongs to the stomach meridian. You see, each tooth belongs to a meridian, and over 97% had a root canal on the same meridian that belongs to the breast. It's very interesting.

Of course, when I brought this up in a medical congress, they simply said, "Well, in this day and age, all women have root canals." So we did a study of women in the same age range without breast cancer, without chronic diseases, and only 30% of that group had root canals. It's significant difference.
I'm not saying that root canals cause breast cancer, but if you have breast cancer and you don't remove your root canals and the other toxic elements that bother the breast tissue, then you have a lower chance to heal.

AT: Are these meridians that you're talking about from Chinese medicine?

Rau: Yes. They are the acupuncture meridians from Chinese medicine, but I don't think you can heal breast cancer with acupuncture. It's only about the correlations of meridians. It's about the organs that belong together. The thyroid belongs to the breast and the upper molars belong to the breast, too. So do the ovaries. That's why so many breast cancers are hormonally related.

AT: So you're using Chinese philosophy to help you diagnose, but you're not treating with it. Do you do acupuncture at your clinic?

Rau: Yes, we do acupuncture, but it's only 1 minor instrument in the whole process. The mistake that is made in the biological field is that there are many practitioners who use 1 instrument. But you have to use several instruments, and you have to add them to one another very individually. There is no single method in biological medicine. There is no single remedy that works against this or that chronic disease. There is no cancer remedy. It's only an individual combination that works well against a disease.
So if you really want to do biological medicine, you have to get away from this materialistic thinking of organs and of single treatment.

AT: You said had studied anthroposophy. Do you also work with patients spiritually?

Rau: I am a spiritual doctor and I have some healing capacities. I feel what is wrong with the patient. That's my gift. So yes, I work with them spiritually, but there are also 2 healers in our clinic who do the same thing. I can't explain with an intellectual explanation what we do on a spiritual level, but I can feel it. When I see a patient and I interact with him in the examination, I simply can feel what the patient has an on which meridians I need to work. That's my healing gift. But I can't put it into words.
A healer just knows what patients have wrong with them. Nobody understands why he knows things that you didn't tell him. Why does he know about your mother or what happened to you 5 years before? He just knows, and nobody can explain it. But getting things out of the unconscious into the consciousness is, in itself, a healing act.
But a healer alone can't make a chronic disease heal. This might have been possible 50 or 100 years ago, but today, the healing capacity, the reaction capacity, is so decreased by toxins and different regulation blockages that we have to combine the healer's healing forces with detoxification and up-building of the regulation. A healer can only heal a person who is still able to react. We can't heal a stone.

For information on treatment with or training in biological medicine, contact Dr Rau at The Marion Foundation, phone, (508) 748- 0816: fax, (508) 748-1796. Web site, http://www.marionfoundation,org. Dr Rau may also be contacted at the Paracelus Klinik, CH-9062, Lustmiihle, Switzerland: phone+41-71-335-7171.
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The Springs Of Clifton: Water And Wellness

In 1850, Dr Henry Foster founded the Clifton Springs Water Cure on a natural sulphur spring in the Finger Lakes region of New York state. Today, Clifton Springs Hospital and Clinic is a thriving organization that continues Dr Foster's vision of medicine, which he stated was "conducted upon the most liberal and scientific principles, always seeking the highest good of the patient, morally and physically."
Dr Foster completed his allopathic medical training at the Medical College in Cleveland, Ohio, after training in home opathy and hydrotherapy. He began his career at the Graefenberg Water Cure in upstate New York and was sought by several other water-cure institutions when he had a vision of a water-cure facility that focused on matters of the spirit and mental health as well as healing of the body. These philosophical threads continue to influence the hospital today.

Clifton Springs Hospital and Clinic is the only hospital built on mineral springs that is accredited by the Joint Commission of Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO). Having functioned continuously for 152 years, it has come full circle with the addition of the Integrated Health Department (also called The Springs of Clifton). The idea for the new department grew from the recognition that people seeking healing need a variety of therapies available within their hospital in an integrated setting that supports their choices.
According to Charlotte Wytias, RN, MS, FNP, program manager of The Springs of Clifton to be deeply connected to Henry Foster's vision of healing. With the addition of the Integrated Health Department to the hospital in 2000, that vision is taking new form. Old therapies that had fallen by the wayside, especially in the 1950s when the sulphur baths were closed, are being brought back. Conventional medical practitioners are beginning to see the value and usefulness of both older and newer alternatives.
Taking data from the National Center for complementary and Alternative Medicine, the Integrated Health Department decided to offer acupuncture, chiropractic, and massage as its first therapies. Hydrotherapy also was included because of the hospital's tradition of incorporating water treatments.

Les Moore, ND, MSOM, LAC, found himself drawn to Clifton Springs in the summer of 2000. Wytias says Moore was quite overcome: "When he walked through my door he said, 'All my life I've wanted to build a center on a healing spring, and here I don't have to; it's already here!" Dr Moore has introduced traditional Chinese medicine, homeopathy, herbology, qigong, hydrotherapy, and naturopathy.

In the Integrated Health Department, a licensed aromatherapist is available to patients; Wytias herself provides Healing Touch Buddies is available for any patient; one of the massage therapists provides craniosacral therapy; and another is a Reiki practitioner. Mary Greida, a nurse who helped initiate the department, provides holistic nursing assessments. Dr Moore provides acupuncture, and Arun Nagpaul, MD, joined the staff this year to provide medical hypnotherapy. He specializes in smoking cessation and weight management. "We have a huge waiting list for him," Wytias reports.

Patients also have access to nutritional counseling, lifestyle counseling, and, through the Spiritual Care Department, spiritual consultation. Additionally, and Integrated Health Department has a leading library and an extensive collection of handouts on many nonallopathic modalities. A small stores offers herbs, books, tapes, aromatherapy, bath salts. Soaps, salves, and music.

The staff has put together medical spa packages that incorporate the skills of a variety of the practitioners. This year, a Healthy Weight Program, Smoking Cessation, Spring Detoxification, Antiagain, and Stress Management are being offered. Packages can include hypnotherapy from Dr Nagpaul, nutritional assessment and education form Dr Moore, herbs and supplements, and acupuncture, Patients may also include massage and aromatherapy in their package.

Water as a healing modality was fundamental to treatment plans in Dr Foster's day, and it is again finding a significant role within the Integrated Health Department. The hospital is working with hydrologists and architects to reopen the suphur baths.

Hydrotherapy at Clifton Springs is internal as well as external, Moore explains, "The way we're using it today comes out of the European nature cure movement, like Kniepp in the late 1800s. Nature-cure hydrotherapy turned into naturopathy in the US."

As an exapmle, Moore described a constitutional hydrotherapy treatment used at Clifton Springs. A patient lies on a table that has been draped with wool blankets and covered with sheets. A hot, moist towel is applied to the patient's body, then the patient is bundled up in the sheets and blankets. After 5 minutes, the patient is unwrapped and the hot towel is changed for another, which is left on for 1 minute, then changed for a clod towel. When the patient's body has warmed the clod towel, it is removed. The patient turns over, and the process begins again. After each application, the patient is covered in the sheets and blankets. The hot towels are vasodilators and the cold are vasoconstrictors, so the treatment "creates a mechanical pumping action of fluids through the body, helping the circulation and the digestion. It's a very nurturing experience - you're wrapped and pampered. Most people fall asleep."
Along with the various therapies, Clifton Springs has offered workshops, classes, and seminars to the community since 1998. The majority of the presenters are local, most from the greater Rochester area. The Integrated Health Department also has hosted such notable speakers as Joan Borysenko, PhD, form Boulder, Colo; Hunter "Patch" Adams, MD, from West Virginia; and Loretta LaRoche from Boston, Mass.
Dr Moore himself has taught a number of classes. "He's doing an herb walk next month, "Wytias said. "We have a lot of trail systems." In and around the hospital grounds, there is vegetation that can be used medicinally, as well as the hospital's own herb garden. Although at one time the hospital grew much of its own food and some of its own medicinals, herbs from the hospital's garden are no longer used therapeutically. Recently, however, the garden was part of a class in which students planted herbs and learned about their healing properties.

Another class Moore teaches is qigong. "Les teaches qigong, but he also practice qigong every day," Wytias says. "The commitment we have here is to practice what we teach."

Clifton Springs Hospital and Clinic continues to be in the forefront of medical innovation, in part because of its commitment to integrating Western medical technology with the more holistic approaches offered in the Integrated Health Department. Dr Moore works closely with the hospital's cancer center, providing consultation on herbs and supplements that support patients in their cancer treatment.

Patients throughout the hospital are checked for herb and drug interactions. Moore, who has had training in herbal medicine and whose father was an herbalist, often fields questions from the hospital's conventional medical staff and other professional about possible interactions, including nutrient and drug interactions. "They use him as a resources," Wytias says. "With acute care inpatients, they call us for hydrotherapy acupuncture for pain, massage, and herbal questions."

The hospital's openness to complementary and alternative medical therapies is helpful to patients because they know that the conventional physicians and the Integrated Health Department's practitioners will communicate about their care. "They support us here; they're right on board," Moore says. "There's never any fear that one doctor's not talking to another."

And, he points out, it works both ways. In the Integrated Health Department, "we get people who won't come to a hospital or see an MD ordinarily; this is a stepping stone for them. And we see people come in with, say, tumors- 'I want more, I want the best of conventional medicine and the best of alternative medicine, to." Clifton Springs allows both options in an atmosphere of respect for al types of practitioners and a commitment to the needs of different patients.

One of the necessities at Clifton Springs Hospital has always been spiritual care. The hospital was the first in the United States to have full-time pastoral care. Even today, the Board of Trustees begins each of its sessions with a prayer.

The Spiritual Care Department was formed in 1997, with the hospital chaplain in charge of training and supervising a spiritual care director and a group of volunteers who are available 24 hours a day to patients, families, and staff. "That is so unbelievably handy," Moore says.
Regarding Henry Foster's original vision for Clifton Springs, Moore says, "He was taking about this medicine we're doing here today."

For more information, contact Clifton Springs Hospital and Clinic, 2 Coulter Rd, Clifton Springs, NY 14432-1189; Phone, (315) 462-9561; fax, (315) 462-3492; Web site, http://www.cliftonspringshospital.org.


NOTES OF THE JOURNEY
Leeches could be finicky, too, and getting a leech to go to work was not always easy. It first had to be induced to attach itself to the patient. To tempt it, the skin was washed with warm or hot water to bring blood to the surface. Some authorities advised shaving the skin as well. If this didn't work, the skin was rubbed with a piece of raw meat or moistened with sugared water or milk. If the leech remained recalcitrant, the leecher could prick the skin of his patient or even his own finger and smear the blood over the area. To make sure the leech bit the right place, it could be applied via a cup that was inverted over the spot, or a hole could be cut in blotting paper, which was then placed over the intended site. Applying the leech to an anatomically complex area such as the nostril, throat, or vagina could be difficult, and for this purpose a leech glass- a tube open at both ends-was used.

Sometimes the leech became full after 15 or 20 minutes and quit sucking before the desired amount of blood had been removed. In this situation, rather than applying another leech, the Roman physician Galen advised puncturing or cutting off the tail of the leech so it would continue to feed, losing blood from the tail as it did so. Or the leech could be stripped, applying pressure from the tail forward, which forced the blood out of its mouth. If these methods failed, the leech could be submerged in a weak saline or vinegar-water solution, which caused it to regurgitate.

Suppose the opposite occurred and the leech was still hungry after removing a sufficient quantity of blood? How did physicians detach a feeding leech? Table salt or vinegar did the job. Forceful removal was not advises; parts of the mouth could be left in place and a "phagodenic ulceration" could result.

LOCAL AND SYSTEMIC EFFECTS
Two types of effects are recognized from the use of leeches- local and systemic. The local effect involve anticoagulation of specific sites and blood removal. Physicians make use of these local effects of leeches following digital reimplantations, the grafting of sin flaps, breast reconstruction, and so on, in which edema and tissue congestion can interfere with healing, or in evacuating subcutaneous bleeding in periobrital hematomas ("black eyes"). The systemic or general effects of leeches depend on substances found in their saliva. Hirudin, an anticoagulant isolated from leech saliva, is being investigated in various clinical conditions requiring systemic anticoagulation, such as disseminated intravascular coagulation. In addition, an extract from the giant Amazon leech Haementeria ghilianii is being tested as an inhibitor of metastatic lung cancer.

BEYOND THE YUCK FACTOR

Entomologist Harold Oldroyd sums up the attitude many people have toward the files that spawn maggots: "Breeding in dung, carrion, sewage and even living flesh, files are a subject of disgust….a topic drains, not to be discussed in polite society. But as environmentalist and educator Joanne Elizabeth Lauck observes in her book The Voice of the Infinite: Revisioning the Insect-Human Connection.

"Disgust is, after all, a learned response. Every culture teaches its members what is disgusting and what is mot. Children develop their disgust reaction by observing the facial expressions and reactions of their parents and teachers. And what is disgusting to members of one culture may not be disgusting to members of another. What allows us to eat shrimp and escargot, for example, and refuse maggots and caterpillars is the bias of our particular culture.

The bias against maggots is not universal. As Lauck points out, not only have maggots been used throughout history to promote would healing, they have also been highly prized by indigenous peoples as food. The Dogrib Indians of the Athapascan tribe of eastern Canada consider the maggots of several fly species a delicacy, as to many other native societies around the world. One reason is their nutritional value. Housefly maggots consist of 63% protein and 15% fat. They are so nutritious that entomologist Ronald Taylor advocates using maggots and insects to help alleviate world hunger. Because the majority of maggots feed on dead materials that are high in protein-animals, garbage, dung-Taylor suggests that mass-raised maggots also could help solve the world's burgeoning organic waste problem by converting these wastes into high-quality food supplements for domestic animals.

One professional group that has overcome its revulsion to maggots is forensic entomologists and pathologists. Dead bodies, including human corpses, draw blowflies like a magnet as a perfect place to lay eggs. Whenever forensic pathologists encounter maggots in a corpse, they collect and examine the maggots for their stage of development. By determining how old the maggots are, they know when the eggs were laid and thus the approximate time of the person's death. Maggots have thus served as witness in courts around the world-sometimes for the defense, sometimes for the prosecution.

Maggots and leeches have fascinated me for a long time. A friend of mine who is a psychoanalyst considers my curiosity about these flesh-eating, bloodsucking creatures perverse, and he finds all sorts of morbid, hidden meanings in my interest. He says that, because worms will eventually have their way with us, my interest in maggots represents a death wish. I in turn accuse him of suffering from an overheated imagination. As Freud famously said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

There is something special about maggot and leech therapy, which one simply does not see when drugs and surgical procedures are used. When maggots and leeches go to work on us, all parties benefit: we get better and the creatures get a meal. There is a lovely symmetry here, a mutual advantage through cooperation, and we ought to pay more attention to such things.
Can we free ourselves from our revulsion toward these creatures? Our turnoff is, after all, irrational. It makes no sense to reject a therapy that is inexpensive, almost totally free of side effects, and often highly effective when conventional treatments have failed.

One reason for our phobia is our increasing separation from the natural world, the world of the wild. For increasing numbers of people, "nature" suggests a continual assault by invisible pathogens that requires constant vigilence. This has led to "fortress medicine"- shielding ourselves from natural threats, many of which are imaginary, and developing increasingly aggressive ways of dealing with them.
Maggot and leech therapy involves a different attitude toward nature: nature as ally, not as enemy. This is an idea whose time has come. There is increasing evidence that a variety of primitive creatures can indeed help us, and a new field in medicine, probiotics, is based on this premises. Probiotics, sometimes called "living drugs," are live microorganisms that are used singly or in a mixture to improve an individual's microbial balance. Research in this field is exploding; one search revealed 646 probiotic-related papers listed on the National Library of Medicine's PubMed Web site (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov). For example, the yeast Lactobacillus have shown efficacy in clinical trials for preventing diarrhea following the use of antibiotics. Lactobacillus strains also show promise as a treatment for urinary tract infections. The bottom line is that microbes are not all bad, and we need to rethink our blanket hostility toward "germs." As health journalist Tinker Ready reports, "Bacteria in the mouth may cause tooth decay but can also inhibit strep throat and pneumonia. Rats fed on a diet that promoted the growth of lactobacilli in the small intensive appear to be more resistant to food poisoning. And studies have found that children who grow up in large families or attend day care early-and are thus exposed to more germs-are less likely to develop allergies later in life…[A] newly discovered, harmless virus called Hepatitis G somehow appears to slow the rapidly duplicating AIDS virus."

Maggots and leeches unmask some of our hidden attitudes toward the wild world, and they expose some of our most ingrained prejudices about our role in the natural order. One such prejudice is our concept of the food chain, which we usually imagine as a vertical, ladder-like arrangement with humans on top, eating anything below us that strikes our fancy. A more fitting symbol would be not a verticle chain but a circle, in which living things eat one another without any particular creature being on top. This process was captured by the American humorist and satirist Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) in The Devil's Dictionary, with his circular definition of "edible."

Edible, adj.good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.

When we employ maggots and leeches therapeutically , we invert the food chain and allow lower organisms to feed on us. Permitting primitive creatures to gnaw on us for a while- the dinner becoming the dinner-requires a considerable dose of humility. Yet, as patients continue to discover, a bruised ego can be a fair price to pay when conventional medicine fails.
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Death By Doctoring
Vitamin C & B17


By Steven Ransom © 2002
Research director, Credence Publications, UK
Telephone : +44 (0) 1622 832386
Email : steve2@onetel.net.uk
Website : http://www.redence.org
Extracted from his book Great News on cancer in the 21st Century (Credence, 2002)

REPUTATION IS EVERYTHING
But what relevance does all this have to the debate on treatment for cancer? Where is all of this headed? This has been a necessary diversion-firstly, that we might begin to understand some of the frustrations that many reasoned thinkers have with the issues raised; and secondly, that we might begin to consider the impact that such weakened thinking has no genuine natural treatments for disease. For instance, what damage is secondarily being wrought upon the reputation of the genuine treatments in the cabinet, the ones that can actually heal?

Sadly, there is no clear division between the reputation of much of the unregulated alternative health industry and that of the many sensible and proven, non-conventional treatments available today. It has all become a horrible blue and is a point of major concern even to the non-orthodox regulatory bodies overseeing the alternative/complementary health movement. The whole arena is fraught with as many vested interests and misunderstandings as conventional health, but commentaries drawing such conclusions- even from those concerned bodies sympathetic to the natural approach- are viewed as almost heretical and somehow betraying the brotherhood of the alternative hierarchy.

Personally speaking, critical debate should commence as soon as possible with regard to those "helping" therapies that only temporarily distract the seriously ill. In need only of sensible advice and sensible treatment, these people can very quickly end up worse off in body, mind and spirit- and, last but not least, in pocket-leading very quickly to derision and a carte blanche dismissal of all the good that genuine natural treatments have to offer.

John Diamond stated that there was as much chance of his going down the alternative treatment route as there was of the Pope getting drunk on the communion wine and getting off with a couple of nuns. Whilst we can perhaps understand some of John Diamond's frustrations, his comparison don't exactly aid the cause. Because the truth is that the alternativist's cabinet is not all "mumbo jumbo" by any means. Genuine medicine can be found in there.

Perhaps a name change is in order. Are we alternative? Are we complementary? But complementary to what? To chemotherapy, perhaps? But then, what medicine could possibly complement chemotherapy? Shouldn't there just be medicine and non-medicine, full stop? Be that as it may, many people are wrongly assuming that the non-orthodox medical cabinet is barren and not worthy of closer inspection.
The hazy and often crazy information being disseminated on numerous non conventional treatments, coupled with our innate and naïve trust in the orthodoxy, is the reason why thousands of people like John Diamond are staying with, and relying upon, conventional treatments for serious illnesses including cancer. As a result, thousands of people like John Diamond are dying, and often in a horrible fashion.

Vitamin B17

In his UK Observer article entitled "Quacks on the Rack", John Diamond summarily dismissed what is arguably the most famous of the natural and proven anti-cancer treatments known to man: the natural extract of the apricot kernel, otherwise known as vitamin B17.

'Supporters of laetrile (vitamin B17) and Essiac, in particular, made so much noise about their miracle cures that both have been through the research mill on numerous occasions and found to be useless."
Now we can ask ourselves whether it was perhaps the fault of some kindly but misguided soul who posted John Diamond an essay on the benefits of vitamin B17 mixed with walnut water which caused him to dismiss B17 so emphatically. Or was it that John actually trusted the conventional research reports he had accrued on this vitamin?

Interestingly, Dr Dean Burk, the former head of the Cytochemistry Department of the National Cancer Institute and one of the co-founders of this famous American medical institution, had personally worked on vitamin B1. He described this substance in very different terms:

"When we add laetrile to a cancer culture under the microscope," said Dr Burk, "providing the enzyme glucosidase also is present, we can see the cancer cells dying off like files."

(Glucosidase is the enzyme heavily present in cancerous cells, which triggers the unique cancer-destroying mechanism found in vitamin B17. An excellent clinical analysis of this mechanism is found in B17 Metabolic Therapy- In the Prevention and Control of Cancer, a concise history of the research into this vitamin, including many clinical assessments.

Dr Burk also stated that evidence for laetrile's efficacy had been noted in at least five independent institutions in three widely separated countries of the world.
So whom do we trust in this matter? Diamond or Burk? By looking at where John Diamond might have got his B17 research "information", the ugly features of conventional cancer research move more sharply into focus.

Because of the Money 
Cancer in big business, and knowledge claims on any treatments that earn money and, conversely, on any treatments that do not earn money for the drug companies are never neutral.
Dr Ralph Moss served as the Assistant Director of Public Affairs at America's most famous cancer research institution, Memorial Sloan-Kettering in Manhattan. He knows the cancer industry inside out. Read what he had to say in an April 1994 interview with Laura Lee, and judge for yourself the quality of the evidence against the effectiveness of vitamin B17:
Dr Moss: "Shortly after I went to work [at the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute], I visited the elderly Japanese scientist Kanemastu Sugiura, who astonished me when he told me he was working on laetrile (B17). At the time it was the most controversial thing in cancer, reputed to be a cure for cancer. We in Public Affairs were giving out statements that laetrile was worthless, it was quackery, and that people should not abandon proven therapies. I was astonished that our most distinguished scientist would be bothering with something like this, and I said, 'Why are you doing this if it doesn't work? He took down his lab books and showed me that, in fact, laetrile was dramatically effective in stopping the spread of cancer."

Laura Lee: "So this is verified, that laetrile can have this positive effect?"
Moss: "We were finding this and yet we in Public Affairs were told to issue statements to the exact opposite of what we were finding scientifically."

Unable to sit on this information, Dr Moss later called a press conference of his own and, before a battery of reporters and cameramen, charged that Sloan-Kettering officials had engineered a massive cover-up. He provided all the supporting documents and named all the names necessary to validate his case. The following day he was fired for "failing to carry out his most basic job responsibilities."

Similarly, in his book, World Without Cancer, cancer industry researcher G. Edward Griffin notes:
"Every laetrile study had been tarnished with the same kind of scientific ineptitude, bias and outright deception….Some of these studies openly admitted evidence of anti-cancer effect, but hastened to attributed this effect to other causes. Some were toxicity studies only, which means that they weren't trying to see if laetrile was effective, but merely to determine how much of it was required to kill the patient."
The "evidence" supporting John Diamond's claim that vitamin B17 is useless and even dangerous is available in abundance in all of the major cancer institutions today. Well, of course it is! We're in the merchant's house, don't forget!

As Apt Rattigan, author of the Cancer Business, reports"
"The threat to the cancer business from effective therapies was taken very seriously from the beginning. By the 1940s, the Syndicate had 300,000 names on its 'quack' files. Vitamin B17, being a unique threat due to its simplicity, attracted more concentrated attacks than all the other treatments put together: fraudulent test reports; hired, banner-carrying pickets outside clinics; rigged juries; newspaper character assassinations; dismissal of heretic employees; etc. the FDA, orchestrating the onslaught, sent out 10,000 posters and hundreds of thousands of leaflets warning about the dangers of the toxicity of the non-toxic substance. Earlier, a Congressional Accounting Office had found that 350 FDA employees had shares in, or had refused to declare an interest in, the pharmaceutical industry."

The American Food and Drug Administration issued one such story about the death of an 11-month-old girl, supposedly from cyanide poisoning due to her apparently swallowing her father's vitamin B17 tablets. Cancer specialist and B17 advocate Dr Harold Manner takes up the story:

"I was lecturing in Buffalo, New York and… after I had made some strong statements, a man stood up and said, 'Dr Manner, how in the world can you make statements like that when the FDA is making these other statements?' I reiterated that the FDA statements were lies. He said, 'Look at this little girl in upstate New York; she took her father's laetrile tablets and died of cyanide poisoning.' Just think I am entitled to because I am that little baby's mother. That baby never touched her father's laetrile tablets. The doctor, knowing the father was on laetrile, marked down "possible cyanide poisoning". At the hospital they used a cyanide antidote and it was the antidote that killed the child. And yet that statement will continue to appear, even though they know it is a lie."

"When we add laetrile to a cancer culture under the microscope," said Dr Burk, "providing the enzyme glucosidase also is present, we can see the cancer cells dying off like files."

The scare stories always focus on the minute amounts of naturally occurring cyanide found in vitamin B17. But no mention is made in any of these stories of the wondrous mechanism governing the release of this cyanide. No harm is done to the person eating this vitamin (if that were the case, we've consumed enough apricots, apples, peaches, cherries, etc. containing B17 to have finished us off long ago). The cyanide is released only when cancerous cells are recognised by their high glucosidase content. B17 cyanide attacks cancer cells specifically. No large amounts of glucosidase detected means no cyanide release. Rest assured, there is no evidence that vitamin B17 can kill- unless, of course, one is accidentally crushed under a pallet of the stuff!

A further embarrassment for the cancer orthodoxy must surely be the research being carried out at the Imperial College in London, where researchers are looking at ways of using naturally occurring plant cyanide specifically to attack human bowel tumours. The idea came about after studying the pattern of specific cyanide release in the almond and cassava fruit which protects them from insect attack. Another one of those natural wonders, just crying out to be heard, is at last being listened to by the orthodoxy, perhaps?

Very sadly, in assessing the deservedness of the "shady" reputation bestowed upon vitamin B17 metabolic therapy, we realise it is entirely unwarranted and that, instead, there has been a sustained attack by the conventional cancer industry on this treatment- an attack that has been carried on in one form or another for the last 40 years.

As mentioned earlier, with global spending on conventional cancer running into the hundreds of billions annually, a naturally occurring cancer cure of any description is an unwanted intruder.
Here is Dr Moss, again from the April 1994 Laura Lee interview, this time on the money involved in conventional cancer:

Moss: "About 630,000 people die every year of cancer in the US, and it really is an epidemic disease. We have got a tremendous industry. Every one of those people who is getting cancer and dying of it is going to be treated, and these treatments are extremely expensive. Chemo is [costed at] tens of thousands, of dollars. A bone marrow transplant, which is basically another way of giving chemotherapy, or radiation, can run to about $150,000 per person, and is almost never effective. It kills about 25 per cent of the patients."

Lee: "Why carry on doing it?"
Moss: "Because of the money, which is tremendous."
When we understand the amounts of money involved, we can begin to understand the in-house desire to sustain a "fact-creating" process in support of conventional treatment. Conventional cancer treatment and cancer research are a licence to print money. Most definitely, conventional interested parties and institutions have colluded in a shameful anti-vitamin B17 "fact-creating" process, which in turn has surely led to the early and unnecessary deaths of thousands upon thousands of people.

As for John Diamond's dismissal of vitamin B17, he didn't write his comments on B17 as an intentional slur. He wasn't the forked tongue in this chain of events. He desperately wanted to live. His single paragraph read by thousands was just another example of the damaging knock-on effect of merchant-speak. Merchant-speak on vitamin B17 metabolic therapy has exacted a grave injustice upon this treatment, and subsequently upon all who have been persuaded to think likewise.

Phillips
Phillips is 64. In April 2001, he was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. The oncologist showed him the X-rays that confirmed the dreaded "shadows". He was told to go home, enjoy his life as best he could and put his affairs in order.

A week later, in a chance conversation at work, Phillips was told about vitamin B17. Phillips immediately began taking a combination of vitamin B17 and vitamin C. four months later, Phillips returned to hospital for a check-up, where a new set of X-rays was taken. The shadows had completely disappeared. Says Phillip:

"I know what I saw, and the doctor couldn't explain it. I'm continuing with my vitamin B17 regime and eating about 10 kernels a day."

Phillip now pays great attention to his diet and believes that what we put into our bodies can have a dramatic effect medicinally.

The Importance of Nutrition
Here's John Diamond again, this time on some "nutter" with a magical diet:
"I was waiting my turn for zapping [radiation] one day and mentioned the ludicrousness of one diet I'd been reading about. The radiographer agreed and said that when she had started at the hospital there used to be a nutter who, having refused radiography, would come down and rail against those sitting in the radiotherapy waiting room, telling them they should abandon evil radiation and take up his magical diet. 'Criminal,' I said. 'You kicked him out, of course?' 'Well yes,' she said, 'we kicked him out regularly. The only thing was, he did survive for years and the cancer did disappear.' Which only goes to prove-well, nothing very much at all really, but I thought I'd pass it on in the name of fair dealing."

Now if this cancer "nutter" was just an isolated case of recovery through diet, his recovery would not of course constitute proof. But with vitamin B17 metabolic therapy, we are seeing tremendous results time after time. Continuing on in the name of fair dealing…

William
William was diagnosed with a tumour in the oesophagus. He had read about vitamin B17 12 months previously and had kept the article. William began taking vitamin B17 soon after the diagnosis. After three weeks he was swallowing food a lot easier, and after about seven weeks he was told by his doctor that the only reason for this was because the tumour was shrinking.

Says William: "The operation to remove the tumour was cancelled and I am still awaiting the results of the latest scan. I feel fit as a fiddle. I pay attention on my diet and I thank God quite literally for vitamin B17. It is time the NHS [National Health Service] recognised this vitamin as an alternative to the conventional treatments. I consider that any money spent on B17 is money well spent."

What Are We Eating?
It is interesting to note that there are cultures today who remain almost entirely cancer free. The Abkhasians, the Azerbaijants, the Hunzasm the Eskimos and the Karakorum all live on foodstuffs rich in nitriloside or vitamin B17. Their food consists variously of buckwheat, peas, broad beans, lucerne, turnips, lettuce, sprouting pulse or grain, apricots with their seeds, and berries of various kinds. Their diet can provide them with as much as 250-3,000mg of nitrloside a day. The founding father of vitamin B17 research, Ernst T. Krebs, Jr, studied the dietary habits of these tribes. Krebs stated:

"Upon investigating the diet of these people, we found that the seed of the apricot was prized as a delicacy and that every part of the apricot was utilized."

The average Western diet, with its refined, fibreless foods, offers less than 2mg of nitriloside a day. It has also been noted that natives from these tribes who move into "civilised" areas and change their diets accordingly are prone to cancers at the regular Western incidence.

The Right Materials
In his book, Preface to Cancer: Nature, Cause and Cure, Dr. Alexander Berglas has this to say about cancer incidence:

"Civilization is, in terms of cancer, a juggernaut that cannot be stopped… It is the nature and essence of industrial civilization to be toxic in every sense…. We are faced with the grim prospect that the advance of cancer and of civilization parallel each other."

The human body has an amazing capacity to recover, if we look after it properly and if we supply it with the proper materials for repair. Working with non-toxic, physio-friendly treatments can only work in our favour. Just look at the side-effects of vitamin B17 as described by G. Edward Griffin in World Without Cancer.

"B17 side effects include increased appetite, weight gain, lowered blood pressure, increased hemoglobin and red blood cell count, elimination or sharp reduction of pain without narcotics; builds up the body' resistance to other disease, is a natural substance found in foods and is compatible with human biological experience, destroys cancer cells while nourishing non-cancer cells…"
Compare the above with the side effects from chemotherapy and radiation: the dizziness, skin discolouration, nausea, diarrhoea, loss of hair, loss of appetite, organ failure, internal bleeding, etcetera, etcetera. 

How long will it be before we find ourselves looking back on these treatments in the same way as we now look back on the blood-letting and ammonia infusions exacted upon King Charles II? Notwithstanding the often life-saving surgical removal of cancerous tissue, could there possibly be amore inhumane treatment in the 21st century than conventional cancer therapy?

Flora

Flora was diagnosed with stage-four bowel cancer in 1999.
"Before the operation they gave me chemotherapy, which was devastating. By the end of the course, I could hardly stand. They then removed the tumour from my bowel. I was told the cancer had spread to the liver. I was offered further chemotherapy, but declined. I attended Middlesex Hospital and had five sessions of laser treatment to try and contain the liver cancer, followed by more chemotherapy. After the fifth time of trying to contain the cancer, they said that it was beginning to grow yet again. So I was told about vitamin B17. I added that to my regime. Over a period of time, the cancer completely disappeared from my liver. it is now February 2002 and I have been one year clear of cancer. I am maintaining my organic diet and eating about 50 apricot kernels a day. I'm 64, I've returned to work and I feel fine. Treatments such as these should at least be made known to patients by the NHS."

There are literally thousands of people who can attest to the pharmacological, life-saving power of vitamin B17 and its supporting nutritional regime. And the same can also be said of vitamin C.

Vitamin C
The all-round benefits of vitamin C to the human physiology have been known and utilised for centuries. In terms of its benefits in cancer treatment and prevention, we read the following from Phillips Day:
"Dr Linus Pauling, often knows as the 'Father of Vitamin C" and twice awarded the Nobel Prize, declared that daily intake of up to 10 grams a day of the vitamin aids anticancer activity within the body. 
"Pauling was largely derided for making these declarations but, today, large doses of vitamin C are used by many practitioners for cancer patients in nutritional therapy, who believe Pauling was right and that the popular nutrient is indispensable to the body in its fight to regain health from cancer."

Vitamin C can protect against breast cancer. After reviewing 90 studies on the relationship between vitamin C and cancer, Gladys Block, PhD, at the University of California at Berkeley, concluded:
"There is overwhelming evidence of the protective effect of vitamin C and other antioxidants against cancer of the breast." 
And Geoffrey R. Howe, of the National Cancer Institute of Canada, reviewed 12 controlled case studies of diet and breast cancer and noted that vitamin C had the most consistent statistically significant relationship to the reduction of breast cancer risk.

On the subject of the importance or mineral and vitamin supplements, a recent New York Times front-page article quoted Dr Geoffrey P. Oakley, Jr, at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, as saying:

"We, the physicians, were mistaken not to recommended vitamin supplements to our patients for so long. We need just to admit that, on this one, we were wrong."

Let the reader be assured that the recent scare tactics surrounding vitamin C and its supposed links to cancer are just another one of those smear campaigns orchestrated by the merchants.

Quite simply, any good news on vitamin C represents yet another threat to the pharmaceutical industry's considerable income from conventional cancer treatments. The full story on the vested interests supporting the author of the much-published vitamin C/cancer story can be found at the website http://www.whatareweswallowing.freeserve.co.uk/vitc.htm.

Hazel
Hazel had been given a virtual death sentence by her cancer doctor, who told her that although there was an 86 per cent recovery rate from her tyoe of breast cancer, she was unfortunately in the smaller category.
As previously noted, Hazel's chemotherapy was only making her feel terrible, and she decided that if she were going to die then she would do so without further conventional treatment. Hazel began a regime of intravenously administered vitamin C and supplements, including vitamin B17, and paid great attention to her diet. She soon began to feel a great deal better. She regained her weight, her hair and her appetite.

About none months following the diagnosis, she was troubled with lower back pain and visited her doctor. He suggested a further scan based on Hazel's lower back pain, which the doctor believed was possibly the result of her cancer having spread to the base of her spine. Hazel said there was no way she was going for more chemotherapy or scans, which she believes in themselves can trigger carcinogenic activity.

Instead, Hazel supplemented her vitamin C regime with a course of vitamin B17 kernels, and she also maintained a sensible diet and stayed away from her conventional cancer physician. The blood count taken by her GP before Christmas read as normal. She feels very healthy and is in the process of writing a book her experiences. She feels passionately that people need to know that there are alternative cancer treatments available, and she speaks to groups on this subject.

Need for Data and Education

Finally, we hear from Dr Nicola Hembry of the Dove Clinic, which specialises in the non-conventional approach to cancer care and treatment.

"Nutritional treatments such as high-dose vitamin C and B17 [laetrile] have been known about for years, and there are many success stories from patients lucky enough to have received and benefited from them. Research shows that levels of 400 mg/dL vitamin C in the blood can kill cancer cells by a pro-oxidative mechanism, and there is a great deal of data showing that B17 is preferentially toxic to cancer cells.
"The trouble is that there is little in the way well-designed random control trial data for the use of these substances, and therefore mainstream medicine rejects them out of hand without even considering the evidence available or even asking why these trials haven't been carried out. It has to be said that one of the reasons is a lack of financial incentive because these substances cannot be patented.
"sadly, it is the cancer sufferers who lose out. To not even have the choice of these safer, more natural treatments, even when a cancer is deemed incurable and only palliative chemotherapy or radiotherapy is offered, is in my view totally unacceptable. I have seen many patients experience an improved duration and quality of life with an integrated approach, and some go on to achieve complete remission of their disease, even when dismissed as incurable by their oncologists."

Treating cancer is not just about getting hold of vitamin B 17 as quickly as possible. We beed to be educated in a whole range of issues. Phillip Day's book, Cancer: Why We're Still Dying To Know The Truth, has been written in an easily readable and understandable manner, specifically to inform the general public on all of the key issues pertaining to natural treatment for cancer. It makes for necessary and fascinating reading.

For those readers interested in finding out more on the issues raised in this article, just click on the following titles available from Credence Publications at the website http://www.credence.org:

- Cancer: Why We're Still Dying To Know The Truth- A concise account of the cancer industry and of the good news on vitamin B17 metabolic therapy.

- Vitamin B17 Metabolic Therapy: A Clinical Guide-A Clinical account of vitamin B17, detailing the landmark research of this most vital of vitamins in the fight against cancer.

- Food For Thought-Delicious recipes designed to promote health. A vital contribution to cancer prevention and recovery.

Closing Comments

Throughout the writing of this article, I have been acutely aware of three things.
Firstly, I've been aware of my slender mortality and that only by the grace of God have I not had to face a cancer diagnosis of my own. I know that for many, the information contained in "Death by Doctoring" will bring sadness as well as anger. But in its telling, I also believe this story brings great hope.
Secondly, vitamin B17 metabolic therapy and vitamin C form only part of a much wider regime of treatments that have proven successful in the treatment of cancer. These and other sensible treatments are explained in more detail in the above Credence titles.

Thirdly, I am conscious of the fact that there are elements of conventional medical practice that are saving and enhancing lives every day, not least in some methods of early cancer diagnosis and in acute and emergency medicine. May the good continue, and may the bad be open to complete reappraisal.

Finally, I do so wish I'd been given the opportunity to meet John Diamond, because I reckon we'd have got on like a house on fire.
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Water-only Fasting
Joel Fuhrman, MD, Barbara Sarter, PhD, RN, ENP, and David J. Calabro, DC

Joel Fuhrman is a board-certified family physician affiliated with Hunterdon Medical Center in Flemington, Nj. Barbara Sarter is an associate professor in the Department of Nursing at the University of Southern California in Los Angels. David J. Calabro is chiropractor in private practice in Linwood, Nj.

Medically supervised, water-only fasting is known to be an effective means of lessening the symptoms of autoimmune illnesses; in many cases, remission of the disease occurs. The challenge, however, is to maintain the benefits of the fast after reintroduction of foods. Those studies that have shown no long-term benefit to fasting have allowed unrestricted food intake after the fasting period. A few studies, however, have demonstrated long-term benefit from adherence to a vegan or lacto-vegan diet after fasting. In our practice, we admit motivated patients suffering from autoimmune diseases to a facility where they are offered intensive education and support in vegan eating during a medically supervised, water-only fast that varies in length from 1 to 3 weeks. Patients then maintain the vegan diet after the fast. We describe 6 representative cases below.

A recent meta-analysis of 31 scientific reports on fasting followed by vegetarian diet in patients with rheumatoid arthritis concluded that this regimen may be useful in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. Of the 31 studies identified, only 4 were found to be controlled clinical trials that reported follow up data for at least 3 months after initiation of treatment. The results of these 4 studies were pooled, and an effect size (d) and its standard deviation for each study was calculated, demonstrating a significant beneficial effect of fasting followed by vegetarian diet (pYes.001,r=.38,d=.83). A separate pooling of the 2 randomized, controlled studies showed a significant improvement in the treatment groups (pYes.01,r=.28,d=.58). For most of the studies analyzed, the criterion for clinical improvement was a visual analog pain scale.

CASE REPORTS

We report here 6 cases in which medically supervised, water-only fasting followed by a vegan diet resulted in reduction in pain and inflammatory markers in patients with autoimmune illnesses. These cases indicate the therapeutic potential of this approach and a need for further clinical research.

Materials and Methods 

All patients were given a carefully designed vegan diet before they came to a treatment facility to fast. This was a high-nutrient-density diet consisting of fresh fruits, vegetables, beans, and nuts. All antirheumatic medications were tapered and discontinued before the fast. Baseline serological studies included a basic chemistry panel to assure adequate renal and hepatic function before fasting.

Patients were admitted to a medically supervised site for the fasting period. Informed consent was obtain, and patients understood that they could stop the fast at any time. Patients were instructed to drink at least 1 quart of distilled spring water per day and to minimize physical or mental exertion. Daily vital signs were recorded including weight. A chemistry panel was obtained once per week and more often as needed.
Patients fasted from 1 to 3 weeks. However, fasts were broken earlier if there were indications of electrolyte deficiency either from results of laboratory work or from symptoms. Fasts were broken by a vegetable and fruit diet. The first day of refeeding consisted of small portions of light fruits and vegetables every 2 hours. The diet was then advanced gradually to include other fruits and vegetables, then to a normal caloric intake of a natural food diet as described above. All patients were discharged after a minimum of 4 days of refeeding. 
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Maggots And Leeches : When Science And Aesthetics Collide
Larry Dossey, MD

Imagine a therapy which, when concluded, sprouts wings and files away, leaving healing in its wake. That's literally what happened in the case of a bedridden 80-years-old man being cared for by Dr Grady Dugas of Marion, La. The elderly gentleman had severely infected pressure sores on his heels, hips, and buttocks, some an inch deep. Antibiotics and debridement had proved ineffective, and Dr Dugas figured he'd have to amputate both feet. Then the physician recalled that his diabetic grandmother had been treated successfully for infected ulcerations on her legs in the 1930s using an unusual therapy-maggots. Thinking that he had nothing to lose, he contacted Jeffrey Wells, an entomologist at Louisiana State University. A week later Wells showed up in Marion with 8,000 blowfly eggs. Dugas applied the eggs to his patient's sores, just as he remembered in his grandmother's case. They hatched into larvae, ate the infected tissue, turned into files, and flew off. Dugas applied more eggs and the process repeated clean and were filling in with healthy granulation tissue. Instead if amputating both feet, Dugas sent the man to a locak hospital for skin grafts. 

That's what can happen when people feel kindly toward maggots and are willing to use them. Often, however, these creatures strike terror in peoples' hearts.

For example, consider what happened on June 19, 2001, when 11-year-old Vincent Ingram of Detroit, Mich, bought a cheeseburger at a local McDonald's and tool it home to eat. Vincent alleges that when he chomped into the burger, he found it infested with maggots. His attorney, who is representing Vincent in a $1 million lawsuit against McDonald's, described the horror that gripped the Ingram household following Vincent's fateful meal: "His sister is standing next to him and starts freaking out, because she sees these things crawling around…and out of his mouth." His mom, demonstrating selfless maternal devotion and a keen eye for evidence, saved her son's vomit and the remains of the cheeseburger. Vincent says he swallowed at least half a dozen maggots before he realized what was happening. The attorney says that since this incident, Vincent has been freaking out and won't eat. McDonald's called the allegations "questionable" and said they had not been provided any evidence to validate the claim.

Vincent's experience illustrates the instinctive revulsion most people have toward creepy-crawlies such as maggots, leeches, and worms. It wasn't always so. "Leech" is derived from the Gothic lekeis, meaning magician or healer. "Maggot" may possibly be related to Magot, a form of the name Margaret, which can be traced to a Sanskrit term for pearl. "Worm" is derived from the Old English wyrm, meaning serpent or dragon. These etymologies suggest that our ancestors were not repelled by maggots, leeches, and worms but saw magic, enchantment, and power in them.

Mythologies evolve, however, and in today's world the awe our ancestors felt toward these entities has largely disappeared. Currently we use these terms as slurs or insults. When we call someone a leech, we are accusing him of being a parasitic, bloodsucking, selfish individual who attaches himself to another to get what he wants. To refer to someone as a worm is to consider him insignificant and unworthy of notice. To many people, worms and maggots are unspeakably low-invaders of corpses, emblems of destruction and death, mediators of rot and decay.

In view of the widespread disgust people feel toward maggots and leeches, one might presume that they had disappeared for good from the medical scene. But as Dalia Sofer, senior editor of the American Journal of Nursing, says, "[T]he squeamish better toughen up… Hirudo medicinalis [the medicinal leech] is back." It is not only to America's hospitals and clinics that leeches have returned. Sofer notes that they have "gone chic." Leech containing cosmetics are now being sold in Europe, and a company in Dallas, plans to market 2 million units of these creams annually in the United States. In addition to their use in cosmetics, plans are also being made to add leech components to toothpastes. These products take advantage of various pharmacological actions of Hirudo medicianalis, such as its anti-inflammatory, anticoagulative, vasodilating, and analgesic properties.

THE YUCK FACTOR

Far more that leeches, maggots face a major public relations problem because of what's been called the "gag," "disgust," or "yuck" factor. The term "maggot therapy"- the use of fly larvae to clean out infected and necrotic wounds as in Dr Dugas's patient, above-is a turnoff for most patients and healthcare professional alike. "Larval therapy" has been suggested as a substitute, but it, too, makes some people's skin crawl and has not caught on. "Maggot debridement designed therapy" (MDT) and "biosurgery" are the latest monikers designed to bypass the yuck factor. Whether these terms will prove successful remains to be seen.

Regardless of these factors, maggots and leeches are genuine examples of alternative therapies. As such, they deserve the notice of anyone interested in the field of complementary and integrative healthcare. Now let's focus on these creatures and the contributions they are making once again to healing.

MAGGOTS: A SHORT HISTORY
The accidental infestation of human wounds by flesh-eating worms is call myiasis, a condition that has been known since antiquity. The earliest recorded case my be the Old Testament story of Job, who lamented, "…my flesh is clothed with worms…. my skin is broken, and become loathsome…."
The larvae if certain flies have long been purposely used to treat suppurative wounds and to clear away dead tissue. Anthropological research suggests that the ancient Maya of Central America soaked dressings in the blood of cattle and exposed the dressings to squirm in a few days with maggots. The Ngemba people of New South Wales, Australia, also used maggots to cleanse infected wounds, as did certain isolated tribes in the hills of Burma.

As Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein report in tier fascinating book Honey, Mud, Maggots, and Other Medical Marvels, the Western knowledge of the value of maggots is closely connected with warfare. The legendary Ambroise Pare (1509-1590), chief surgeon to Charles IX and Henri III, reported firsthand in 1557 following the battle of St Quentin in France that "the wounds with gangrene and putrifaction." He thought that the "wormes" were generated spontaneously from rotting flesh; he was unaware that they were connected with files. Pare treated one maggot-infested battlefield wound which "recovered beyond all men's expectations," and is thus credited with the first European report recognizing the value of maggots in medical care.

Nepoleon's great military surgeon, Baron Dominique-Jean Larrey, reported that during the Egyptian campaign, most of the infected wounds became infested with maggots. The solders, he observed, were "much annoyed by the worms or larvae of the blue fly, peculiar to that climate." Larrey and his staff realized their value and tried to convince the soldiers that the maggots "cut short the process of nature" and sped healing by removing necrotic tissue. Nevertheless, the French physicians made diligent effort to rid the wounds of the larvae when changing bandages."

The first purposeful use of maggots in wound care is credited to John Forney Zacharias, a Confederate physician in the American Civil War. He wrote, "During my service…at Danville, Virginia, I first used maggots to remove the decayed tissue in hospital gangrene and with eminent satisfaction. In a single day they would clean a wound much better than any agents we had at our command. I used them afterwards at various places. I am sure I saved many lives by their use, escaped spticaemia, and had rapid recoveries. 
Credit for reviving interest in maggots therapy in the 20th century is largely due to William S. Baer, a Baltimore surgeon who served in the army in World War I. Baer took care of 2 severely wounded men who had lain on the battlefield for 7 days. Although their wounds were crawling with maggots by the time they reached the hospital, they were free of gangrene, infection, and fever. When Baer scraped away the maggot, he saw "the most beautiful pink granulation tissue that you can imagine. 

The experience deeply impressed him. Following the war, on his return to Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine as clinical professor of orthopedic surgery, he specialized in osteomyelitis. In those preantibiotic days, chronic osteomyelitis was a vexing problem; it was not unusual for cases to drag on for a dacade or longer despite aggressive surgical debridement, the standard treatment, and mortality was high.
Hearkening back to the 2 battlefield cases that had riveted him, Baer decided on an experiment. He selected 21 individuals with chronic osteomyelitis, debrided their wounds, packed them to stop the bleeding, then filled them with as many maggots, produced by the local blowfly, as the wounds would hold. He replaced the maggots every 4 days for 6 or 7 weeks. During this time the dead and dying tissue was consumed by the larvae and healthy pink granulation tissue took its place. By 2 months all 21 cases were totally healed. As the Root-Bernsteins say in their summary of this landmark study. "The maggots not only did a better job of debridement than the surgeons, they actually seemed to foster the healing process. There was no purulent odor, no pus, no scar tissue. The bacterial count diminished rapidly, and the wound turned a healthy alkaline….Baer's maggot trial had proved to be the quickest and most successful treatment of chronic osteomyelitis then known to medical science.

One of the problems Baer encountered was the revulsion some patients had toward maggots. He solved this by constructing mesh cages over the wounds, shielding them from the patient's view. Another problem was itching in the wound, which responded to frequent dressing of the skin around the lesion. The worst complication was the development of tetanus by several patients from contamination by naturally raised maggots. Baer solved this by breeding maggots in the laboratory and rendering them noninfectious by sterilizing the eggs before applying the hatched larvae to wounds. The only other significant complication that was reported was a single case of erysipeals.
Government entomologists assisted these efforts by developing better methods of culturing the flies and ways of identifying the various look-alike species. It was crucial to use the correct one; one clinic had mistakenly bred screwworm flies, whose larvae destroy living, healthy tissue.

By the time Baer died in 1931, he had convinced a growing number of his colleagues of the value of maggot therapy. Between 1930 and 1940, around 100 papers were written on the subject. Live maggots were being employed in more than 300 US and Canadian hospitals. Lederle Laboratories, the pharamaceutical gaint, began the mass-production of sterile maggots and advertised their product in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The going rate was $5 for 1,000 (equivalent to about $100 today, but still inexpensive compared to the cost of most pills). Authorities were generally enthusiastic about the superiority of maggot therapy in a variety of conditions, mainly bone infections, abscesses, carbuncles, and leg ulcers.

In the 1930s, several researchers tried to isolate the "maggot active principle" from maggot extracts, much like try to find the main ingredient in herbs today. An injectable maggot extract vaccine was tried, but was abandoned because of toxic systemic reactions.

Then, with the advent of sulfa drugs in the mid-1930s, penicillin in the 1940s, and advances in surgical techniques, maggot therapy became virtually extinct. For more than 40 years, the field fell silent. Some took pride in laying maggots to rest. As one individual wrote, "[F]ortunately maggot therapy is now relegated to a historical backwater, of interest more for its bizarre nature than its effect on the course of medical science…a therapy the demise of which on one is likely to mourn…." There is unmistakable chest-thumping here. After all, with antibiotics handy, who needs worms?

MODERN DEVELOPMENTS

The reason for the resurgence of maggots is straightforward: the increasing resistance of microbes to antibiotics, the problem of failing immune systems in various conditions, and arising tide of chronic infections.

Currently, the most prominent champion of maggot therapy is Ronald A. Sherman, MD, MSc, assistant professor of medicine at the University of California-Irvine. As with Baer, sererendipity played a role in Sherman's interest in maggot therapy. While working at the University of California-Los Angeles medical center in the 1980s, Sherman encountered a patient whose leg would was crawling with worms. he and his colleague on the case, Edward Pechter, MD, were initially disgusted. Then they noticed that healthy, uninfected tissue was growing into the wound. Although Pechter's enthusiasm waned, Sherman's grew; he has written definitive articles about maggot therapy and is the field's proponent.

Sherman comes by his interest in maggots honesty. He was an avid bug collector as a child and holds a degree in entomology, the study of insects, as well as in medicine. He has been interested in the therapeutic uses of insects most of his life. Today he acts as a virtual clearing house for information in this field, and he handles queries from doctors from all over the world.
Sherman says that people don't think about maggot therapy until all other methods have continued to fail, which he finds irrational. Why delay maggot therapy? It's low cost, requires no anesthesia, caused few to no side effects, and wounds heal with minimal scarring.

Starting maggot therapy is pretty simple. All you need is a few hunks of meat and a few files. Reporter Drawn Blalock, who visited Sherman, followed him around the hospital and wrote an article about his work for The Wall Street Journal. She described what things are like:

He unlocks double doors…into his "insectary," essentially a maggot farm housed in a tiny converted kitchenette in the hospital's recesses. Thousands of blowflies buzz and swarm in three small cages holding putrid liver. the stench is overpowering- but maggots would rather starve than eat fresh food.
The flies lay their eggs in the liver; left alone, the maggot eggs would hatch, engorge themselves and turn into flies. Dr Sherman intervenes by removing the eggs from the liver and bathing them in a chemical solution that sterilizes them without killing them. After hatching, they are sewn into a patient's wound, which is sealed with a mixture of glue and gauze. This creates a little window allowing the maggots to breathe, and Dr. Sherman to observe them at work.

Barely a millimeter long when they go into the wound, they come out two to three days later five to 10 times bigger. Removing them is no problem: Feasting maggots become drowsy, reaching a state of near-hibernation.

Sherman has treated hundreds of patients since his first encounter with a maggot-infested would. One was a Mr Taylor, a 59-year-old carpet salesman who was hospitalized at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Long Beach, Calif. Taylor was a diabetic with a gangrenous, ulcerated right leg from compromised arterial blood flow. The gangrenous ulcer refused to heal and his surgeon was on the verge of amputating the leg. Following Sherman's intensive maggot therapy over several months, the gangrenous ulcer healed and Taylor kept his leg.

John Church, a British orthopedic surgeon, and a group of Oxford physicians have set up an insectary along the lines of Sherman's model. Church's incentive came when he treated a car accident victim who had been thrown through the windshield. The patient was covered with cuts and abrasions and had lain in a ditch for 3 days before being found. "His wounds were full of common housefly larvae, but they had done an excellent job on him," Church said. Not only had the maggots eliminated infection in the man's lesions, his extensive lacerations healed without costly surgery.

Cases such as these make maggot therapy seem straightforward, yet nothing is as simple as it seems. For starters, there are around 80,000 known species of flies, which includes 4 large families that feed on animal protein as larvae. Some of these feed only on necrotic or dead tissue; some on both dead and living flesh; and some only on healthy, viable tissue.
The files most often used in maggot therapy are Lucilia species belonging to the family Calliphoridae, most commonly the greenbottle blowfly. Lucilia sericata. These larvae are ideally suited to the task; if placed on healthy human tissue, they starve; if on necrotic tissue, they fatten and thrive. 

The main indications for maggot therapy are pressure ulcers ( bed sores), venous stasis ulcers, neurovascular ulcers such as diabetic foot wounds, traumatic and postsurgical wounds, and burns. Maggots have been used to control some of the problems associated with tumor necrosis and necrotizing fasciitis. If surgical intervention is considered risky or not even an option, maggots have been helpful when conventional treatments have failed. Still, infected wounds that are considered life-or limb-threatening usually are not treated with maggot debridement; surgery is faster and remains the treatment of choice. Circulatory obstruction is considered a relative contraindication for maggot therapy; amputation is usually indicated if bloodflow is insufficient to establish healing despite debridement.

In practice, 5 to 10 larvae per cm2 are used, and are removed from the wound 1 to 3 days later. Depending on the condition of the wound, fresh maggots may or may not be reapplied. The wound and the maggots are then covered with a sterile sheet of nylon mesh, which is affixed to a surrounding hydrocolloid dressing. The mesh allows air to enter the wound and the maggots to breathe, and permits the drainage of liquified necrotic tissue and serous fluids. An absorbent pad is then placed over the wound.

If left to their own, the maggots would turn into flies and simply fly away-not a welcome prospect in the hospital. They are disposed of following removal from the wound like other surgical dressings and infectious wastes.

HOW THEY DO IT
Although maggots clean wounds by munching on dead tissue, other mechanisms are involved as well. Some authorities purpose that their debridement activity is enhanced by their crawling about on the wound, probing and macerating it with their mouthhooks. They also secrete proteolytic enzymes, which help break down necrotic tissue. Additionally, maggots secrete ammonia, causing wounds to become alkaline, which is believed to inhibit bacteria and help disinfect wounds. Antimicrobial substances have been isolated from some species of maggots, which have the ability to kill multidrug resistant Staphylococcus aureus and pathogenic Streptococcus species. It is known that Proteus mirabilis bacteria live in the gut of maggots and that they produce agents that are highly lethal to a variety of microbes. Researchers have discovered several substances secreted by maggots that actually stimulate wound healing and the growth of granulation tissue. An example is allantoin, which was first isolated from comfrey root. Some entomologists believe that the secretions from maggots are so complex that no single isolate or extract can duplicate the activity of this complicated mixture.

INCRESING ACCEPTANCE

Most practitioners are pleased with the results of maggot therapy. In a survey conducted in the United Kingdom, 95% of respondents said the treatment fulfilled a limited or significant role in wound management. On average, wounds required only 2 applications for complete debridement.
Surveys show that patient acceptance of maggot therapy has also been high and psychological distress has been rare. This may be a surprise to well people who are not used to bugs and worms. to them, maggot therapy may seem too loathsome to contemplate. But to sick individuals facing amputation after conventional therapies have failed, any other option can seem welcome. Said Taylor, the 59-year-old diabetic who was on the verge of losing his leg because of a gangrenous ulcer, "I tell you, my thoughts were, I don't want to lose my leg, let's take every shot." And Edward Wicks, a 73-year-old former hombardier captain and car salesman, who resisted maggot therapy for a diabetic foot ulcer until his wife talked him into it, said, "They are creepy-crawly little rascals, but they sure do a job on infection. When the things were done with me, I was well."

INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENTS

"The revival of maggot therapy is well under way," says Sherman. As of 2000, around 50 centers in North America were once again using maggots, mainly for treating pressure ulcers, venous statis ulcers, diabetic foot ulcers, infected surgical wounds, and wounds infected with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Moreover, says Sherman, maggot therapy has added to the quality of life for some patients by decreasing wound odor and pain.

In the United Kingdom, the Biosurgical Research Unit in Bridgend, South Wales, has treated scores of patients, and has distributed medicinal maggots, under the brand name Larv E, for 5,000 treatments to more than 400 medical centers and general practitioners. The Hadassah Hospital maggot therapy center in Jerusalem, Israel, is also a focus of activity. Centers in Belgium, Germany, Sweden and Ukraine are also using maggot therapy. In Germany, BioMonde is producing L sericata and distributing them to more than 140 hospitals and 50 general practitioners. The Maggot Therapy Research Development Group is being organized in Australia. The International Biotherapy Society was founded in 1996 "to investigate and develop the use of living organisms, or their products, in tissue repair," and the society sponsors an annual international conference.

WHETHER MAGGOT THERAPY?

Sherman, the godfather of maggot therapy in the United States, says that maggot therapy is so inexpensive that the large pharmaceutical companies are unlikely to bankroll further research because they don't stand to make much profit, seven if the clinical trials proved successful. Still, as we have seen, maggot therapy continues to be adopted by centers and hospitals around the world.

The future of maggot therapy looks bright. The World Health Organization suggests that by the year 2025,228 million people in developing countries will suffer from diabetes, resulting in countless cases of diabetic ulcers that can benefit from maggot therapy. Furthermore, new indications keep cropping up, such as the escalating nations where conventional medical and surgical approaches are in short supply.

Tropical and rural regions in third-world countries are likely to benefit from maggot therapy because highly skilled surgeons and pharmaceutical options often are in short supply in these areas. Unfortunately, however, maggot therapy has been slow to move into these regions.
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Spirituality And Well-Being For Cardiac Patients

Conclusions: Programs that explore spirituality in a health context can result in increased spirituality that is associated with increased well-being and related measures. Many patients and their families want to integrate the spiritual and health dimensions of their lives. Further work is needed to develop healthcare settings that can support this integration. (Altern Ther Health Med. 2002;8(4):64-73)

Many studies indicate that religious or spiritual faith is correlated with better physical and mental health. Recent reviews report that these correlations include lower rates of mortality from all causes, less cardiovascular disease, less hypertension, less substance abuse, less depression, and better coping with and recovery from illness.

Several review have commented on the need to move beyond correlational studies and begin investigating interventions that influence spirituality. Correlational studies can, at best, provide only weak evidence that spirituality actually causes better health. The classic warning that correlation does not prove causation applies here. Further, the optimum scientific approach is to study directly those specific interventions that are proposed to improve health. Research is needed on changes in spirituality to justify suggestions by health professional that these changes may have health benefits.

However, available research provides little evidence that health interventions can affect spirituality. A variety of research indicates that parents are the greatest influence of religious beliefs and practices. Traditionally, parental influence was assumed to occur through socialization during childhood. Recent studies of twins, however, indicate that generics may account for approximately 30% to 50% of the variation in factors such as interest in religion, intrinsic religiosity, personal devotion and self-transcendence. Whatever the exact causal mechanism, research on religious development offers limited insight or support for developing health interventions that affect spirituality in adults. The correlations between spirituality and health could reflect genetic or childhood factors that are not subject to modification in adulthood. 

Few studies have investigated whether health programs that encourage changes in spirituality actually influence spirituality.

The available research is retrospective and therefore one cannot determine whether the changes in spirituality occurred in those who were already motivated by spirituality or whether the changes reflected more basic alterations in the values of people with little previous interest in spirituality.

Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is probably the oldest and best known program that actively attempts to change a person's spirituality to improve physical and mental health. According to AA writings, change in spirituality is the core element of the AA "12 steps." Participants are asked to be open to the possibility that a higher power will cause changes in their lives. No strong conviction is needed, just a willingness to believe in the possibility of a power greater than oneself. One of the steps includes prayer or meditation as an attempt by the participant to try to become more aware of his or her purpose in life or of the will of the higher power. According to AA, the simple belief in the possibility of the higher power, combined with the other steps, begins a spiritual evolution that culminates in a transformation sufficient to bring about recovery from alcoholism. Studies have found that frequency of prayer or meditation by AA participants was associated with a greater sense of purpose in life and length of sobriety, and that participants reported a higher degree of spirituality after participation. The AA approach unquestionably has helped many addicts, but it may not be the optimal strategy for all who suffer addictive behaviors. 

The Mind/Body Medical Institute, founded by Herbert Benson, at Harvard Medical School, also encourages spiritual exploration as part of health improvement. Benson reports in a popular book that about 80% of the participants at his institute choose a meditation or "relaxation response" technique that focuses on a spiritually meaningful phrase or image, and about 25% report increased spiritually from these practices. He also notes that meditation can increase spirituality in some people even when they do not approach it as a spiritual practice. However, he has not presented the methodology or data underlying these estimates.

Dean Ornish's well-known program for reversing heart disease also gently encourages changes in spirituality. His book Reversing Heart Disease includes a chapter on "Opening your Heart to a Higher Self" that describes the benefits of spiritual beliefs. He also describes the value of yoga and meditation for stress management and for other, more profound transformations. Although he clearly believes spirituality is important, he states that he does not want to "say what your experience of a higher force should be-or even if you should have one," and further clarifies, "please adopt whatever is useful and leave the rest." Ornish has provided strong evidence that his overall program, which includes diet, exercise, stress management, and social support, can reduce or reverse heart disease progression. 

 

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Ladies fashion - clothing - apparel - designers manufacture - wholesale & retail. factory prices - catalogs - shopping e-commerce... Ladies lingerie - ladies leather jackets -ladies bags.. Jewellery fantasy & costume..Organic cosmetics-organic health shop-organic bath products..Dr Bach flowers. Organic & biodynamic foods-organic supermarket-organic&biodynamic wines-organic & biodynamic coffee & tea. Organic baby foods... Gifts - flowers-free greeting cards & e-cards. Free health tips & Alternative Therapies. Free horoscope free news - free jokes & proverbs.

Charity - children's charity - world hunger.. Web design - website design.