Donna Jackson Nakazawa
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 As she talks she diagrams for me why, in her estimation, the too-clean theory is too flimsy to explain today's autoimmune epidemic.
Although it is true, she agrees, that allergies, asthma, and autoimmunity may be higher in countries where there are more vaccines and fewer infections in early childhood, it is also true that immigrants from other countries who are exposed to numerous infections and few vaccines as young children develop allergies and autoimmune disease at rates similar to those of Americans soon after they immigrate to this country. |
| For nearly half a century, as big industry flourished, scientists sat idle in the lull of a gathering storm, not only missing today's autoimmune disease epidemic in the making but blinded to its possible causes.
During these same decades, the idea that chemicals from our industrial age could trigger cancer would become so widely accepted that the term "carcinogens" would emerge as a household word by the 1970s. But science would be sluggish to accept the idea that chemicals could have similar effects on the human immune system. |
| The Autoimmune epidemic is every bit as compelling as Upton Sinclair's groundbreaking novel The Jungle and every bit as necessary as An Inconvenient Truth, the startling movie featuring Al Gore and directed by Davis Guggenheim, that shows us that global warming is upon us and may at some point in the near future be irreversible.
You will leave this book with no reservations about the veracity of the conclusions: put simply, there is no doubt that autoimmune diseases are on the rise and our increasing environmental exposure to toxins and chemicals is fueling this rise. The research is sound. |
| What is propelling this epidemic? Scientists the world over agree that the root cause of this frightening trend is environmental. Twin studies elucidate that two-thirds of the risk of developing autoimmune disease is acquired through some environmental trigger, genetic risk being the smaller part of the equation. Over the past decade, labs around the globe have proven definitive links between a list of commonly used industrial-age chemicals, heavy metals, and toxins and the development of numerous autoimmune diseases. |
| But blaming hygiene as the sole source of today's autoimmune epidemic doesn't wash with all scientists, and this basic conflict of ideas is at the heart of a growing controversy. One well-known researcher who feels the too-clean theory can't possibly fully explain today's rising rates of autoimmune disease is DeLisa Fairweather, PhD, a young assistant professor at the Bloomberg School of Public Health's Department of Environmental Health Sciences Division of
Toxicology and a protege and co-author with Noel Rose of many scientific papers on viral-induced autoimmune disease. |
| We could have thousands of kids who are exposed to the cereal falling ill or even dying before we remotely begin to figure out that this is another autoimmune cluster epidemic in motion."
Several scientists are now working under the auspices of the World Health Organization to create an autoimmunity task force that, if given adequate dollars, would serve as a worldwide monitoring group to educate against manufacturing practices that are most likely to put populations at risk. |
John E. Sarno, M.D.
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 This negative conditioning is a major reason for the pain epidemic in the Western world today.
Another form of treatment of dubious value is surgery for the back and neck. There is now a large number of surgeons who specialize in such surgery. In addition to surgery to remove herniated disk material, spine fusions are now commonly done, though it has not been demonstrated that they are more effective than the simpler procedure. Indeed, experience treating TMS questions the need for any surgical procedure in most cases. |
| In its blindness, modern medicine has enhanced the tendency of the pain syndromes to spread in epidemic fashion. It has introduced a variety of ineffective treatments, some of them extremely expensive, placing great burdens on the government and private insurance.
The enormity of the problem is illustrated by an article that appeared in the business section of the New York Times on December 31, 2003. It described how one such expensive treatment, spinal fusion, is being widely performed despite the lack of evidence that it has any value whatsoever. |
| The reason for this epidemic is the stubborn resistance of the medical profession to even consider the likelihood of mindbody disorders. Most people with chronic pain are suffering from one of the many manifestations of TMS just described, but the majority of practitioners called upon to treat them are unaware of that diagnosis. Those few who know about it often choose not to acknowledge it. Instead, they attribute the pain to one of the many disorders just listed. |
| They are "popular" and most of them have been misdiagnosed as being the result of a variety of physical structural abnormalities, hence their spread in epidemic fashion.
What is the genesis of a psychosomatic disorder? As we shall see, the cause is to be found in the unconscious regions of the mind, and as we shall also see, its purpose is to deliberately distract the conscious mind.
The type of symptom and its location in the body is not important so long as it fulfills its purpose of diverting attention from what is transpiring in the unconscious. |
| Pain problems have become epidemic. Gastrointestinal, dermatologic, and allergic conditions are increasingly widespread, all because laboratory identification of the physics and chemistry of these conditions does not, contrary to popular medical belief, identify their cause. And paradoxically, wonderful new diagnostic tools, like the MRI, often contribute to misdiagnoses when doctors misinterpret the significance of findings. The methods of the laboratory may be impeccable but are wasted if the interpretation of their findings is faulty. |
| But these are not common causes, and furthermore it does not explain the epidemic proportion that carpal tunnel has occurred recently in our society. Thus, the carpal tunnel syndrome from a structural cause (an uncommon occurrence) becomes the template for the disorder to occur with relative frequency as a psychosomatic disorder.
Before the eradication of polio in the United States, "hysterical paralysis" was a common diagnosis for what was, in fact, a psychogenic (conversion-hysterical) disorder. |
Stephen T. Sinatra, M.D.
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 Add that to the existing pool we've been collecting, and I'm ready to tell you how to use this simple nutrient to protect yourself from one of our epidemic health problems: keeping your blood sugar levels in check. Remember, type 2 diabetes is an epidemic these days!
More and more studies document a high occurrence of low magnesium states in people with diabetes, as well as those with the syndrome called insulin resistance (IR) or Syndrome X. The good news is knowing this association gives us a new leg up for treating and preventing IR and diabetes, two very problematic endocrine problems. |
Too Profitable to CureBrent Hoadley, Ph.D.
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| Making people hungrier—and fatter
The book Aspartame Disease: An Ignored epidemic, by Dr. H.J. Roberts, claims that aspartame has even caused the obesity epidemic. Roberts says that aspartame makes you crave carbohydrates, which, of course, make you gain weight.
One case history in Dr. Roberts' book especially got my attention: "One of the terrible things aspartame did was to render my body unable to tell me when I was full. I was never, ever full! I could eat, and eat, and eat, and eat and still have room for more food — at least that is what my brain was telling me. |
Michael T. Murray and Michael R. Lyon
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 In the developed world, obesity is a true epidemic. North America has the highest percentage of people who are obese, as well as the highest number of people who are succumbing to obesity-related illnesses. Our healthcare system is already strained by this epidemic, and the ability to sustain even basic healthcare in the years to come is in doubt if obesity continues to prevail as it does today. We all need to do our part in helping to reverse this worrisome trend. The best place to start is in our own homes and our own lives. |
David Winston, RH(AHG), and Steven Maimes
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 Results: Incidence of cases during an influenza epidemic dropped by two-thirds.
Subjects: Twelve hundred long-distance truck drivers.
Results: Improved productivity, incidence of cases during an influenza epidemic was reduced by 30 percent.
Subjects: Fourteen thousand auto factory workers. Results: 30 percent decrease in total reported symptoms such as fatigue, insomnia, and anxiety; 40 percent reduction in high blood pressure and heart disease symptoms.
Subjects: One hundred and seven patients receiving drugs for gastric cancer. |
Peter J. Whitehouse and Daniel George
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 Around the world, people from developed and developing countries are facing an obesity epidemic. This epidemic is driven by multiple ecological factors:
•Urbanism
?Expansion of global markets
?Changing family structures
?Changing work environments
? |
Shannon Brownlee
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 But it's hard to imagine that the incredible increase in psychiatric prescriptions for teenagers and children is due entirely to an epidemic of psychiatric disorders, that some combination of bad parenting, bad genes, and bad videos has created an entire nation of screwed-up kids. We're also in the midst of an epidemic of diagnoses, in which children who exhibit behavior that is even mildly out of the norm are labeled and treated, along with the kids who are truly mentally ill. The question is, why are we now so quick to diagnose mental illness? |
Jack Challem
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 The worldwide obesity epidemic drives the diabetes epidemic. In 2006, an estimated 246 million people worldwide had diabetes, a phenomenal increase from only 30 million just twenty years ago. That number is expected to climb to 420 million in less than twenty years. We believe that two to three times this many people already have prediabetes, creating the stepping-stone to a catastrophic health disaster. |
Lynne Mctaggart
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 In the 1980s, at the height of the AIDS epidemic - a time when a diagnosis of HIV was almost certainly a death sentence - Elisabeth had chosen this specialty in San Francisco, the very epicenter of the US epidemic. At the time of Hellas phone call, the hottest topic in medical circles in California was psychoneuroimmunology. Patients had begun to crowd into special town-hall meetings given by mind—body devotees such as Louise Hay or into workshops on visualization and imagery. |
Dr Ron Roberts
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 REPPED: INTRODUCTION
Asthma has slowly but surely been increasing in its incidence over the last few decades, until it can be said without exaggeration to have reached epidemic status in many countries, with one in four children now diagnosed to have it to some degree in certain industrialised societies. Why is this quiet epidemic occurring? No one knows for sure, but it is widely believed that people in the developed world are being exposed to much higher amounts of allergens in their lives than they used to be, and this is related to the rising incidence of asthma. |
Bottom Line Health
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| How Not to
Worry Yourself Sick
Marc Siegel, MD, associate professor of medicine, New York University School of Medicine, New York City, and author of False Alarm: The Truth About the epidemic of Fear and Bird Flu: Everything You Need to Know About the Next Pandemic, both from Wiley.
Being offered a regular flu shot doesn't seem to reassure my patients. Bird flu is what worries them. Bird flu is indeed a threat—it has shown itself to be a ruthless killer of birds, and it has prompted humans to slaughter millions of birds that could be infected. |
| Identifying individuals at high risk for diabetes, particularly among young adults, will hopefully prove beneficial in reducing the epidemic proportions of the disease," says Tirosh, the former head of research and project development section of the Israeli Defense Forces Medical Corps.
The new study suggests that more people may be prediabetic even if their glucose levels are in the normal range. If these people are identified early, they can take steps to reduce potential health problems. Those steps can include exercise, improved diet and/or medication. |
Ron Garner
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 While modern medicine leads us to believe the reduction of epidemic diseases like smallpox and polio is due to the introduction of mass vaccination programs, the research of Miller and Scheibner found this to be totally unsubstantiated. They found that infectious diseases, which were rampant in Europe even a century ago, had declined up to 90% before any vaccine had been used in large sections of the population. Diseases such as bubonic plague and scarlet fever disappeared entirely on their own without any vaccination programs at all. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Baughman: I think this has a great deal to do with the magnitude of the psychiatric epidemic in general and the ADHD epidemic. Parents, ordinary layman, going with their children at the behest of school officials in the first place, could not believe that someone would tell a total lie to them. They cannot imagine that. At the moment, I'm working with individuals to put together a consumer fraud suit here in the state of California, based on fraudulent diagnosis of ADHD and subsequent drugging. If you've been lied to and told you have a disease when you don't and then drugged, that's battery. |
Too Profitable to CureBrent Hoadley, Ph.D.
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| After reading her article, I could not discern whether she was (1) defending the pharmaceutical industry; (2) massaging the diabetic community, making them aware of the many great "management" advances; or (3) hyping the impending diabetes "epidemic."
Recalling an earlier analogy, that of a rape victim who was told to be grateful the rapist wore a condom, diabetics are urged to be appreciative of new, modern tools. |
| Only when the disease reached epidemic proportions, and politicians thought that even they might become victims, did government provide economic incentives for research into drugs that could control or prevent the disease.
In the same vein, new diabetic drugs like Human insulin were waiting in the wings for the proper moment to add fuel to the economic fires. If only patients could be convinced that the new (rDNA) insulin was as good as the products they were currently using, the economic explosion would propel Lilly and Novo into the stratosphere. |
| Aspartame Disease — An Ignored epidemic. West Palm Beach (FL): Sunshine Sentinel Press, 2001.
The FDA and the USDA are culpable drug agents when you consider they approved the additives for our processed food products. Red Dye #2 and transfatty acids are just two examples of lobbying efforts gone astray. The food police were left with egg on their faces.
Any processed food has been modified to the extent it has increased shelf life because of added preservatives (chemicals). |
J. Douglas Bremner
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 In fact, a national epidemic of osteoporosis in Swedish women was traced to a supplementation of vitamin A in food in that country.
Megadoses of vitamin A can also cause dry skin, swelling of the brain, psychosis, depression, headache, ulceration of the colon, and a range of other toxic effects. We have known about the toxicity of vitamin A since the nineteenth century, when explorers at the North Pole became psychotic after eating polar bear liver, which has high concentrations of vitamin A.
There is also cause for concern for women who take vitamins containing vitamin A during pregnancy. |
Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr., M.D.
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 A mechanical approach to a metabolic, biochemical epidemic, he argued, was not the answer. Dr. Thomas further cautioned that there would be a moral and ethical challenge to physicians down the road: to relinquish this halfway technology in favor of simpler, safer metabolic and biochemical cures.
The time is now. The weight of scientific evidence and public opinion, once the truth is known, will prevail. And finally, we can start teaching people how to walk alongside the edge of the cliff, instead of desperately trying to save them after they fall off. |
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