Medicine, Neurology, Vitamins
Concussion: What Surprised Me about Its Treatment
How should hockey star Sidney Crosby, or my own child, be treated if he suffered a brain concussion? To answer this question I interviewed Dr. Andrew Saul, Editor-in-Chief of the Orthomolecular Medical News Service, and a world authority on nutrition. Dr. Saul confirmed what I suspected, that bruised brains are not receiving the treatment they desperately need. Newton’s Law states, “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Unfortunately, our Maker didn’t use screws to anchor the human brain inside its skull. So, without this protection, sudden blows to the head toss the brain against a formidable hard skull, causing various degrees of injury. But there’s a problem. It’s easy to diagnose a fractured arm, but impossible to know the...Read More
Lifestyle, Miscellaneous, Nutrition, Vitamins
Can Six Million Readers Help Answer This Question?
Several weeks ago I reported that autopsies of the brains of people diagnosed with dementia reveal damage to small arteries, which may cause tiny strokes and brain injury. Researchers also discovered that mice with Alzheimer’s Disease (AD), when treated with vitamin C, showed that typical amyloid plaques associated with this disease disappeared! And since high doses of vitamin C can decrease the risk of heart attack by providing oxygenated blood, could it also prevent AD? So I asked readers “Do you know anyone who has used high doses of vitamin C (4,000 to 6,000 milligrams) for several years, then developed Alzheimer’s Disease?” MM replied, “I believe Linus Pauling, the Nobel Prize winner, was right that low amounts of C cause tiny cracks...Read More
Neurology, Vitamins
Can Six Million Readers Answer This Question?
This week, would readers help me answer a perplexing question? Their answers could be helpful to millions of people. I’m sure that very few in Canada and the U.S. have not witnessed a friend or loved one develop Alzheimer’s disease (AD). First, some of the facts about this crippling malady. Then I’d appreciate my readers’ response. Fact # 1- Researchers at the Kaiser Permanente Center in Oakland, California, and the University of Kuopio in Finland, followed the health of 10,000 people for 40 years. They found that high blood cholesterol was associated with a 66 percent higher risk of AD. And even those with borderline levels of cholesterol, were 52 percent more likely to develop AD. Fact # 2 – The brains...Read More
Lifestyle, Neurology, Vitamins
Strokes; Not Just For the Elderly
How could it happen to Kris Letang, the Pittsburgh Penguin hockey player? He was young, in excellent physical condition, yet a victim of stroke. Today, stroke is not just a senior problem. So, why don’t learned professors know why this is happening? Professor Valery Feigin is Director of the National Institute for Stroke and Applied Neurosciences at Auckland University, in New Zealand. He reports in the journal, The Lancet, that every year over 80,000 children and youth are affected by this sudden medical crisis. Strokes affect 50,000 people a year in Canada and of this number up to 10 percent occur in those under 45 years of age. In the U.S., strokes affect 800,000 people causing one in every 20 deaths. Worldwide...Read More
Cardiovascular, Vitamins
Vitamin K2: How It Helps Heart and Bone
Ask people what they know about vitamin C and some will reply it’s good for preventing common colds. Maybe they’d add heart attack, if they’ve read my column. But ask the same question about K2 and most people will give you a blank stare. Now, Dr. Dennis Goodman, cardiologist and Director of Integrative Medicine at New York University, says ignoring vitamin K2 is dangerous. In 1929 Danish scientist, Dr. Henrik Dam, discovered vitamin K. Since then researchers have discovered two types of K, K1 and K2. Leafy green vegetables are rich in K1. It plays a vital role in blood clotting. But K2 isn’t easy to obtain in the diet, placing many at risk of being deficient of this vitamin. Goodman, in...Read More
Gastroenterology, Lifestyle, Nutrition, Vitamins
There’s more to Constipation than Grunting.
You think constipation isn’t important? If so, an article in the American Journal of Gastroenterology suggests you’d better think again. Annually, in the U.S., 700,000 people are seen in hospital emergency wards for this problem. Since 2006 there’s been a shocking 42 percent increase in constipation, costing 1.6 billion dollars. So what’s gone wrong, and what are the medical consequences other than grunting? Constipation can be merely a chronic annoyance affecting quality of life. But Dr. John R. Hyatt, gastroenterologist at the Baylor Regional Medical Center at Plano in Texas, says, “It can also result in hemorrhoids, anal tears, fissures, rectal prolapse and fecal impaction”. Fecal impaction is no fun. It occurs when a large fecal mass cannot be passed. This can...Read More
Infection, Vitamins
Do I Get a Flu Shot?
Sir William Osler, one of the world’s great doctors, suggested a treatment for the common cold. He said, “Hang your hat on the bedpost, go to bed, start sipping whisky, and stop when you see two hats!” He was stressing humorously that there wasn’t any sure treatment for the common cold. Now, during the flu season, I’m often asked if I get a flu shot. But there’s a big difference between a cold and the flu. So read this column with reservation, and remember I am not your doctor. Albert Szent-Gyorgyi received the Nobel Prize in 1937 for his research on vitamin C. At the time vitamin C could only be extracted from adrenal glands and massive amounts of orange juice. Life...Read More
Nutrition, Vitamins
Surviving a Toxic World
How many of us would like to live like a hermit? I doubt that many would decide to give up the comfort and pleasures of civilization. But we pay an increasing price for comfort. Today, it’s impossible to escape fumes from cars, radiation from computers, earth’s depleted ozone layer, foods that have been over-processed, pesticides sprayed onto crops, to mention a few. It’s no wonder that so many North Americans suffer from toxic inflammatory diseases. But there’s a natural way to boost the immune system to decrease the risk. Dr. John Wilkinson, Senior Herbal Medicine Lecturer at Middlesex University, London, England, says the answer is plant sterols which, like vitamin C, cannot be made by the human body. Studies show that...Read More
Lungs, Medicine, Vitamins
Hillary Clinton: Did She Receive the Best RX?
Do famous people always receive superior medical care? If this were a Trivial Pursuit question, the answer would be a big “Yes”. After all, they’re famous and have the money to demand the best medical treatment. But has fame and fortune guaranteed that Clinton has been given the best advice to treat pneumonia? This week I encountered several surprises. The first surprise was that Hillary Clinton, at age 68, hadn’t collapsed earlier from this disease. Or that Donald Trump, age 70 and overweight, hasn’t as yet collapsed from coronary attack. The grueling U.S. election campaign is not designed for seniors, so something medical is bound to happen eventually. It occurred this past week. What else amazed me? Everything I read...Read More
Cardiovascular, Vitamins
What They Don’t Tell You about Baldness and Heart Attack
A Czech proverb says, “A good man grows gray and a rascal bald”. And Thomas Dekker wrote in “The Gull’s Hornbook” in 1609, “How ugly is a bald pate! It looks like a face wanting a nose”. Now, a Japanese report says that men with baldness should be less concerned about how it affects their looks. Rather, is the lack of hair associated with increased risk of coronary attack? The Japanese findings were published online in the British Medical Journal, “Open”. The study involved 40,000 males whose hair pattern was graded as either frontal, crown-top baldness or a combination of the two. The conclusion was that not all bald men are created equal. Men with frontal baldness had a 22 percent increased...Read More
Lifestyle, Sports, Vitamins
Fight Infection like an Olympic Athlete
How hard would be the disappointment? You’ve trained for years to acquire a medal at the Rio Olympics. And then the unthinkable happens. You develop a respiratory or intestinal infection just before the event. It’s an unmitigated disaster of unparalleled proportions, never to be forgotten. So, how do Olympic athletes avoid this catastrophe? An article published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine stresses it’s not just luck that prevents infection. Rather, according to Ida Svendsen, physiologist with the Norwegian Olympic Committee, it’s attention to detail. As Leonardo Da Vinci wrote centuries ago, “Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle”. Svendsen reports that a study of 37 elite Norwegian skiers, over a nine year period, showed that those who had won...Read More
Lifestyle, Nutrition, Vitamins
Child Hunger: How a Pharmaceutical Company Will End It
What has “Plant a seed and Watch it grow” have to do with a medical column? In one word, plenty! One of today’s medical disasters is that many children in this country are hungry and poor. Finally, a major pharmaceutical company has come up with a novel idea to eliminate this shameful social condition. According to the World Health Organization, malnutrition is the greatest threat to public health. Canada, unlike many of its G8 counterparts, has no national child nutrition program. So, one in seven children live in poverty and hunger with increased risk of a variety of health problems. In the U.S., The Department of Agriculture says 9 out of 10 Americans are deficient in potassium, 8 out of 10 in...Read More
Alternate Treatments, Medicine, Vitamins
There Are Still No Dead Bodies!!!
Why is it impossible for investigative media reporters to get it right about health supplements? In March of 2013 medical research showed that every day 290 North Americans die from prescription drugs. To kill the same number of people a jumbo jet plane would have to crash every day. I asked Health Canada’s forensic bureaucrats to explain where the dead bodies are who took natural supplements? I have never had a reply. Now the media are using a study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S Food and Drug Administration to damn supplements. Its study of 63 hospitals over a 10 year period showed 3,667 emergency room (ER) visits and 2,154 hospitalizations from the use of...Read More
Lifestyle, Nutrition, Vitamins
Martin Luther King Had a Great Dream: What’s Mine on My 40th?
To dream of what might be is a good thing. Martin Luther King had a great dream but only some of his dream has been realized. The U.S. now has a black President, Jackie Robinson became a great baseball star and a friend of mine became Professor of Medicine at The Harvard Medical School. So, this week marks the 40th year I’ve written this column and I too have a dream. But it’s far from reality. For 40 years I’ve hoped that by passing along medical information I’ve helped people live a healthier lifestyle and longer life. I believe one of my most important messages is that high doses of vitamin C and lysine can prevent and reverse atherosclerosis (hardening of...Read More
Eyes, Ears, Nose & Throat, Nutrition, Surgery, Vitamins
Do I Need Cataract Surgery?
Do I get a lot of E-mail? Yes, tons of it. Do I get letters? Practically never, particularly those without a return address. So I was surprised by a recent one. All I know is the writer lives in Lethbridge, Alberta, and is elderly. She has written that she wants to be an informed patient, so is asking for my stand on cataract surgery. “Ms. X” simply believed she needed reading glasses, but was told by an optometrist that she required cataract surgery. She remarks, “I hesitated, so he sent me to an ophthalmologist for a second opinion. He also agreed that surgery was needed, suggested I simply sign on the dotted line, then called, “Next patient, please”. But the writer asked...Read More
Nutrition, Vitamins
The Darkness Hormone
"Do you think melatonin is of any value?" a doctor recently asked me. So if a doctor is wondering about this natural remedy, there must be many patients who are asking the same question. So what do we know about it? Melatonin has been labeled "the darkness hormone" because it's produced at night in contrast to vitamin D, "the sunshine hormone", that's manufactured during sunlight hours. Melatonin is found in some plants such as bananas, cherries and grapes. A report in the Journal of Medicinal Food showed that tart cherry juice, compared to a placebo drink, helped some older people sleep better. But it required 16 ounces a day, (the equivalent of 100 cherries) to have this modest effect. It also added...Read More
Lifestyle, Miscellaneous, Vitamins
Are Calcium Pills Killing us?
Is there anything sacred anymore? For years researchers have stressed that people are not getting sufficient calcium to build strong bones and prevent osteoporosis (brittle bones). But now a research report claims that calcium supplements increase the risk of cardiovascular disease. Nevertheless, a largely unknown vitamin can prevent this tragedy. Dr. Ian Reid and his colleagues at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, studied 14,000 women who were taking 1,000 mg (milligrams) of calcium daily. They report in the British Medical Journal that these women showed a 31 percent increased risk of coronary attack, stroke and death. This means 14 extra heart attacks, 10 more strokes and 13 more deaths over a two to five year period than women not taking...Read More
Cardiovascular, Lifestyle, Nutrition, Vitamins
Waiter, Make Sure My Steak Moos only Once!
I’ve been told it many times, “One of these days you’re going to push your luck too far”. It’s because I stress to waiters I want my steak “blue”. The worst that can happen is it arrives rare. But what is the risk of a blue steak? And can well done steak be bad for the heart? No waiter has ever said to me, “You dummy, didn’t you learn in medical school that ordering a steak rare may cause toxoplasmosis? Go back and read about parasitology.” Toxoplasmosis is not a common household term such as measles. But if the parasite is contacted, it can cause enlarged glands in the neck, fatigue, fever, and an enlarged spleen. In rare...Read More
Cardiovascular, Lifestyle, Nutrition, Vitamins
Do You Want a Shock? High Cholesterol for a Longer Life?
A recent medical tip to readers sparked a quick reaction. It reported a study that those with higher blood cholesterol lived longer! This is contradictory to everything we’ve been told for years. The Scandinavian Journal of Primary Health Care reported research that will shock millions of North Americans who ingest, faithfully, cholesterol-lowering drugs (CLDs). Scientists analyzed the cholesterol level of 120,000 Danish adults residing in Denmark. They discovered men age 60 to 70 with high levels of blood cholesterol showed a 32 percent decreased risk of death. Women fared better with a 41 percent reduced risk of death. To add more injury to the cholesterol theory, these researchers also discovered that higher levels of LDL cholesterol, the bad cholesterol, was also associated...Read More
Cardiovascular, Lifestyle, Medicine, Vitamins
Stroke Update: What’s Missing will Cost Lives
Every year 650,000 North Americans suffer a lethal stroke, or one that leads to debilitating mental or physical problems. The American Stroke Association (ASA) has issued an important update on how to prevent this disaster for those who have not had a major stroke or a mini one. But why do prestigious university medical centers continue to make a grievous error that costs lives? Remember, you cannot change your family history of stroke, or your age. But you can change the odds, because 90 percent of the factors that cause stroke are controllable. So here are facts you should be aware of. Anticoagulants (blood thinners) to treat A Fib, an irregular heart rate, should be used more often, but have a high...Read More
Cardiovascular, Nutrition, Vitamins
Magnesium: Protection from Undertakers
In 1979 Dr. David Chipperfield reported a finding in the British Medical Journal, Lancet. He had discovered that patients suffering from angina pain had low blood levels of magnesium. Equally important, he found that by prescribing this mineral, often referred to as “nature’s natural dilator”, the spasm of the coronary artery could be relieved, preventing a fatal heart attack and ultimately, the need to call an undertaker. Today, doctors are often asked, “Am I taking enough or too much calcium?” But in my days of practicing medicine, I can’t recall a single patient who asked me the same question about magnesium. It’s ironic because studies show that many North Americans are not obtaining sufficient amounts of this vital mineral. This can...Read More
Cardiovascular, Lifestyle, Medicine, Vitamins
A Shocking Finding About Aspirin and Heart Attack
Aspirin has been called the “One Cent Miracle Drug” for good reason. It’s the most widely used medical remedy in the world and available for over a hundred years to treat headaches and other pains. Millions take it to decrease the risk of heart attack and more recently, cancer. But how effective is it? And what is the recent surprise finding? In January 2011, the journal, “The Lancet”, reported data from eight studies involving 25,570 people. It concluded that a daily Aspirin decreased total cancer deaths by 24 percent after five years of use. Moreover, after people stopped Aspirin, death rates were still 20 percent lower for 15 years, largely for cancers of the colon, esophagus and prostate. Researchers also discovered an...Read More
Nutrition, Vitamins
The Vitamin D Bandwagon: Is it Ahead of the Science?
Here are some of the 100 medical conditions that have been associated with decreased blood levels of vitamin D; arthritis, asthma, colon cancer, emphysema, dementia, depression, diabetes, coronary heart disease, fibromyalgia, hypertension, infections, multiple sclerosis, muscle weakness, obesity, Parkinson’s Disease and psoriasis. But how many of these links have been proven by scientific studies? A report from the University of California says most of them are the result of “observational studies”. This means that over a period of years patients have been followed to see whether low levels of vitamin D are associated with a particular disease. Many researchers now say the bandwagon of “associations” of vitamin D should be slowed down. The Institute of Medicine echoes this warning. It states the...Read More
Lifestyle, Miscellaneous, Nutrition, Vitamins
EP = a2 Has Killed More People than E=mc2
It’s been said Einstein’s E=mc2 (energy=mass x C speed of light squared) is the world’s most important scientific equation. Unfortunately it created the atomic bomb that killed thousands in World War II. But I believe my equation EP = a2 (extra pounds = atherosclerosis squared) is the world’s important medical equation. Regrettably, it’s killing more millions every year than E=mc2.Think again if you believe this is exaggerated. Consider human obesity. Nothing, including the thousands of books on weight loss and diet, has been able to stop the epidemic of obesity which gets worse world-wide every year. Nor does anyone have the solution to the problem of increasing numbers of people developing Type 2 diabetes. The U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention...Read More
Infection, Vitamins
How To Protect Your Family From Ebola Infection
If it wasn’t happening I wouldn’t believe it! But night after night I’ve seen Wolf Blitzer on CNN and Peter Mansbridge on CBC news talking about Ebola, interviewing infectious disease experts about it. Yet, to my knowledge, no one in medical circles nor in the media has discussed the fact that there’s a proven way to treat viral diseases successfully, such as Ebola. What astounds me is that intelligent people are totally ignorant of medical history. Their lack of knowledge has doomed Ebola victims in West Africa and may kill others if this disease hits North America with a vengeance. 64 years ago Dr. Frederick Klenner, a small town family doctor treated 60 polio patients with large doses of...Read More
