Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Twas the night before...

Here it is another Christmas about to happen and I am up north in Restoule in winter white and not too cold. It has been a week and a few days of R and R and slowly I am coming up for air and thinking about all the things I want to talk about. But not tonight for it is time to sweep the roof and get ready for Santa.
We are so lucky to be humans and alive to experience our world although it is not easy all the time or pleasant all the time but there are moments of great joy and great awakening and great love.

I wish all a Merry Christmas and hope each is with loved ones and enjoying the festivities of giving and receiving.

Saturday, December 13, 2008

thoughts on Vaccinations.

I found this article in - http://www.hpathy.com/ which is a great source of all information. I am so pleased to recommend it to everyone. Books free to download, massive amounts of information for all people from novice to professional and articles like the one below. Have a read and know this article supports the blog earlier today about the big Pharma advertising which disseminates false information and information that hints at things without proof. We are being bilked by the most sophisticated and devious Snake Oil salesmen in history.

Homeopathy 4 Everyone - Editorial

November, 2008

A Personal Decision

- Alan V. Schmukler

The question of whether to vaccinate is a personal and often difficult decision. One has to weigh the danger of the disease and the chance of contracting it, against the dangers of the vaccine. Neither side in the debate can guarantee 100% protection.

On the one hand, a vaccine might protect you from a disease you were going to get and maybe die of. Benjamin Franklin opposed variolation (smallpox vaccination) and his unvaccinated son died of smallpox. He subsequently changed his mind and expressed regret for his former position.

On the other hand, vaccines have been associated with everything from autism, retardation and immune suppression to death. In the U.S., the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (U.S.) has paid out over a billion dollars to parents of children injured by vaccines. Vaccine manufacturers, while insisting on the safety of their product, have steadfastly demanded immunity from lawsuit.

So how does one make this decision? The answer is, by becoming knowledgeable about all aspects of this debate, including alternatives to vaccination.

Homeopathy has for many years been used to prevent illness (homeoprophylaxis). Hahnemann used Belladonna successfully to prevent scarlet fever. During a smallpox outbreak in Iowa, 1902, the homeopathic remedy Variolinum proved 97% effective in preventing the disease. Thousands of people in Buenos Aires received the remedy Lathyrus sativa during a 1957 polio outbreak. Not a single case of polio developed in those so treated. In 1974, 18,640 children in Brazil were given Meningococcinum to prevent meningococcal meningitis. The protection rate was 97 %.

Homeopath and researcher Isaac Golden has developed protocols for preventing illness with homeopathy (see interview in this edition and links to previous articles). While there is some debate about the mechanism of homeoprophylaxis, it clearly works. Homeopaths also use constitutional treatment as an effective alternative to vaccination. Aside from prevention, childhood diseases like measles can be treated easily and safely with homeopathy, which also helps prevent the sequelae.

Having said all this, there are still many people who don’t know about homeopathy or have any practical access to homeopathic treatment.

The first vaccine was developed by Edward Jenner (1796) who used cowpox to prevent smallpox. Pasteur developed a post- bite inoculation for rabies in 1885. While these first vaccines were rather simple, today’s vaccines contain many excipients that are highly toxic and can cause more harm than the diseases they are intended to prevent. These ingredients include Mercury, Aluminum, Formaldehyde, Phenol, MSG, Monkey kidney tissue, Chick embryonic fibroblasts etc. (see this month’s cartoon)

The production of vaccines is a multibillion dollar business, where the bottom line of profits often conflicts with the desire to do good. Consider the issue of Thimerosal, the mercury added to preserve shelf life. In the U.S., government hearings determined that it was harmful and forbid it to be added to any future vaccines (after years of doing damage ). However they permitted vaccine manufacturers to continue selling their stockpiled Thimerosal laden vaccines, a supply which some estimate will last over a decade.

In the end, you must make your own informed decision. We hope this month’s commentary and resources will help you do that.

Big Pharma Spends More On Advertising Than Research

I could not help myself but to publish this article for it shows clearly where the Pharmaceuticals spend money and it is to get you to buy their products. It is not about health but about selling and other priorities like denagrating all other forms of healing. America should take pharma ads off Television and force the pharmaceuticals to use the money to promote health and non invasive techniques of healing. It is clear that the way we are going with pharmaceuticals and pesticides and herbicides that soon we will be unable to support the human race for lack of drugs to keep us alive. This is a sad statement but I feel we are coming closer every day to this state of affairs. When will the governments of the world come to realize this. The Pharmaceuticals are doing nothing but making money and destroying our health systems, our hospitals and our lives.

This article was published in AME Science.

Big Pharma Spends More On Advertising Than Research

Tue, Jan 8, 2008

Health, Studies

drug company
A drug company is a commercial business whose focus is to research, develop, market and/or distribute drugs, most commonly in the context of healthcare; from wikipedia. But according to a study by two York University researchers estimates the U.S. pharmaceutical industry spends almost twice as much on promotion as it does on research and development, contrary to the industry’s claim.

But how could this be you might ask yourself. Well the answer is fairly easy; regardless of its purpose of helping people it is a bussiness and thus it has to make money and the way of making money is by advertising more and researching less. The researchers’ estimate is based on the systematic collection of data directly from the industry and doctors during 2004, which shows the U.S. pharmaceutical industry spent 24.4% of the sales dollar on promotion, versus 13.4% for research and development, as a percentage of US domestic sales of US$235.4 billion.

In case you are wondering who made this study well the research is co-authored by PhD candidate Marc-AndrĂ© Gagnon, who led the study and Joel Lexchin, a long-time researcher of pharmaceutical promotion, Toronto physician, and Associate Chair of York’s School of Health Policy & Management in the Faculty of Health.

“In our paper, we make the case for the need for a new estimate of promotional expenditures by the U.S. pharmaceutical industry,” says Gagnon. “We then explain how we used proprietary databases to construct a revised estimate and finally, we compare our results with those from other data sources to argue in favor of changing the priorities of the industry.”

This study is very important as it shows the most accurate image yet of the promotional workings of the pharmaceutical industry, says Lexchin. But even this could be wrong a bit because there are other advertising campaigns which could not be taken into consideration such as ghost-writing and off-label promotion so in fact these companies are probably spending more than twice advertising rather then researching. As well, note the authors, the number of meetings for promotional purposes has dramatically increased in the U.S. pharmaceutical industry, jumping from 120,000 in 1998 to 371,000 in 2004, further supporting their findings that the U.S. pharmaceutical industry is marketing-driven.

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

THE FLU SHOT IS A MONEY GRAB AND DANGEROUS

When enough reputed Doctor come forward as Dr. Miller has and say that Flu shots are not supported by any research and in fact are dangerous then we may wake up as a nation. We will come to understand the Fear Factor played over and over again by the Pharmaceutical industry is creating a market and costing us billions of dollars. The country is reeling over health costs and the health system failing due to its cost and much of the money is going to all those high profile drug companies who say they are doing good when in fact they are only doing good to their own pocketbooks.


Here is a statement I found in Dr. Mercola's fine weekly magazine.http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/12/09/prominent-physician-advises-against-flu-shots.aspx

This is a talk about vitamin D and how it helps in many ways to strengthen us to fight disease including the flu.

Dr. Donald Miller, a cardiac surgeon and Professor of Surgery at the University of Washington, recommends avoiding the flu shot and taking vitamin D instead. According to Dr. Miller, “Seventy percent of doctors do not get a flu shot.”

Health officials say that every winter 36,000 people will die from it. But the National Vital Statistics Reports compiled by the CDC show that only 1,138 deaths a year occur due to influenza alone -- more than 34,000 of the “36,000″ flu deaths are actually pneumonic and cardiovascular deaths.

There is also a lack of evidence that young children benefit from flu shots. In fact, a systematic review of 51 studies involving 260,000 children age 6 to 23 months found no evidence that the flu vaccine is any more effective than a placebo. But there is also a risk of harm from the flu vaccine itself, particularly from the mercury, aluminum, and formaldehyde it contains.

The Drug companies should be forced to repay governments for their inappropriate touting of flu shots as a preventative. The FDA should not allow the Drug Companies to put ads on Television. America is one of the few countries in the world that allow Drug ads on TV.

Friday, December 5, 2008

Dr. Edward Bach's Flower Remedies as he saw them

Dr. Bach stated that the real diseases of man are pride, cruelty, hate, selfishness, ignorance, instability and greed. His flower remedies have a strong impact with toxic emotions like resentment, guilt, hate and the feeling of being a victim. The flower remedies heal by rising the vibratory level of consciousness, therefore allowing us to perceive our superior nature. The flowers allow us to infuse our being with the particular virtue we need and automatically erasing the negative cause of the disorder producing pain. Dr. Bach passed away m peace in 1936. To this day, Queen Elizabeth II uses his flower remedies.

I found this in my reading and I am very happy to post it for it tells you in a nut shell what the remedies are for and how Bach perceived them to work. I can only say that they work and cannot dare to know why in the end but the above is as good an explanation as I could hope for. I do know we are mind driven and spirit seems to be present as some part of brain. So much for schooling.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

A sad day for real Democracy with rules.

I am hugely disappointed that we will have to wait almost 2 months for a change of Government and the Gov Gen. decided to give the conservatives a break and suspend parliament. Prorogation ends a parliamentary session and allows the government to start again at a later date with a fresh throne speech. It typically happens when a government has exhausted its legislative agenda, not before it's even begun. How can this happen except through powerful forces swaying the Governor General. Are all her advisers in the same camp?

It is interesting to note here that the papers and media slammed Dion on his camera and some minor focus problems and perhaps too that a couple of times he stumbled. They did not comment on his words which were very reassuring. He would make a great leader I believe but the money men are against him. It is obvious in the slant of the criticism and the calls of it being undemocratic plus the calls to fear of chaos and not the issues of a failed minority at all.

We will see how hard the coalition can fight to either get great programs or bring the government down in this next little while and once the new budget is released. The coalition have the upper hand but only if the people respond and support them.
The people, the 65% of the population can win this way If the Government does fall the other parties will rise higher in the next election and make even a stronger coalition.

We need consensus and not conflict in our political world. We have to somehow redirect our energies to get government and our economy back to the people and away from the powers of money that are manipulating us.

Count the dollars spent and the coffers of the Conservative party. They are supported to rule and can win no matter how bad and we see this in the Pharmaceutical power block as well, in their similar ad campaigns that spread fear of change and their ability to hoodwink the public. The Pharmaceutical subvert the media through the millions they pour into it in ads. The money men own the media and are pleased as it all makes money. Our fight has to be on You Tube and in the public web media that they do not control. So membership in Face Book and My Space groups are important and necessary. If we are active we will win.

Onward and upward!
Prevail with purpose!

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Hahnemann Homeopathy and Bach Flower Remedies and my thoughts

I was in the shower and began to think about how they interrelate. I really started with Arnica and Bach Rescue Remedy. Homeopathy diagnoses using physical, mental and emotional symptoms. Bach really deals with mental and emotional symptoms.
In acute situations Homeopathy is peerless. In emotional turmoil the Rescue Remedy is peerless.
I opine in chronics that it is a bit different for there the Homeopathic remedies are working with more symptoms directly.
I realize that if all disease and dis-ease are caused by a mental, spiritual split then we should be using it long before we see physical symptoms. Dis-ease, out of sorts. Lets examine my idea. It really starts at the beginning.

The trauma of birth, the shocks of light and sound and air. The using of the lungs. The fussy or angry or weepy or lethargic or frightened child, the slow toddler, the antisocial younger brother, the picked on student and we could go on with these emotional and mental space we get ourselves into for a long time. These are all the forerunners, dis-ease and they cause disease. Not all disease nor all genetic problems but the arthritis, asthma, and eczema to name common ones even medicine recognizes the psychological factors in the management of them. Using Bach flowers for the different mental, emotional stresses, can create in us a state that will avoid illnesses of many kinds.

Bach believed that the mind spirit rift when healed would eliminate disease in the body therefore if we pay early attention to the emotional problems large and small we will reduce if not eliminate more serious problems. this is true throughout life and certainly in my later life I find the flower remedies true to their promises. Fears of all kinds, tensions that drive us mad, situations that seem hopeless, feelings of insecurity are all problems that I have quickly cleared up using flower remedies. They are awesome.

With proper diet, exercise and rest our physical body can do all its own work to maintain our muscles and rest for our systems.
Homeopathy takes care of our acute situations and Bach really is a defense of all our emotional situations from birth to death.

We inherit a starting point from our parents - life. It is a collection of the two people who begat you. From there we grow and how we are handled at the beginning and then how we handle the realities of being human is what we become. We are the creators and what we believe we create and become. It plays out in every way. Without a cognizant mind we grope no better than a one cell creature.

Life is what we make it. How we think and about what. How we deal with the physical and emotional stress of being alive. We are alive and in charge. Both Bach and Hahnemann have added immensely to our abilities to care for ourselves with remedies that have no side effects and support the body to heal itself

What cost life? It could be less.

I am continually surprised to read the New York Times and see articles like this that cannot figure out how we should deal with people and the rising cost of Health Care. It is very clear that we are in the hands of the Pharmaceuticals and our doctors are co-opted by them. They rule our lives more and more and if they have their way we will be in their pockets from birth to death.

Systematically they fight all other methods of healing spending millions of dollars world wide to give all but their own a bad name.
The article below prompted me to remember that I am here to encourage people to look at Homeopathy and its ability to deal with chronic ailments. I spent less than $100 over a ten year period to keep my arthritis, that started in my left wrist and hand, under control. Even now I take one tiny globule every day or two at the cost of less than $100 per year and most of that is for the couple of visits to my Homeopathic doctor to make sure I do not need some other remedy. Cheap, cheap, cheap. And effective and now at 74 most people would never guess that I have arthritis all over my body from toes to shoulders. I do not have pain and I know when to take another globule by the rise of one or another symptom. Not only that the remedy works on my mental and emotional space as well and keeps me emotionally stable and energized to carry on my life in the best possible way.
I am a layman with no formal training in Homeopathy other than through experience on film sets. Film sets are very stressful places with dis-ease and diseases and injuries and the latest flu and colds finding easy targets as crews work long hours. Those long hours play havoc with the body and wears us down and soon we are vulnerable to catching whatever is going around. I use my remedies with crews very successfully for acute situations. I have everyday books to diagnose and those books are clear and simple to understand. And the action of the remedies is sometimes so fast that it is hard to believe.
I had a chap come to me with his mouth full of blisters and scratching like mad at his cheek. I opened
Homeopathic Self-Care
The Quick & Easy Guide for the Whole Family
Written by Robert Ullman, N.D.Robert Ullman, N.D. Author Alert and Judyth Reichenberg-Ullman, N.D., M.S.W

I looked at the allergy page and went to the section called listen to. That took about one minute. I handed it to the suffering man and he quickly read the sentences and after each sentence was a suggested remedy. He found one with symptoms of blisters and terrible itching and asked for the remedy Rhus Tox. I got it from my bag for it is a common remedy and he took it. In less than 5 minutes he was totally clear of all the problem. The whole episode took about 10 minutes. We were both in awe of the effectiveness. The only other thing we could have done was rush to the hospital and hope they would have the expensive pharmaceuticals to deal with the attack. I actually pondered if I should just get in the car with him and rush to the hospital for I was afraid his wind pipe would soon be affected. I am glad I went to my books and remedies.

So read below where we are in our society. Completely at the mercy of the Pharmaceuticals who's medicines often have terrible side effects and begin us on the slippery slope of being in their hands. It is a shame articles like the one below are having to be written and ordinary people have to be held hostage with the idea of how much is life worth.

There is lots to read below and places to go to read a Times series on the subject of costs and efficacy.

New York Times Wednesday December 3, 2008


British Balance Gain Against the Cost of the Latest Drugs


Published: December 2, 2008

RUISLIP, England — When Bruce Hardy’s kidney cancer spread to his lung, his doctor recommended an expensive new pill from Pfizer. But Mr. Hardy is British, and the British health authorities refused to buy the medicine. His wife has been distraught.


Hazel Thompson for The New York Times

Bruce and Joy Hardy of Ruislip, England, are awaiting a British agency’s reconsideration of its rejection of a medicine sought by Mr. Hardy, a kidney cancer patient.

The Evidence Gap

Setting a Price on Life

Articles in this series will explore medical treatments used despite scant proof they work and will consider steps toward medicine based on evidence.

All Articles in the Series »

“Everybody should be allowed to have as much life as they can,” Joy Hardy said in the couple’s modest home outside London.

If the Hardys lived in the United States or just about any European country other than Britain, Mr. Hardy would most likely get the drug, although he might have to pay part of the cost. A clinical trial showed that the pill, called Sutent, delays cancer progression for six months at an estimated treatment cost of $54,000.

But at that price, Mr. Hardy’s life is not worth prolonging, according to a British government agency, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. The institute, known as NICE, has decided that Britain, except in rare cases, can afford only £15,000, or about $22,750, to save six months of a citizen’s life.

British authorities, after a storm of protest, are reconsidering their decision on the cancer drug and others.

For years, Britain was almost alone in using evidence of cost-effectiveness to decide what to pay for. But skyrocketing prices for drugs and medical devices have led a growing number of countries to ask the hardest of questions: How much is life worth? For many, NICE has the answer.

Top health officials in Austria, Brazil, Colombia and Thailand said in interviews that NICE now strongly influences their policies.

“All the middle-income countries — in Eastern Europe, Central and South America, the Middle East and all over Asia — are aware of NICE and are thinking about setting up something similar,” said Dr. Andreas Seiter, a senior health specialist at the World Bank.

So what is your health worth? Do you want a price tag on it? Get smart and look to other ways to heal yourself. Step out of the paradigm of the Pharmaceutical world. Homeopathy and the Bach Flower remedies for mental and emotional problems are two of the ways to do this with remedies that are effective and have no side effects.

Saturday, November 22, 2008

FEAR - THE NEW WORLD EPIDEMIC

Over the last few years our lives have been driven by fear. Fear after 911, fear of SARS, Fear of Flu and have spent billions on vaccines which are questionable as to their efficacy and can have dangerous side effects. In some states it is mandatory to take flu shots if you want your child to go to school and in one state even preschoolers are obliged to have them. The pharmaceuticals of the world use fear continually to get people to buy their wares. It is a shame but true.
Because of the problems with our current economy and the downturn in the stock market our fear is poverty, even destitution and abandonment. It has thrown a negative pall on our entire society. It chokes our media. We are swallowed by it.

On Wednesday I went to the Toronto Sick Kids hospital Toastmasters Club open house. It was great fun. I can see why so many men and women use the club to hone their public speaking skills. It would be good for me to go regularly and improve my speaking skills.

The guest speaker was Marilyn Daniels MA,MEd,CPCC who is the Principal of VisionLegacy Coaching and who coaches business people and normal folks like you and I, how to be a positive influence in the world we live in. Her topic was Creative Chaos in Uncertain times. It was fascinating.

With the recent financial problems the world is having Dr. Daniels broke down the kinds of personal views we have at the present time.
Some feel the downturn is part of a normal cycle.
Others are negative and some hopeless and their language supports this: meltdown, depression, collapse, are some of the words they use to describe where we find ourselves right now.
There are many who believe we are in new and unknown territory due to Technology and how it has changed so many of our financial dealings. The future is truly unknown.

I was a cage clerk in a Brokerage house in 1953 and if you bought stock I was the clerk who sent the stock certificates out to you after they were processed. Now all the functions of trading are on line and even the exchanges are more and more out in space and not in huge markets with men and women running about buying and selling.

Fear influences our psychology. Our daily performance at work and our relationships at home suffer in an environment of personal fear. This only makes matters worse.

Answers as to how each of us can change this epidemic are clear; Awareness is the key.

Awareness of the words we use, like meltdown, collapse, depression. Rebuilding our patterns of thinking: Be aware of the scare and build a new vision.

Begin to take care of yourself through exercise, meditation, and getting out into nature. Exercise for your body, meditate for your balance and awareness of the present through proper focus, and nature to feed the spirit and allow yourself to experience the world in its simple and beautiful form.

In the end no one is secure and even the safest people may be overpowered with one or another of the fear symptoms that are mentioned above and can find no way to get yourself balanced again and needed something just to get started. It is not that you do not see the negative situation you are painting. It is that you cannot seem to get started to deal with it.
Dr. Edward Bach (See my post November 19th, 2008 for a good review of Dr. Bach and the 38 flower remedies he examined.
All for the negative thoughts we find ourselves in from time to time.

I use them very effectively and his Rescue Remedy formula is brilliant for calming all negative situations; stage fright, fear of exams, a death of a loved one, marriage jitters, a job interview, impatience to name a few.

Following are some of the remedies for the various fear symptoms in our current Epidemic. The remedies do not mask the feelings but rather balance the mind to accept the situation and move through the experience positively.

Below I am quoting from The Bach Remedies Repertory by F.J. Wheeler. It is just 13 pages of emotional words and beside each a suggest flower remedy. I have used this pamphlet using Gorse for a long bout of hopelessness and Larch for a lack of self confidence on the job. I was amazed how quickly the thoughts disappeared and I just got on with living and enjoying my work and life. These were acute situations and for deeper longstanding problems combinations of the flowers are put together and taken for extended periods and over time help to bring new balance and a positive outlook. The flowers have no known side effects and are not addictive. Simple and straightforward.

http://www.bachcentre.com/centre/remedies.htm is the site of all the remedies.

Press any of the Flower remedy buttons and go directly to that remedy. You can read what Dr. Bach said about each.



LOSS OF CONTROL - RESCUE REMEDY - A 5 flower combination that works as quickly as you take it.

Cherry Plum - fear of the mind giving way

Clematis - dreaming of the future without working in the present

Impatiens - impatience

Rock Rose - terror and fright

Star of Bethlehem - shock
-----------------------------------------

Other symptoms and flower remedies in the area of our collective fears:

Fear of the Future, poverty, -
Agrimony - mental torture behind a cheerful face, Mimulus - fear of known things

Fear for themselves, health,
Heather - self-centredness and self-concern

Depression -
Mustard - deep gloom for no reason, Gentian - discouragement after a setback

Despondency has many sides
Larch - lack of confidence, Pine - guilt,

Dissatisfaction,
Oak - the plodder who keeps going past the point of exhaustion, Walnut - protection from change and unwanted influences




Thursday, November 20, 2008

Grandma used to say Tell me who your friends are and I will tell you who you are

I wonder if this article understands that in some strange way. This sort of fall out makes me wonder about all the violence we now see on Television and all the lawlessness and the guns are not somehow getting us all worked up into accepting these things as how life is and so we begin to lose our moral base. Have a look.
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/081120/science/science_messing_up 

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

A great Bach Flower article with case study

I found this article on Rogers Life Style and it impressed me a great deal. I recommend it for a clear understanding of Dr. Edward Bach who created the Bach flower remedies and what he was all about. The case study done in Florida last year speaks highly of the Rescue Remedy which is the made from 5 flowers and it also first remedy in my kits. I use Tromos Stress Formula which is made in Peterborough using Bailey tinctures that come from England and a formula which is the original one Bach used and made by the same method.

If I was cast away on an island and could take only one medicine I would take my Tromos Stress Remedy for it would help me deal with every situation by calming my mind and centering me to look for answers instead of carping about the situation.

Bach Flower Remedies to the rescue

By Joyce Nelson

The essence of flowers can do more just add a decorative touch, according to Dr. Edward Bach.

When we visit a sick friend or relative in the hospital, our first impulse is to bring flowers. At some level, we sense that there's something about fresh flowers that will help the healing process. Bach Flower Remedies are a popular alternative medicine based on the healing powers of flowers.

Pioneer in alternative treatments
Dr. Edward Bach, a British physician, become convinced that some flowers have such healing powers that their "essence" should be ingested by patients. He created Bach Flower Remedies, which have become

Bach began a distinguished career in medicine in 1919, when he was appointed Casualty Medical Officer for the University College Hospital in London, supervising the treatment of hundreds of soldiers wounded in World War I. It was there that he observed the effects of stress and trauma in relationship to the recovery potential of his patients. Surgery and standard medical practice did not hold all the answers to healing, leading him to a great interest in the field of immunology. Over time he began to diagnose and treat patients according to their mental and emotional aspects, not just their external physical symptoms.

In 1930, Bach abandoned his lucrative London practice and began to treat patients in the small villages of Wales and England as he wandered the countryside studying native plants. He became convinced that disease of the body is due not primarily to physical causes, but that moods and states of mind can also undermine the health of bodily organs and tissues.

Mind, body and spirit
Nowadays, there is an entire new field of medicine called psychoneuroimmunology that is based on this concept. But Bach's thinking went further. Through experimentation and observation, he came to believe that flowering plants have high vibrations that are able to raise the lowered vibrations of humans. In the book, The Secret Life of Plants (Avon, 1973), Bach is quoted as saying that such flower based herbal remedies "draw down spiritual power, which cleanses mind and body, and heals".

Before he died in 1936, Bach had isolated 38 flowering plants that he felt had positive energy to neutralize specific negative emotions. To obtain the flower essences, he picked the best specimens grown in sunlight and steeped them individually in bowls of water under the heat and light of the afternoon sun. The result of this process is the 'mother tincture' which is further diluted with brandy to preserve the essence. Any Bach flower remedy is taken in liquid form as a few drops placed under the tongue.

Thirty-eight emotions
According to the Encyclopedia of Alternative Medicine (Stoddard, 1996), each of the 38 remedies counters a specific state of mind by "introducing new information into the emotional and mental fields of the individual". For example the Wild Rose remedy is for someone feeling apathetic and resigned, while the Aspen remedy is for someone feeling apprehension for no known reason. A list of each remedy with the corresponding emotional state is available at the Bach Centre.

There are now more than 25,000 practitioners of Bach flower remedies worldwide, serving hundreds of thousands of clients. Virtually no reliable clinical studies have been conducted on the effectiveness of the remedies until recently.

Rescue me now
On July 2, 2007, the Medical News Today reported the results of a study on the effectiveness of a popular Bach Flower preparation called Rescue Remedy. The study was conducted by researchers at the University of Miami School of Nursing in conjunction with the Sirkin Creative Living Center. Using a sample of 111 individuals aged 18 to 49, the study was a double-blind clinical trial comparing a standard dose of Rescue Remedy against a placebo of identical appearance. A standard test to evaluate anxiety was administered before and after the dosage.

The result was that Rescue Remedy was found to be "an effective over-the-counter stress reliever with a comparable effect to traditional pharmaceutical drugs yet without any of the known adverse side effects, including addiction."

Bach Flower Remedies are sold at many health food stores as well as pharmacies.

Joyce Nelson is an environmental journalist based in Toronto.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

New York Times: Kidney Disease Takes a Growing Toll

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/health/18kidneydisease.html?nl=8hlth&emc=hltha1

It does not take a genius to realize that our poor kidneys have to process the toxins we condone and sell to put into our bodies. We are being killed. Dead. What goes in has to go out and surely our intake of bad drinks like soda pop and a plethora of drugs are the cause. When will governments wake up and get them under control. We are being addicted from a young age. What isn't on the counter screaming to be bought is a start to improving our mind sets. In Toronto cigarettes are not in view at all. Out of sight-out of mind is a first step. Campaigns that discourage people to partake of bad foods just like we do with tobacco and drugs would be good. Elimination of all Alcohol ads would be good. This is what I strive for. Health after all is paramount and good health is better than bad health and maintaining the immune system paramount in our task to be healthy. It is simple to understand and to head ourselves toward.

Saturday, June 14, 2008

Reflections on how we got here.

I have just finished reading "A Far Country" but Winston Churchill. He was a cousin of the famous Winston Churchill, and an American writer in the early 1900s. The book is a very open story about the early "men of means" and how they rigged and fixed governments from city boroughs to town halls, States and the nation itself. I was surprised at my own naivety and surprise to read what we all know so clearly today and that it has been so for centuries. It is a gently told story as English was written in those days was more measured and somehow clean and pure.

A young man growing up in an established family home becomes a brilliant lawyer and uses his talents to foster the desires of the wealthy as they dominate the mining, textile, transport systems in his home state. It even alludes to the hospitals under the control of the wealthy. Remember that in the early days of the AMA and the pharmaceuticals that denigrating the homeopathic system which was well developed in America at the turn of the century was a clear purpose and we today are the inheritors of the success that they had. It was and is to the detriment of society at large and today all people are reaping the results of the victories of the moneyed and the corporations that control our ordinary lives. We are the pathetic recipients of this lack of humanity that brings us now to a world in crisis at every level. It is a shame for these people are intelligent and if they turned their work away from greed to care for others and proper support of the ordinary folk of the world and not the bottom line of profits we would be living in Eden instead of edging toward mass catastrophe. Throughout the world the ordinary people of the world are suffering untold problems while lining the coffers of the wealthy and the corporations.

I think that the Corporations are amoral and sociopathic in their behavior and was wont to attribute it the people who run them but lately I realize that in every person who works at the top of these corporations the blame must be laid for they are intelligent and keep themselves blinkered to the task at hand which is profit even at the expense of people if need be. The famous 4 Ds pervade their way of being. Deny, Delay, Divide, Discredit. How they operate and nowhere more clearly than in the pharmaceutical industry that is trying and still succeeding in controlling the Governments of the world to accept modern medicine and their goods as the arbiters of good medicine and health and the Governments fall pray to their deep pockets and influence peddling in spite of the clear negative and often criminal results of their powerful self serving attitudes.

This morning in the New York Times there is an article which I have posted reporting that in examining the death reasons over several years through coroner's and autopsy reports many more people have died from problems with pharmaceutical drugs than have died through illegal drugs. It is shocking when you read the numbers and realize that the research is valid and cannot be refuted.





http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/14/us/14florida.html?th=&adxnnl=1&emc=th&adxnnlx=1213449111-akbO2Ql4Uh9NmMtSpLZk/Q

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Every step a Victory!!!

My life and work are very gratifying.

I have terrible teeth and go to the U of T Dental school to have them worked on. Over the 5 years I have had several student dentists. My present doctor, Brian Waxman took one of my pocket packs although until he met me he did not know anything about homeopathy or flower remedies. I showed him how to tkae the pills and what they might help with. How to go with the guiding symptom. He just finished his finals and here is his testimonial.
Hey John,

I wanted to thank you for your guidance in helping me discover the healing power of the hollywood surival kit. As a dental student, I often have a ton of exams and clinic which is double the stress. I often don't have time to have lunch, and often have a racing mind and don't have great sleeps due to stress. Furthermore, being in dental school, I am always on the run! So, with the help of the survival kit, I was able to deal with my stress with the stress formula, the nux vomica and the coffea cruda. They all helped me to focus and to sleep and really took my stress to a level that was manageable. Also, the arnica montana was amazing in helping with the aches and pains of running around all day. I recommended it to all my friends and colleagues who already are seeing the benefits.

Thanks again John!

Bryan Waxman
U of T Dental School

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Separating Doctors from Pharmaceutical Companies

This New York Times editorial tells us that the problem of an inappropriate liaison between doctors and the drug companies is now clearly on the table. It is about time that the doctors began to honor their oath of "First Do No Harm."


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/29/opinion/29tue4.html?th&emc=th

Saturday, April 19, 2008

I came across this article and it is nicely written and one can even go back and read Hahnemann's original thoughts on how to treat burns. He did not suffer fools lightly and his letter is a response to a Doctor who had prescribed cold applications to burns. It seems that actually hot water or hot flame is better for a burn and seems to encourage the healing. It is worth knowing or at least in my life there have been times when knowing how to treat a burn would have been good to know. Have a look as it is well documented.
http://www.hpathy.com/papersnew/bartlett-tratment-burns.asp

Thursday, April 17, 2008

PANGEA DAY IN MAY

http://pangeaday.org/
Have a look. This is sponsored by TED.com and many others and will prove to be a fabulous 4 hours of TV that will circle the world and each person or group who attends will come away with wonderful ideas and images I am sure.

Friday, April 11, 2008

Join the army!!! Be counted.

I have joined a group: www.Avaaz.org They peacefully support humane action worldwide. For Myanmar, Tibet, Zimbabwe and other situations of concern. By joining you can add your name to each petition that supports by thousands of names and become and are a real voice.

I wrote the below to add support for a clear recognition of the dangers of the large corporations and their allies.

Harsh as it sounds I have to agree with Sadun. I am in Canada doing my best to promote homeopathy and Bach Flower remedies and the created resistance to homeopathy by the medical/pharmaeceuticals is clear and continuing. I am in the midst of reading The Homeopathic Revolution by Dana Ullman.
http://www.homeopathic.com/
His book is a clear history and supports your thesis completely by its contents. Remembering always that Homeopathy is cheap, safe and effective and these humane attributes make it the enemy of the medical/pharmaceutical group.
It is only through public awareness can we grow the alternate world and so like cream we must rise to the top with support from groups like Avaaz. I am very pleased you are here.

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Waking up at 4 am and wondering what to do

The last few nights I have woken around 4 or 5 am and then been restless. I even got up once and just began my day. I don't know why this is happening but last night I woke at 4 and went to the bathroom and when I came back my mind was going a hundred miles an hour. I tried an old trick of just watching my breath but nothing seemed to be working. I lay and tossed a while longer and remembered my own pocket pack. I wondered if I should take Coffea #6 for my overactive mind or Nux Vomica #8 for overwork and waking with a mind full of thoughts. I opted for the #8 and I cannot remember the process of going to sleep again but I woke at 8 and felt refreshed.

Monday, March 31, 2008

Answers to an interesting letter.

Thanks for your considered reply. Your questions are all sensible and I will do my best to answer them all.

Why wouldn't you want to part with your base supply? Wouldn't they be identical according to the rules of homeopathy?

If I gave my bottle away then what about the next person who may need a pill. It costs about 6 dollars a bottle and about 75 cents to use blanks. Cost effective and I am lazy and poor and so do not want to either go out or pay for foolish behaviour.

I understand that you genuinely believe seeing people feeling better, but insn't it safe to say, youre not sure how the remedies work, or more importantly, if they're even involved?

I can tell you just like the high from the first time I ever had grass that the sensations in my painful hand once I took one pill were awesome. Over a couple of days. At first sharp pains in knuckles never before painful (like the advance forces were being defeated)
and then slowly all the pains subsided and then the one frozen knuckle on my baby finger started to move correctly. I could go on about the next 10 years and even now so personally I am sure.
I can tell you about the guy who took a pill for horrible allergy in the summer, his nose running, his eyes sore and red and his nostrils on fire. He took the pill turned away and then turned back. He said."Could this work that fast?" I said. "You tell me. You took the pill." He shook his head and smiled. Or the 10 in the evening call when my designer of 7 years and old friend Morley Markson called me up. "John that stuff really works!!! That pill you gave me this afternoon is still working and my cold is going away. In truth I knew something had changed the moment I took the pill but it was unspoken and somehow I could not define it in words."
I can tell you stories about people who used it successfully on their dog when they were afraid of thunder. I am sure they work and I am sure they are involved. You can tell me what a drug will do to its immediate point like effect x chemical which seems to stop y from happening. But else is x doing and is stopping y best for healing and strengthening the patient. Remember that every thing people take from me has no side effect. The explanation I like best is the idea of a hhuge spectrum of notes into infinity and some get out of line and each has a vibration and homeopathy will pass through if its vibration is represented in the spectrum and if it is missing it comes and stays and completes the perfect total vibration: The Human.


If the remedies work, then the process that makes them would also cause the empty pills to be contaminated by pill dust from other mixtures in the air no?

I think this is a matter of clean labs and appropriate cleaning first of all just the same as a pharmaceutical who will use one machine for different jobs or a printer for that matter. The machine goes to zero before it is reused for the reasons you point out. Now for me who will make pills you could be right although I have not had any mixed messages in the pills I have made for others.

Why do have such a strong inclination against the power of suggestion and placebo? There are many more powerful effects that just placebo when testing an effect. Subjective bias creeps up in even the most well controlled experiment.

My homeopath would agree with you to a degree. He would say it is also in the giver and he would not be beyond using a placebo if the remedy he gave last had not worked yet and then he would wait longer before giving another real pill. It is a complex art well beyond my abilities. So yes I know I may have effect but I back away from that idea for all the reasons of ego and confidence that I had no person influencing my first experiences so both ideas are true but both also not necessary. I can say the same for medicines given by a doctor. For it rests on the giver too. We are subtle auras in the end.

Let me ask you this.. Hypothetically speaking, what type of evidence would you personally need to collect to convince yourselt that homeopathy is an illusion, based on placebo and personal bias?

I am not sure you could. I have thousands of people world wide using my kits. Thousands. And there are millions of people being helped every day for both acute and chronic ailments. If you read at all or have had my experiences you would understand. I have given guys pills telling them to shut up and stop ranting about whether it worked or not on a finger slammed in a door. Three times he told me "I don't believe in that shit. I'm a stunt man and I know this will hurt for a couple of hours and turn blue and I will cut a slit in my nail and let the blood out and in three weeks I will have a new nail. Now F.O. Not once but three times in about 20 minutes but I persisted each time. When I saw him an hour later and I asked how his finger was he said. "I don't believe that shit!!! Which finger?" I had to search the hand to find a tiny mark under one nail and he said I was right and if he were here he would tell you he carries arnica with him all the time now for bangs and sprains etc. Physical injury and stunt men get it a lot. I have seen and I have helped even Burt Reynolds. He gave me a book at the end of the film for helping him. I am actually an awesome healer. But it is the pills that heal. I am sure of that. So tell me how you could change my mind. Solid evidence until I could not deny it.

You can ask the same of me in reverse. I think I could come up with a pretty specific requirement for accepting or rejecting its usefulness.

I know your requirements for accepting, what are you requirements for rejecting it?

Buy a Pocket Pack and put it to use for one month. For you and your friends. One month. The only requirement is to read the remedy profiles in the pamphlet and when you hear a symptom word then use the kit. Try it honestly for I am sure. If after an honest month and you can keep a little book on it if you will. If you have no success or poor success then I will refund you the money and you can keep the pack and I will know your reasons for rejecting it for you will be obliged to tell me.

I hope I have answered your questions to some satisfaction. It is not easy to articulate what you know without words. We all of us lose our freedom in being attached so hard to our concrete selves. It suits the corporations if we are but it does not serve our inner selves nearly so well. But that is another conversation about society and our loss of community etc.

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Dr Rant: Antidepressants don't work - in Hull

Dr Rant: Antidepressants don't work - in Hull

It is becoming clear that many antidepressent drugs work well in giving the patient side effects that are horrible. I suggest you look at the brilliant work of Dr. Bach who cataloged and tested on hundreds his Flower Remedies. His Rescue Remedy is famous. I speak from an experiential place of using the flower remedies particularly the Rescue Remedy and Homeopathic remedies on sets world wide. I have at least 1000 personal observations and thousands using my Hollywood Survival Kit and now my pocket pack. The set is a microcosm of everyday life in the fast lane with stress and injuries and overwork and sleeplessness. I know what I am using works and I know too that is does no harm as it is without known side effects. The remedies I use are made exactly as they were over 200 years ago and are used for the same reason and with the same good effects. Try and come to the same place I am in now, happy to tell you and everyone else that there are ways that are safe and sure and supportive of the immune system and profoundly user friendly
John Board
www.hollywoodsurvivalkit.net

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

the idle world

I often wonder if we are all too busy trying to stay alive to care how we are dying. Or if we are all aware we are dying and will do anything to stay alive. I of course am referring to how badly we treat ourselves generally in what we eat and what we think about. I watch the TV and see all the ads for medicines and cold remedies and sleep remedies and pain remedies and know they must be bought by millions or the ads would not be there. Most of the money goes to bringing in new users. It is a shame that we have a health community that is driven by greed. I long for the day when Governments begin to lead their people and examine the choices that they are offering to their countrymen. Why they encourage us to gamble with lotteries and they stoke the coffers of the pharmaceuticals although it is getting clearer and clearer that many of the drugs not sold even over the counter and many that are prescribed by doctors too are dangerous and have nasty side effects. Isn't it a shame.
Here we have television an opportunity to support proper values and a modest sharing life and most of the time we are being given anything that will distract us from any good purpose at all. I marvel at the rise of the extreme fighters as what millions are now watching. I marvel that we are encouraged to be fans of this sort of violence. We are in an age where cheating is fine and anything is considered fair game to get ahead. To those who get caught it is the throw of the die. And to the many who do not get caught well they consider themselves worthy of not getting caught.
Our values are deplorable and our heroes are without real valor but they do get our adrenalin going and we can cheer and forget about the millions of people who would die for the price of a ticket to a sporting event to spend on food. How we think it is our right to have it all and not live in the honour of the place we really find ourselves. In the olden days we would tithe and share one tenth of what we earned with those not so lucky and our companies and our government worked hard to care for us properly but now our medical system is in shambles and our pensions often used by corporations for other things. Isn't it a shame that will all our progressiveness we have forgotten how to live in real community.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Valentine Day Thoughts

Yesterday I spent time at a school where I spoke to a few teachers about wellness and my Hollywood Survival Kit pocket pack and it was such a quick hour spent in enjoyment and contact. If any of you have the wish to put together a group of people or work where a group might wish to talk about wellness and my pocket pack I am available.I wish I could go somewhere every day to do that; to talk to people about health and homeopathy and the benefits of taking care of self with love and direction. It is my goal.

How we are led so astray from our simple selves. How we are pushed into greed and shallow pleasures. Where are our Gods and our religions that they no longer guide our leaders and our energy into better places.

In mixing we have lost the fibers that join us into family, tribes and proper community and so we have no lineal connections it seems. As if we were a beautiful swan made of paper stuck together the rain has soaked us leaving nothing but bits of paper floating on a careless sea.

It is so hard being me for I am all things good and bad and willing and willful. I can sense no reason that it is not hard for everyone, each for their own reasons. It is a large keyboard that I seem to play but then we all play a large keyboard and most are just a bit tunnel-visioned and only see a few of the vast array.

Somewhere inside me I wait for there to be a huge purging cry go up from all the people and we will stop and see the beauty about us and the joy hidden behind the wanton desires that stretch so far now into our beings; and that there will be this primal scream and after that we will love each other and know that though thousands of miles away we are all joined as one caring for each other and ourselves in positive ways.

It is no stretch of mind that takes me to the place of being part of all, but this does not mean I can find it at my surface mind in every moment. To love self and other equally, and treat self and others in a nurturing way is mind stuff easily understood as appropriate but not part of personal action, rather sitting as good thoughts only.

We are all so blessed to have the opportunity of communion, thought and change and each who does comes closer to the will of all. Hope is energy that can and will rise to such strength that change will happen.

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Thoughts for a Sunday afternoon

It is so hard to keep balance when so much is happening in life. To keep healthy and fit and alert and kind and thoughtful and caring and leading and following and get enough sleep too and laugh some and see beyond the box you are in and see into the box you are in is not easy for anyone. Busy is a word that defines us all whether we are bees or drones we all seem to find things to occupy our minds and bodies. It is that even at rest we are busy restoring ourselves and just breathing which when you think of it takes millions of tiny movements from molecules of oxygen to the blood carrying it to our different need areas. So we are in fact always in movement and even in death we are physically moved first by people and then by the critters that nosh us up and we become part of new movements of others. So busy we are but what occupies our minds, our waking hours, our conscious busyness. That is always the question we are asking ourselves if we do not have order and direction. Ugh those words must ring in millions of ears in many languages. It is a simple act to carry out - life - at a need to eat to stay alive basis, but it is not so easy for the more complicated quality of the brain that is a continual forest where we must choose a path to go along or make a new one to discover.

And some things are obligations brought on by our circumstances and they must be fit correctly into the stream of things or everything is pushed out of kilter. But circumstances do not care about anything other than themselves and so how do we arrange our lives to do all this. Circumstances may require new directions which may compromise all parts of our lives. This requires openness often and redirections that may totally alter our other purposes in life. Life is as it is and finds you whether you like it or not and you decide what to do.

The circumstance of the car needing an oil change is no different in its obligation idea than the needing to spend time with a loved one that needs your real attention. I see this all the time in my own life and I wonder in retrospect what I chose as the major obligations and what the minor and what I hid from myself and what I realized and how I would perhaps change things had I to do it again. From the distance of age and the meanderings of an old man I think that every moment choices are made and every moment we are challenged and in the end, the statement always holds; that the more you give to the beings about you in the aura you have, and the people that are the closest to you personally, the more you will be satisfied for it is like feeding yourself.
Sometimes it is difficult to know what food is really necessary whether for self or others. So only searching and listening and opening the mind to other ideas and reasoning can a correct decision be made and an action begun. Whether these are self driven through sitting and sorting the priorities out or whether the ideas come from others matters not. Only correct action under the circumstances one finds oneself in matters.

To balance our own physical universe is the continual effort of the inside of the body. This we know. It is the same for everything we are both physical and mental. We are the masters of all we are. We are the creators of our whole world. It seems to follow then that we are the only ones who can change our world.

Recognizing this is one thing, wanting to change something is another thing and the act of changing is what we do if we wish to have things otherwise. Only in action is there physical movement. Many things are needed to get actions ready to happen and the use of personal physical energy is the last thing to need and the first thing needed for change to happen.
Life!!!

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

About bees and ants sortta

I was thinking about bees and ants that live in huge colonies of thousands of members. Each member knowing and doing its duty unfailingly to render a perfect home for all. I was realizing that our bodies are in some ways like hives only the residents are so small we cannot even understand if they are just energy or have mass. I mean tiny. I know that I have arthritis all over my wonderful body and I can feel it activating at times. I can feel it encroaching on territory. An army moving quickly if I bang myself and slowly if I don't eat right and I do not eat right dumb as I am. So we have tiny negative and positive things that keep us in stasis. I know too that the little pill I take right now is a perfect messenger to the positive side that must do its work to keep the negative under control: to keep the balance. I am able to run and jump too. When I did that Rap I ran and fell and was totally active for over 8 hours and I am 72. I think we fool ourselves if we take medicines that will either mask the negatives or anhialate the negatives and positives at that level of activity through anti-biotics. They leave around all sorts of undesirable effects which we call side effects. It is a drag but true. We all know this. That is one of the main reasons I got into Homeopathy and Flower remedies. They do not have side effects. That is a major reason I tried but I was and am still amazed at how effective they are. I must be well of a couple of thousand experiences that I have seen with my own eyes of people being helped quickly. I myself can tell you I must take a pill or one sort or another maybe 25 times a year for everything from a cold coming on to a hangover in the morning or an upsetting situation where I feel I have to calm down. The odd bang. Wow when I fell into the flowers on the rap I really hurt the arm I thrust out to break the fall. I winced with pain. I think the bone between my elbow and shoulder twisted for I had no damage at all at the shoulder or elbow. I immediately called for Arnica and cream was husstled out and pills as well and I was pain free in under 5 minutes. My son Simon who is also a 1st AD asked me if I had pads down and a stunt coordinator with me. I said no and his look told me he thought I was nuts. I tell you I was half way to the ground when I started to think about landing. I was nuts not to have a pad down. Never trust an actor and that is what I had turned into that day. Mind you not a great actor but the idea of actor. I will one day put together the out takes and you will marvel at how often I had to say each line to get it right. Unbelievable how stupid my mind is when it comes to repeating even one sentence. Arnica is fabulous as a remedy. It is for any physical trauma.

Saturday, January 19, 2008

The New York Times is an alarm clock!!!

The National Institutes of Health does almost nothing to monitor the financial conflicts of university professors to whom it provides grants, and the huge federal research agency does not want to start now.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/19/us/19conflict.html?ex=1358485200

This is a very telling article and shows a certain disregard for ordinary Americans who live trusting that their best interest is being taken care of. With the news over the last years about the research reporting by large Pharmaceuticals who turn out to have on side and paid medical doctors who make these reports and who laud their products, you would imagine that any National Institute of Health that gives away many millions of dolaars would be concerned about who was in conflict. It is bad enough that we are getting lousy information about the negative realities of some of the new drugs but that we might be paying part of the bill to create this bad information is outrageous.

More and more I read in the NY Times horror stories about drugs not being what they are purported to be. They also support medicine and there is a wonderful story aobut the man who fell 48 floors and not only lived but because of great trauma medicine and technique is now being moved to a convalescence facility just 6 weeks since the accident.

I tell you this for I do not feel the Times is witch hunting as much as trying to wake up America about their health.

I too am trying to wake up America to try Homeopathy and Flower remedies for acute situations as an no side effect alternative to drugs that cause side effects and in the end create worse situations than the problem they were trying to solve. My cut line "A safe way to get better." is worth the cost of admission in an age where the human is being bombarded every minute by chemical mixtures that never existed 50 years ago. The immune system is under real attack brought on by human innovations over the last couple of hundred years. The human does not seem to recognize that the world was not put here to serve humanity but rather that humankind are just another species of equal importance. Having run rough shod over the earth and now using artificial means to attain even more plunder the human is weakening not only the whole world but also himself. We are our own executioners. I am doing my best to help people resist this downward spiral in their individual care for themselves under these negative circumstances.


Thursday, January 17, 2008

Positive Funk!!!

Yep! That is what I prefer to call my present state. I am getting some good work done but I am heavily addicted to my solitaire game. It is my problem and interesting to study and make efforts to realign my thinking.
I was wondering what to eat yesterday and then went for a shower and suddenly missed my old and long departed friend Brian. I wondered why and then remembered that Brian was always a person to call about supper for he cooked brilliantly and he also was somewhat lazy and great company and we liked each other so supper was always an easy question. We liked Chinese a lot over the years and Sai Woo was our favourite since the 50's. It is gone now and Garfield and Bill our friends who ran it all are now found in my memory. The food I can see too and all the people around a Sunday evening meal. Great fun. So I have good reason to miss Brian and all the company and good times we shared over many years. It is such a pleasure to have friends either alive or gone to better climes I hope. Winter is having a time of being fully recognized this year. It seems every time it gets a hold of us it does not have the strength to stay in control. I think when you get old you jam ideas together so in the case of winter I remember snow forts and snow ball fights and streets piled high with snow for weeks but was that just one year or 5? I cannot say for sure. Time and the mind collects images over time and like an album releases those called up and the identifying label is what collects the data so snow and winter calls up what is asked for. Mind is vast and so complete and my ability to access it is a continuing learning experience.

Monday, January 14, 2008

A story about a cold.

Yesterday Andre woke up in the afternoon as usual. He works as a manager at the Madison and gets home late. His nose was stuffed up and he greeted me sadly with. "I've got a cold and its going into my chest. My throat is sore. Can you help me."
I went down to the dining room where my kits are: all my kits including my large, 'on set' kit. He had 2 sprays of the Echinacea throat spray from the Hollywood Survival Kit. I knew the Aconite in the kit would not be of value for the cold was well established.
I opened my everyday diagnosing book at colds. Andre read the page and found no remedy that suited his symptoms and so I looked up coughs in the same book as he said his cold was getting into his lungs. He read down the remedies and blurted out: "Antimonium" A new remedy to me, but I looked in my biggest case of remedies and found it. We carefully opened the tube for it had never been opened. He took one pill. He left for work an hour later seeming not much improved at all.

I saw him today at 2.00 when he came up to my office on the third floor. His voice was clear and his stuffed nose was gone. He said he was almost better and was upbeat. He came home last night and took another spray in his throat and another pill and thought he might take one more of each before going to work again. He was very happy with the results.

It is such a learning experience for me and so satisfying to offer just books and remedies and then watch if the patient knew his symptoms and could find the right remedy. I am mostly rewarded with a thank you for the diagnosing books are simple and easy to find answers in, and people are able to pick the right remedy most often.

Fibromyalgia is a real disease. ????????

Or so says Pfizer in a new television advertising campaign for Lyrica, the first medicine approved to treat the pain condition, whose very existence is questioned by some doctors.
Jamie Rector for The New York Times

I am including the whole article here as it is very revealing in its entirety. It makes me marvel at the cavalier attitude taken overall by the pharmaceuticals and in the end the FDA as well. Treating each person as an individual seems to be called for when dealing with what the doctors call Fibromyalgia as it varies in each individual. Medicines are not direct to the person but rather to the disease which in this case has many symptoms. So it may or may not help but one thing for sure is that the medicines listed all have side effects that may affect those who use them.
So read on and be as startled as I am about it all.

For patient advocacy groups and doctors who specialize in fibromyalgia, the Lyrica approval is a milestone. They say they hope Lyrica and two other drugs that may be approved this year will legitimize fibromyalgia, just as Prozac brought depression into the mainstream.
But other doctors — including the one who wrote the 1990 paper that defined fibromyalgia but who has since changed his mind — say that the disease does not exist and that Lyrica and the other drugs will be taken by millions of people who do not need them.
As diagnosed, fibromyalgia primarily affects middle-aged women and is characterized by chronic, widespread pain of unknown origin. Many of its sufferers are afflicted by other similarly nebulous conditions, like irritable bowel syndrome.
Because fibromyalgia patients typically do not respond to conventional painkillers like aspirin, drug makers are focusing on medicines like Lyrica that affect the brain and the perception of pain.
Advocacy groups and doctors who treat fibromyalgia estimate that 2 to 4 percent of adult Americans, as many as 10 million people, suffer from the disorder.
Those figures are sharply disputed by those doctors who do not consider fibromyalgia a medically recognizable illness and who say that diagnosing the condition actually worsens suffering by causing patients to obsess over aches that other people simply tolerate. Further, they warn that Lyrica’s side effects, which include severe weight gain, dizziness and edema, are very real, even if fibromyalgia is not.
Despite the controversy, the American College of Rheumatology, the Food and Drug Administration and insurers recognize fibromyalgia as a diagnosable disease. And drug companies are aggressively pursuing fibromyalgia treatments, seeing the potential for a major new market.
Hoping to follow Pfizer’s lead, two other big drug companies, Eli Lilly and Forest Laboratories, have asked the F.D.A. to let them market drugs for fibromyalgia. Approval for both is likely later this year, analysts say.
Worldwide sales of Lyrica, which is also used to treat diabetic nerve pain and seizures and which received F.D.A. approval in June for fibromyalgia, reached $1.8 billion in 2007, up 50 percent from 2006. Analysts predict sales will rise an additional 30 percent this year, helped by consumer advertising.
In November, Pfizer began a television ad campaign for Lyrica that features a middle-aged woman who appears to be reading from her diary. “Today I struggled with my fibromyalgia; I had pain all over,” she says, before turning to the camera and adding, “Fibromyalgia is a real, widespread pain condition.”
Doctors who specialize in treating fibromyalgia say that the disorder is undertreated and that its sufferers have been stigmatized as chronic complainers. The new drugs will encourage doctors to treat fibromyalgia patients, said Dr. Dan Clauw, a professor of medicine at the University of Michigan who has consulted with Pfizer, Lilly and Forest.
“What’s going to happen with fibromyalgia is going to be the exact thing that happened to depression with Prozac,” Dr. Clauw said. “These are legitimate problems that need treatments.”
Dr. Clauw said that brain scans of people who have fibromyalgia reveal differences in the way they process pain, although the doctors acknowledge that they cannot determine who will report having fibromyalgia by looking at a scan.
Lynne Matallana, president of the National Fibromyalgia Association, a patients’ advocacy group that receives some of its financing from drug companies, said the new drugs would help people accept the existence of fibromyalgia. “The day that the F.D.A. approved a drug and we had a public service announcement, my pain became real to people,” Ms. Matallana said.
Ms. Matallana said she had suffered from fibromyalgia since 1993. At one point, the pain kept her bedridden for two years, she said. Today she still has pain, but a mix of drug and nondrug treatments — as well as support from her family and her desire to run the National Fibromyalgia Association — has enabled her to improve her health, she said. She declined to say whether she takes Lyrica.
“I just got to a point where I felt, I have pain but I’m going to have to figure out how to live with it,” she said. “I absolutely still have fibromyalgia.”

But doctors who are skeptical of fibromyalgia say vague complaints of chronic pain do not add up to a disease. No biological tests exist to diagnose fibromyalgia, and the condition cannot be linked to any environmental or biological causes.
The diagnosis of fibromyalgia itself worsens the condition by encouraging people to think of themselves as sick and catalog their pain, said Dr. Nortin Hadler, a rheumatologist and professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina who has written extensively about fibromyalgia.
“These people live under a cloud,” he said. “And the more they seem to be around the medical establishment, the sicker they get.”
Dr. Frederick Wolfe, the director of the National Databank for Rheumatic Diseases and the lead author of the 1990 paper that first defined the diagnostic guidelines for fibromyalgia, says he has become cynical and discouraged about the diagnosis. He now considers the condition a physical response to stress, depression, and economic and social anxiety.
“Some of us in those days thought that we had actually identified a disease, which this clearly is not,” Dr. Wolfe said. “To make people ill, to give them an illness, was the wrong thing.”
In general, fibromyalgia patients complain not just of chronic pain but of many other symptoms, Dr. Wolfe said. A survey of 2,500 fibromyalgia patients published in 2007 by the National Fibromyalgia Association indicated that 63 percent reported suffering from back pain, 40 percent from chronic fatigue syndrome, and 30 percent from ringing in the ears, among other conditions. Many also reported that fibromyalgia interfered with their daily lives, with activities like walking or climbing stairs.
Most people “manage to get through life with some vicissitudes, but we adapt,” said Dr. George Ehrlich, a rheumatologist and an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “People with fibromyalgia do not adapt.”
Both sides agree that people who are identified as having fibromyalgia do not get much relief from traditional pain medicines, whether anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen — sold as Advil, among other brands — or prescription opiates like Vicodin. So drug companies have sought other ways to reduce pain.
Pfizer has started a television advertising campaign for the drug Lyrica, the first approved to treat fibromyalgia.
Times Health Guide: Fibromyalgia

Pfizer’s Lyrica, known generically as pregabalin, binds to receptors in the brain and spinal cord and seems to reduce activity in the central nervous system.
Exactly why and how Lyrica reduces pain is unclear. In clinical trials, patients taking the drug reported that their pain — whether from fibromyalgia, shingles or diabetic nerve damage — fell on average about 2 points on a 10-point scale, compared with 1 point for patients taking a placebo. About 30 percent of patients said their pain fell by at least half, compared with 15 percent taking placebos.
The F.D.A. reviewers who initially examined Pfizer’s application for Lyrica in 2004 for diabetic nerve pain found those results unimpressive, especially in comparison to Lyrica’s side effects. The reviewers recommended against approving the drug, citing its side effects.
In many patients, Lyrica causes weight gain and edema, or swelling, as well as dizziness and sleepiness. In 12-week trials, 9 percent of patients saw their weight rise more than 7 percent, and the weight gain appeared to continue over time. The potential for weight gain is a special concern because many fibromyalgia patients are already overweight: the average fibromyalgia patient in the 2007 survey reported weighing 180 pounds and standing 5 feet 4 inches.
But senior F.D.A. officials overruled the initial reviewers, noting that severe pain can be incapacitating. “While pregabalin does present a number of concerns related to its potential for toxicity, the overall risk-to-benefit ratio supports the approval of this product,” Dr. Bob Rappaport, the director of the F.D.A. division reviewing the drug, wrote in June 2004.
Pfizer began selling Lyrica in the United States in 2005. The next year the company asked for F.D.A. approval to market the drug as a fibromyalgia treatment. The F.D.A. granted that request in June 2007.
Pfizer has steadily ramped up consumer advertising of Lyrica. During the first nine months of 2007, it spent $46 million on ads, compared with $33 million in 2006, according to TNS Media Intelligence.
Dr. Steve Romano, a psychiatrist and a Pfizer vice president who oversees Lyrica, says the company expects that Lyrica will be prescribed for fibromyalgia both by specialists like neurologists and by primary care doctors. As doctors see that the drug helps control pain, they will be more willing to use it, he said.

“When you help physicians to recognize the condition and you give them treatments that are well tolerated, you overcome their reluctance,” he said.
Both the Lilly and Forest drugs being proposed for fibromyalgia were originally developed as antidepressants, and both work by increasing levels of serotonin and norepinephrine, brain transmitters that affect mood. The Lilly drug, Cymbalta, is already available in the United States, while the Forest drug, milnacipran, is sold in many countries, though not the United States.
Dr. Amy Chappell, a medical fellow at Lilly, said that even though Cymbalta is an antidepressant, its effects on fibromyalgia pain are independent of its antidepressant effects. In clinical trials, she said, even fibromyalgia patients who are not depressed report relief from their pain on Cymbalta.
The overall efficacy of Cymbalta and milnacipran is similar to that of Lyrica. Analysts and the companies expect that the drugs will probably be used together.
“There’s definitely room for several drugs,” Dr. Chappell said.
But physicians who are opposed to the fibromyalgia diagnosis say the new drugs will probably do little for patients. Over time, fibromyalgia patients tend to cycle among many different painkillers, sleep medicines and antidepressants, using each for a while until its benefit fades, Dr. Wolfe said.
“The fundamental problem is that the improvement that you see, which is not really great in clinical trials, is not maintained,” Dr. Wolfe said.
Still, Dr. Wolfe expects the drugs will be widely used. The companies, he said, are “going to make a fortune.”