Posts Tagged ‘pharmaceuticals’

Type 2 diabetes treatment failure is distressing to say the least. Doctors’ diabetic care seems to accelerate the growth of both the pharmaceutical industry and the medical supply business.

Doctor’s Advice

The doctor’s advice is oddly consistent with the American dietary approach. Eat everything in moderation. That advice hasn’t paid off.  Their solution to the problem is an insulin injection or a pill along with a jab of the finger a few times a day.

Their cash flow isn’t hurt, but the potential for a full recovery isn’t anywhere to be seen. What are the medical community’s benchmarks for successful disease management?  Well it seems the simple trick to success is not to challenge the patient to change their lifestyle, but to just comply with the drug schedule, and adjust medication with glucose monitoring.

The treatment isn’t about science; though that is what it is suppose to be about. The medical system is about care not cure. That is the real problem. Doctors support a system that is about volume, and what works best is maintenance.

Here is some advice from a pediatric endocrinologist and senior scientist in the UAB Comprehensive Diabetes Center. For Halloween he gave parents three options.

Counting Carbohydrates

By counting carbohydrates, kids can enjoy some of the treats that Halloween has to offer in moderation. This option allows the child to keep up with how many carbs they are eating: the example is one unit of insulin for every 15 or 20 grams of carbohydrates.

This is the doctor’s quote: “This is an easy option for kids on an insulin pump because they can just dial in an extra dose of insulin to compensate for what they are about to eat. But for kids that take shots, this could prove to be more difficult or inconvenient if they have to go to the school nurse for an extra dose,”

What is wrong with this solution is that everything can be solved with a shot of insulin. This message sets the stage for life, with using insulin as the fix for poor dietary choices. Sometimes you need the insulin, but to use it as a springboard to survival is absurd. The next problem is the quality of the treats and the ingredient list. These treats will deplete the body of its store of vitamins and minerals, which are needed and used by the pancreas, liver, and all systems that support the body’s ability to deal with sugar and toxins, such as artificial flavor and colors.

This is considered a proactive approach by both the parents and physician. The child needs to feel part of the crowd, and enjoy the American past time of eating poor quality fuel for the body.

Exchanging Candy

The second solution suggested is that the parents can trade the child a gift, money, or low carb snack for their candy. Parents can also provide a substitute snack for their child if the class is holding a Halloween party at school.

I know as a parent that this sounds good and it may work.  However, to offer cash or a gift makes the candy seem to have a high value. What the problem is this is considered a practical solution, since we live in the real world. This approach doesn’t remove sweet treats but perpetuates its value.

The low carb approach is good and even better if it’s structured to be the desired item by the child. The way to do that isn’t mystical; it’s eating healthy while pregnant, and starting the baby on a good diet. The chances of having diabetes would be lower with this approach.

Dessert

kids can savor their Halloween treats without an extra shot or dose of insulin by having them for dessert after dinner. The quote “By incorporating a sugary treat into meal time, when a child would normally get a dose of insulin, it eliminates the need for adding doses to their regimen.”

Another idea I am not fond of and the reason is there is an aticipation of a reward. It takes sweets and holds them in high esteem. Protecting health and remaining safe from disease is the main goal, not building deals around things that aren’t good for diabetes.

Removal of harmful substances is a necessary tool for the parents of diabetic children. Avoiding the American way of eating will enable diabetic children to achieve a long and healthy life.

Acid reflux sufferers are searching for relief. There are safe and effective solutions, but first you have to understand the problem.  This has become a chronic and persistent problem causing millions of Americans great discomfort.

The wide assortments of drugs, which line drug store shelves, are useless. They are usually offering no more than temporary relief. The costs of pharmaceutical solutions are enormous.

Acid Reflux

Reflux comes from an older Latin word refluxus, and that comes from the word refluere, which is to flow back or recede. It is thought that if you suffer from acid reflux the acids from your stomach flow back to your esophagus to cause pain and discomfort. This is commonly known as heartburn. This is the sensation you get when the acid goes into the esophagus from the stomach. Acid reflux is the action, while heartburn is the sensation. The pain is heartburn, while the movement of acid into the esophagus from the stomach is acid reflux.

Symptoms

The symptoms for acid reflux may vary slightly from person to person. However, there are some basics that make this easier to diagnose.  

Heartburn is a burning feeling in the lower chest nearer to the neck, and can include chest pain. These symptoms have been mistaken at times for cardiac problems.

The other known symptoms consists of dysphagia, difficulty swallowing with a sensation of food caught in the throat, dental erosion, asthma like symptoms, hoarseness and regurgitation bring food back into the mouth or a sour or bitter tasting acid backing up into your throat or mouth. The lesser known problems consist of bloating, burping, continuous hiccups, nausea, wheezing, chronic sore throat and a dry cough.

Causes

There are many named causes of acid reflux which include pregnancy especially the third trimester when the baby presses on the stomach. Antacids aren’t any good for this. Smaller meals help a majority of the moms-to-be. Hiatal hernias or hiatus hernia, is a condition where the upper portion of the stomach goes into the chest area through a small opening in the diaphragm.

One of the known risk is eating a large meal and lying down afterwards. Being overweight or obese, eating certain foods such as citrus, tomato, chocolate, mint, garlic, onions, and beverages  such as: alcoholic drinks, carbonated sodas, coffee or tea.  Smoking, aspirin, ibuprofen, muscle relaxes, and blood pressure medications can cause this problem. There are many foods or drinks that can cause heartburn. Each person may have their own list.

Pharmaceuticals

The solution isn’t going to be found with acid blocking medications like Pepsin, Prilosec, and Nexium. They may be a short term band-aid, but they aren’t for long term use. These are powerful drugs, which were originally developed for short term use. They were meant for peptic ulcers with a recommended six week regiment. Today, people just about live on these.

The danger of these drugs is the fact that you need stomach acid to digest food and absorb nutrients. Long term use leads to vitamin and mineral deficiencies. These drugs are robbing the body of magnesium, calcium and vitamin B12 while increasing the risk of osteoporosis, insomnia, depression, anemia, fatigue, nerve damage and dementia. Long team use also leads to the overgrowth of bacteria in the stomach and small intestines.

Real Cause

Any long term solution must address the cause. Acid reflux is typically caused by too little stomach acid. The esophagus is separated from the stomach by a ring of muscles known as the Lower Esophageal Sphincter (LES). The sphincter is what keeps the contents of the stomach and stomach acid from going back up to the esophagus. What determines if the LES stays closed to prevent acid reflux into the esophagus is adequate levels of stomach acid. With sufficient acid production in the stomach there is feedback to LES, This causes increased tone and prevents any food from rising into the esophagus. If stomach acid is low the tone of the LES is compromised and now has a loose hold on the content of the stomach.

Solution

Low stomach acid comes in a large part from our lifestyles. High stress, gulped down meals without a chance to properly digest and faux foods which are incredibly destructive.  The nervous system has two main states which you constantly oscillate between, a sympathetic nervous state responsible for the fight-or-flight mode of operation and the parasympathetic nervous system which is the rest and digest one. One of the underlying causes of acid reflux is eating when sympathetic dominant. This will cause a low production of stomach acid leading to a weakness in the LES response of regurgitation of the stomach contents into the esophagus.

The solution isn’t going to come out of a bottle, jar, or carton. In fact those solution are perhaps a major part of the problem. What is appropriate is a whole food diet, and proper stress control. Eating slowly and chewing well is a good start. Alkaline vegetables and fruit are recommended as they will help with an acidic conditions. Acid reflux is a modern affliction brought on by lifestyle.

Cancer proof yourself is way of saying you have a choice. There is great promise in a healthy lifestyle. If you take a step back in time you will be able to view a much healthier lifestyle.

We have conquered many acute illnesses, which people in the past had to deal with. The modern twist to that is we have produced many chronic illnesses from our analytical, clinical, microbiology, and pharmaceutical interventions.

The first thing that will come to mind for most people: there isn’t a guarantee you will not get a cancer diagnoses. If you are a betting person I would say the deck is stacked to your advantage if you increment a healthy lifestyle. In today’s world the challenges are great, but this is a way to throw yourself a lifeline. The seemingly formidable obstacles will crumble once you add healthy choices in an incremental way.

The focus of a healthy lifestyle isn’t to look at the perceivable problem, but keep your eye on the ball. That means moving out of a disease mentality to one of health and wellbeing. The modern pharmaceutical world has produced food, personal care items, fragrance, and drugs with long and ugly names, with ingredients that don’t seem to trip off the tongue. The food industry thought a cruel irony makes things that are considered edible, and imply safety. However, the truth is radically different.

There is false and misleading information on the ingredients is food, personal care items, and drugs. The world of personal care items sport ingredient labels with words like pharabens, phthalates, methyl, trimethylcyclododeca, ketone, undecylamidopropyltrimonium methodulfate, and of course plenty of other multitasking ingredients. We have endocrine disruptors, solvents, and other chemicals that are used in air fresheners, pesticides, cosmetics and fragrance.

The international fragrance association (IFRA) has made public a list of 3,163 fragrance ingredients for global use. They have provided the EPA with a list of over 600 materials used in air fresheners and more than 1,500 materials used in EPA- registered pesticide products.

Lets be perfectly clear they can proclaim how safety if the first issue of the day, but what you put on the skin is absorbed. What the nose smells may be enticing, but biologically speaking it permeates the body. It enters through the nose and makes it way to the lungs and the liver which now has to get rid of another toxic element.

The toxic opportunity is right in front of your nose, fragrance is everywhere from personal care items to scent masking products, which can  be found everywhere from restrooms, restaurants, to casinos.  you are in a fragrances environment. While improving your sensual experience, you are inhaling and being immersed in unimaginable toxins.

Toxic torts are lawsuits filed by people claiming chemical exposure in occupation or household environments claiming some type of illness from being exposed to these products. The only ones we know about are ones involving asbestos, silica  or benzene. That is because there hasn’t been enough information for the public to realize that the cancer, which the doctor’s say has no particular cause comes most times from diet and environmental exposure.

The newest development is that formaldehyde used in hair products, cosmetics , compressed board and cleaning agents has the potential to cause a rare nasal cancer to a more common form of leukemia. (acute myelogenous leukemia or AML). This as of now is one of the most difficult type of leukemia to treat.  The EPA determined formaldehyde is to be considered a cause of AML. The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancers also recognize the connection between formaldehyde and AMIL.

Formaldehyde is in preservatives found in shampoos, liquid body soaps, nail polishes, hair gels and other personal care products. The America Chemistry Council (ACC) considers formaldehyde to be essential to an estimated $145 billion of the U.S. gross national product, and dozens of industries besides the beauty industry.

To cancer proof yourself means to take prudent steps to protect yourself from all controversial ingredients. That may mean looking at all labels from edibles, personal care, pesticides, and cleaning products. The official line from the manufactures to the medical establishment is it is the amount and duration of exposure, and the individual’s susceptibility. The truth is it is the individuals resolve to stay on the path of a natural way of life.