An Epidemic of Misdiagnoses by Sally M. Pacholok, R.N., B.S.N. and Jeffrey J. Stuart, D.O.

B₁₂ deficiency is too important to miss

Do you suffer from mood disorders; pain, numbness or tingling in your extremities; loss of balance; incontinence; tremors; vascular problems; infertility; fatigue; or intestinal problems? Do you have a child who is developmentally delayed or has been diagnosed with autism? Have you been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, other neurological disorders or autoimmune diseases? For some of you, your symptoms may stem from vitamin B12 deficiency.

Vitamin B12 is one of 13 (known) vitamins and is unique in that it is the only vitamin with a trace element–cobalt. It is produced in the gut of animals, and we must eat animal products to obtain this necessary nutrient. But for many, consumption does not guarantee assimilation.

In Could It Be B12? authors Pacholok and Stuart successfully make the case that an epidemic of B12 deficiency exists and that current guidelines for testing B12 deficiency are inadequate resulting in false diagnoses, permanent neurological damage, and even death.

In this book you’ll learn:

• What vitamin B12 is and why it’s important
• Those most at risk for B12 deficiency
• Symptoms of B12 deficiency
• Tests used for determining B12 status along with their shortcomings and strengths
• Disease states and drugs or supplements that can alter these tests and give false readings
• Recommended reference range for serum B12
• How low B12 can cause symptoms many confuse with aging
• How B12 deficiency that can lead to false diagnoses of diseases such as multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and autism
• Medicine’s failure to recognize and treat symptoms of B12 deficiency
• How nitrous oxide can inactivate B12 stores
• B12′s role in infertility, heart disease, mood disorders, and developmental delays
• The best way to increase B12 stores in the body
• The pros and cons of different supplements and injectable forms of B12

The permanent neurological damage that can result from delayed diagnosis of B12 deficiency makes this an issue of prime importance in the medical field. Every doctor should read this book to provide the best care for their patients. Not only will their patients recover using simple, inexpensive treatments, but billions of dollars can be saved in health care costs.

Those wishing to explore their B12 status will have all the information they need to ensure the proper tests are administered, to advocate for proper diagnosis and treatment, and to gauge their progress. All people interested in health should read this book. A first-rate publication that I highly recommend.

Disclosure: I received a review copy of this book from the publisher.

Buy Could It Be B₁₂? from Amazon.

Power of Vitamin D by Sarfraz Zaidi, MD

Short and sweet

Vitamin D is actually a hormone produced in the skin by exposure to the sun and found in very limited quantities in food. The current RDA for vitamin D is woefully inadequate, and the medical profession seldom tests serum vitamin D levels when treating patients.

In Power of Vitamin D, Dr. Sarfraz Zaidi has provided readers all they need to know to find out their serum vitamin D level and to supplement safely and effectively. By referencing numerous studies, Zaidi demonstrates how low vitamin D status has been shown to be a contributing factor in diseases such as cancer, osteoporosis, diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, kidney disease, infectious diseases, chronic pain, low energy and depression.

Introductory chapters describe what vitamin D is, why it is important for optimum health, misconceptions, how it is produced by the body, and natural sources of vitamin D. The bulk of the book is comprised of chapters describing how inadequate vitamin D levels contribute to the diseases listed above.

Power of Vitamin D was written for the lay audience, so individuals with no scientific background will welcome its straightforward simplicity. Those looking for detailed explanations of the biomechanics of vitamin D’s effects will be disappointed. Some chapters are very short (one is 1 page) and there is some overlap and repetition. Zaidi also makes no mention–pro or con–of the nutritional co-factors that some recommend when supplementing with vitamin D, such as vitamin A, magnesium, and vitamin K2.

Another issue I have with the book is that Zaidi provides numerous, impressive case studies of patient recoveries, which he attributes to vitamin D supplementation. They are quite remarkable until you read that Zaidi also counsels his patients to adopt a low-carb diet and “eliminate all cereals, oatmeal, bread of any color or type, rice of any color or type, corn, potatoes, sweet potatoes, sugar, milk, commercial fruit juices, soy, corn syrup, fructose syrup, ice cream and other desserts.”

The concluding chapters describe which blood test is appropriate for determining serum vitamin D, how to properly interpret the tests (knowing the difference between ng/ml and nmol/L), and supplemental doses for raising and maintaining vitamin D levels.

In 2007 I was very sick, obese, had little energy, and was going through a horrific menopause. Walking up a flight of stairs left me weak and breathless, and I was falling into walls. I am eternally grateful to a gynecologist who took it upon herself to test my vitamin D level, which was 13.1 ng/mL. Daily sunbathing and supplementation helped restore my health and return my zest for life.

If you’ve never had your vitamin D status tested and want a simple book explaining its importance, I recommend Power of Vitamin D. It will provide you with the information you need to get tested properly and to add vitamin D supplements to improve your health. I consider vitamin D to be one of the easiest and most important nutrients that offers the greatest health benefits.

Disclosure: I received a review copy of this book from the publisher.

Buy Power of Vitamin D from Amazon.

In this interview, Dr. Keith Scott-Mumby explores the fascinating field of virtual medicine and how it uses the electromagnetic principles of resonance and inversion to diagnose and cancel out disruptive or deranged information fields. Keith became interested in virtual medicine when a friend of his, Jacques Benveniste, told him that he had sent an electromagnetic signal of curare over the Internet that killed five white mice on the other end.

Since everything is created and formed by information fields, these fields can affect one another. For example, the information field and radiation put out by bacteria can interfere with our own energy signals resulting in disease. Specialized equipment has been used diagnostically for decades to “listen” for transmissions from pathogens and cancel them out using electromagnetic inversion. Cancer fields can be discovered years before cancer is detected using conventional diagnostics. A popular application of virtual medicine is elimination of food allergies.

We still don’t know what energy is. That’s another big hole in science. We have no concept whatsoever of what energy might be. Nobody’s ever seen it, touched it, or held it….We’re just inferring it’s there because we can see the changes when it’s been around. — Dr. Keith Scott-Mumby

Keith discusses the scientific basis of virtual medicine, how it is used to reverse disease, and how mainstream medicine is beginning to adopt some of these principles. He also shares a fascinating hypothesis on cellular communication that contradicts the standard lock-and-key mechanism.

Virtual medicine is an emerging paradigm that holds great promise for the healing arts and one that should be approached with an open mind and great curiosity.

Total time: 48 minutes.

Interview

Click to listen to interview or right-click to download MP3 file

Bio

Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby MD, MB ChB, PhD, was qualified in medicine MB ChB (same as MD) in Manchester, UK in 1970. He made medico-legal history in 1986, when a UK Crown Court accepted his evidence that food allergy was capable of making a youth murderously violent. By 1990 the press were calling him “Britain’s Number One Allergy Detective.” He writes and lecture internationally on the themes of energetic medicine and the new anti-ageing science. He has written several books including Virtual Medicine, which brings science and validation to this emerging field and the vast technology it has spawned.

Books by Dr. Keith Scott-Mumby

Links in Interview

Lyle Watson’s book Life Tide
Lyle Watson’s book The Nature of Things: The Secret Life of Inanimate Objects
Cleve Baxter’s book Primary Perception: Biocommunication with Plants, Living Foods, and Human Cells

If you’ve been diagnosed with diabetes or pre-diabetes, your doctor will probably advise you according to the recommendations promoted by the American Diabetes Association. You’ll be told there is no cure, that you should exercise, eat more carbohydrates and less fat, monitor your blood sugar, and control your blood sugar with insulin.

Dr. Scott Olson, a naturopathic physician, describes that advice as, “a recipe for more diabetes.” In this interview, Scott discusses:

• The role of sugar in causing diabetes
• How sugar is digested, metabolized by the liver, and stored as fat
• How chronic sugar consumption causes insulin resistance and diabetes
• A healthy diet to reverse diabetes
• The glycemic index
• Sugar addiction

Total time: 36 minutes.

Interview

Click to listen to interview or right-click to download MP3 file

Bio

Dr. Scott Olson is a Naturopathic doctor, expert in alternative medicine, author, and medical researcher. Dr. Scott has spent his whole life researching optimal diets for humans. Spurred on by his patients’ struggles with sugar addiction, he was determined to discover just how addictive and harmful sugar can be and ways to overcome that addiction. You can reach Scott at Olson ND.

Books by Scott Olson

For years, Paul Jaminet suffered symptoms similar to multiple sclerosis with no help from the medical profession. His wife, Shou-Ching, was also afflicted with numerous illnesses. They decided to invest their time in researching health and nutrition so that they could bring their bodies back to health. The result of their research is published in their book, Perfect Health Diet.

I learned a lot about chronic infections and how they influence health. I believe that chronic infections are a primary cause of almost all the diseases of aging. And also the importance of diet and nutrition and how powerful they are. They really work much better than any medicine. Our body is meant to be healthy and if you give it the right materials it will be pretty effective at making it healthy. Medicines aren’t designed to optimize the body. It’s already optimized if you give it the right food. — Paul Jaminet

In today’s interview, Paul shares what he feels is the preferred macronutrient composition of the human diet and why eating fat is so important. We discuss optimal percentages of protein, carbohydrate and fat based on three criteria:

1. What other animals subsist on (it’s not what they eat but what their bodies do with what they eat)
2. The composition of human breast milk
3. The protein, fat and carbohydrate composition of the human body

Paul also discusses toxicity of plants, plants to avoid entirely, safe starches, what can happen on a diet too low in fat, and his new book in the works.

Total time: 40 minutes.

Interview

Click to listen to interview or right-click to download MP3 file

Bio

Paul Jaminet, Ph.D. Paul was an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, became a software entrepreneur during the Internet boom, and now provides strategic advice to entrepreneurial companies in the software, media, and health industries. Paul’s experience overcoming a chronic illness led he and his wife Shou-Ching, a vascular biologist and cancer researcher on the Harvard Medical School faculty, to investigate the
optimal diet and how diet can be used as a therapy for chronic disease.
Together, Paul and Shou-Ching wrote their book, Perfect Health Diet: Four
Steps to Renewed Health, Youthful Vitality, and Long Life, and blog Perfect Health Diet. In the year since its publication, Perfect Health Diet has helped hundreds of readers cure chronic diseases.

In this interview, Paul Thacker, investigator for Project on Government Oversight (POGO), discusses conflict of interest between physicians, academia and the pharmaceutical industry.

The pharmaceutical industry puts billions of dollars every year into ensuring that their products are used, all the way from ensuring that if someone has a problem, that they’re treated with their product or to ensure even sometimes that products are used when they’re not really needed to be used. These are very sophisticated marketing campaigns where money is shoved through a variety of channels to create influence. — Mr. Paul Thacker

Topics discussed are:

• The different clinical trials and their functions
• How phase 4 trials are designed primarily as marketing events
• Why FDA approval of drugs does not guarantee their safety
• Pharmaceutical industry influence on integrity in medical reporting
• How doctors decide which medicines to prescribe
• Why doctors are the best sales representatives for pharmaceutical companies
• How doctors increase their publications and status through unethical ghost writing

Total time: 19 minutes.

Interview

Click to listen to interview or right-click to download MP3 file

Bio

Paul Thacker is an investigator for POGO (Project on Government Oversight) after working for three years as an investigator on the Senate Finance Committee for Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa. Mr. Thacker’s investigation into Avandia pressured the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to place patient safety before drug industry profits. In 2007, Mr. Thacker helped initiate an ongoing probe of the financial ties between industry and physicians who receive research grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The investigations were critical in helping to pass Senator Grassley’s Physicians Payments Sunshine Act, which recently became law. Prior to working on the Hill, Mr. Thacker spent several years as a journalist writing about science, medicine, and the environment. His work was profiled in the first season of the award-winning PBS series “Exposé: America’s Investigative Reports.”

The Hidden Truth Behind America’s Deadliest Habit and the Simple Way to Beat It

Journalistic journey in reversing pre-diabetes

Jeff O’Connell, a slender, athletic writer for a men’s health magazine, is diagnosed with pre-diabetes. Seeing his estranged father waste away from the disease, O’Connell sets out to find a cure for his condition and is confronted with a health care system incapable of advising him on preventing diabetes.

Part biography, part exposé, O’Connell chronicles his search for the cause and treatment of pre-diabetes by interviewing countless medical experts and government agencies. The advice consistently given is, “Eat more carbohydrates and less fat, and manage your blood sugar with drugs,” advice that is counterintuitive for a disease that is caused by blood sugar dysregulation and does nothing to reverse it. Unfortunately, the book repeats this theme chapter after chapter, the monotony broken only by personal accounts of the author’s own health issues.

O’Connell rightly contends that high-carbohydrate diets and lack of physical exercise are causative factors in the development of diabetes. And he hammers home the message that if you rely on government-sanctioned advice for managing diabetes, you can look forward to progressive deterioration, limb amputation, heart and kidney disease and death.

He also raises two very important issues: first, that he suffers from reactive hypoglycemia (the high ups and severe downs of blood sugar), which he feels is common among high-carb eaters and a precursor to diabetes; secondly, that the A1C upon which doctors rely so heavily is skewed by this reactive hypoglycemia. The A1C test basically measures the average of fluctuating blood sugar, so someone with reactive hypoglycemia may average out to have an acceptable A1C score showing they are not diabetic, which would be false.

Overall, I found the book very dry and annoyingly repetitive, and halfway through I just didn’t want to read any more. If you enjoy journalism, biographies and personal anecdotes, you may enjoy this book. But if you’re looking for something more on science and biology, I recommend Dr. Bernstein’s Diabetes Solution.

Disclosure: I received a review copy of this book from the publisher.

Buy Sugar Nation from Amazon.

A New Dimension in Energy Healing by Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby MB ChB, MD, PhD

A Much-Needed Paradigm Change in Medicine

Modern mechanistic science views disease as a biological malfunction that needs to be manipulated and controlled with pharmaceutical chemicals. Noncomplying tissues must be burned with radiation or excised through surgery. But what if this paradigm that dominates medical science is not only completely flawed but ultimately harmful to long-term health?

The new paradigm based on quantum physics views ill health as an electromagnetic disturbance in the energy field of the human body, a body created and maintained not by biology but by information fields. As Rupert Sheldrake presents it, life and the conscious process make matter, and not the other way around.

And since everything is created and formed by information fields, these fields can affect one another. For example, the information field and radiation put out by bacteria can interfere with our own energy signals resulting in disease. Specialized equipment has been used diagnostically for decades to “listen” for transmissions from pathogens and cancel them out using electromagnetic inversion. Cancer fields can be discovered years before cancer is detected using conventional diagnostics.

Disease can now be redefined as a disruption, cessation or distortion arising in the information and energy fields. The best way to approach disease then, surely, is by correcting these disturbances, which will then eliminate the disharmony and disease process — in other words, bring about healing. — Prof. Scott-Mumby

Virtual Medicine explains the history and science of energy medicine, the people behind these discoveries, the electromagnetic machines past and present used in diagnosis and treatment, how various energy therapies work, the potential ill effects of radiations in our environment and more.

Virtual Medicine is a book every health enthusiast should own and is essential reading for those skeptics who scoff at therapies like homeopathy, acupuncture, hands-on healing or even the power of the mind to affect the body. This book truly offers a completely different and exciting view for the future of medicine.

Disclosure: I received a review copy of this book from the publisher.

Buy Virtual Medicine from Amazon.

If you’re fat, anorexic, or diabetic, if you have low energy, if you have bone loss, if you’re a woman with amenorrhea or problems conceiving, you are probably leptin resistant.

Leptin is the master hormone that controls energy within the body. It is produced by our fat cells and taken up in the hypothalamus. Leptin lets your hypothalamus know how much energy you’ve consumed, and the hypothalamus then controls several other hormones based on leptin’s message. Proper leptin function tells our brain the energy status of our body in real time.

If leptin is off, every single hormonal response of the brain is off… When you’re leptin resistant, it’s like throwing mud on your windshield and driving on the Long Island Expressway. The brain has no way of knowing precisely what is going on in those 20 trillion cells. — Dr. Jack Kruse

Following a torn knee meniscus, Dr. Jack Kruse began studying leptin, spending 18 months and reading 5 to 6,000 articles. Implementing a plan he developed to work with his body’s circadian rhythms, he lost 77 pounds within the first 7 months and 133 pounds after 11 months. According to Jack, obesity is not a macronutrient story but a result of leptin resistance. In this interview he reveals:

• How leptin plays a critical role in disease, health and wellness
• Why obesity is an inflammatory brain condition
• Why calories don’t matter when you’re leptin sensitive
• How to eat in harmony with circadian rhythms
• Factors that prevent uptake of leptin in the brain
• Which fats contribute to leptin resistance
• How low magnesium affects metabolic derangement
• The best time of day to exercise
• Why Michael Phelps can eat 18,000 calories per day and not gain weight
• The importance of properly functioning uncoupling proteins
• How low thyroid T3 prevents uncoupling proteins from working
• How leptin resistance leads to infertility and osteoporosis
• Why meal timing and composition are important in healing leptin resistance
• Why you shouldn’t snack after dinner
• How to become leptin sensitive, lose weight and improve your health

Total time: 105 minutes.

Interview

Click to listen to part 1 of this interview or right-click to download MP3 file

Click to listen to part 2 of this interview or right-click to download MP3 file

Bio

Dr. Jack Kruse is a neurosurgeon who understands that in order to live pain free, one must take his or her health seriously at every level. His extensive medical training combined with his passion for wellness and nutrition has led to Dr. Kruse’s position as CEO of Optimized Life, a health and wellness company to help people avoid the common healthcare burdens that come with age. Dr. Kruse is also a member of the Age Management Medicine Group (AMMG).

Links in Interview

Jack’s Leptin Prescription
Hormones 101: Clinical Thoughts Revealed
The Leptin RX FAQ
Ramachandran TED talk on phantom pain
Mark’s Daily Apple Leptin Reset Experiment Forum Discussion
Robb Wolf’s The Paleo Solution Book
Mark Sisson’s The Primal Blueprint Book
Art De Vany’s The New Evolution Diet Book
Ron Rosedale’s The Rosedale Diet Book
Ancestral Health Symposium

Sugar Addiction and Your Health

Simplified, step-by-step explanation of the role sugar plays in disease

Sugar is ubiquitous in today’s diet whereas centuries past it was considered a rare treat for the wealthy. Our grandparents ate very little sugar, but today our bodies are bombarded by sugar and foods that act like sugar.

The average American consumes one half pound of sugar per day. The National Academy of Sciences Food and Nutrition boards suggest that no more than 25 percent(!) of total calories should come from added sugars. This sounds reasonable until you realize that nowhere in nature would mankind be able to find and consume this amount of sugar. Evolution did not equip our bodies to handle so much, and we pay the price for this excess in ill health.

Have you ever wondered why so many foods contain sugar? Addiction is a powerful way to sell a product. Cigarette manufacturers have proven this is a strategy that works. But while cigarette companies have been held responsible for adding addictive substances to their cigarettes to ensure that you are a customer for life, food companies have been doing the same thing for decades and getting away with it. — Dr. Scott Olson

Dr. Olson provides the reader with a step-by-step explanation of sugar’s history, how it is metabolized, its addictive properties, how it harms tissues and organs causing obesity, diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, and kidney disease and how to cut sugar from your diet.

Sugarettes avoids complex biology and presents the information so that even young teenagers can understand it. This book is perfect for those beginning their journey into nutrition and is especially important for those diagnosed with pre-diabetes or diabetes. When it comes to your diet, don’t make the mistake of listening to the USDA or the American Diabetic Association. Instead, read Sugarettes.

Disclosure: I received a review copy of this book from the publisher.

Buy Sugarettes from Amazon.