Sulfite Sensitivity? Love wine but cannot drink it? Perhaps you can again...

Can you drink beer, vodka and other alcohol and not get a nasty headache?

But if you drink red wine, you best have some motrin or wet cold socks on your feet the next day to pull you through? You're not alone.

Red wine headaches are no fun. The cause is likely due to the sulfites put in them. A professor of mine practiced in the Napa Valley so she saw patients present with red wine headaches all...the...time.

What did she do for them?

She knew she couldn't tell wine makers and wine lovers to stop drinking wine. So she dug deep and looked for the cause of red wine headaches.

She found one.

Molybdenum deficiency.

She said it worked all the time. Instead of going to the supplement shelves and buying a multi with molybdenum in there, she recommend getting straight up molybdenum as the amount in a multi is not enough to replenish a deficiency.

Molybdenum is not the most absorbable mineral on the planet - far from actually. With the flagrant digestive weakness people now face due to antacids, stress and crappy absorption period, she recommended a liquid form of molybdenum.

A few drops a day for a couple months should allow people to once again drink their loved red wine and not get a nasty headache. She recommended about 150 mcg a day for a month - ballpark. Careful though as if you take too much, an excess of any nutrient can cause havoc. You may want to ask your doctor to evaluate your molybdenum level - which is a simple draw obtaining your plasma and red blood cells.

For additional information on molybdenum, read Gas After Sulfur Containing Foods?

Caution: If you are highly sensitive to sulfites, avoid them always. You may be deficient in molybdenum but you also may have some other hyperactive immune issue going on - perhaps low in selenium also. Talk with your doctor.

If you have gout, do not take molybdenum.

Rowing Sport Injuries: Common Ones

As a former rower for the University of Washington Huskies, I witnessed numerous teammates obtain injuries - including myself.

If only I had known about yoga prior to beginning rowing, I would have been much better off. I would have done the Sun Salutation before and after practice along with numerous other poses and stretches.

I found this great article about Common Rowing Injuries.

Stretch Stretch Stretch.

Also strengthen the heck out of your abdominal muscles. If they are weak, then your lower back falls to poor posture while rowing. Once our coach made us do 700 sit ups of different types, back injuries fell dramatically. We also stopped using hatchet blades during practice. Those things are nasty but sure make the boat go fast.

Be safe. Love the sport - but be safe.

And...kick ass.

Cause of Global Warming

Dr Guiltanin, our gynecology professor, was educating my class about menopause.

She stated that around 2015, 50% of all women will be in menopause.

That then leaves the current 50% of women in peri-menopause.

That means there are a ton of women dealing with hot flashes.

There is your organic cause of global warming.

Peri-Menopausal women.

Patch Adams: Quote

You can treat a disease.
You may win or lose.

Or you can treat a person.
And you'll always win.

Scholarship Keynote Address: Naturopathic Doc Speaks to Us

Scholarships are great to receive. This year I was fortunate to be a recipient of the Bastyr Student Scholarship Award.

Even more fortunate, was to hear Dr Littleton's speech to the award recipients. It was outstanding. I have it here for you to enjoy as well.

Be inspired.

Kent Littleton, MS, ND, is a Bastyr University alumnus and an associate professor in the basic sciences department, where he teaches biochemistry. Due to his creativity and generosity in raising funds to support scholarships at Bastyr, Dr. Littleton was invited to be the keynote speaker at this fall's Scholarship Dinner, an annual event that celebrates both scholarship donors and the student scholars who proved themselves worthy of support. Kent's very funny and insightful speech brought everyone to their feet.

Keynote Address by Dr. Kent Littleton
Bastyr University Scholarship Dinner
October 25, 2006

"When I'm meeting a new class at the beginning of an academic year, I always feel some butterflies in my stomach. I expect them, and they usually go away once I actually begin to speak to the class. This moment is a lot like that — I hope.

What usually works at the outset of a new year of biochemistry is for me to get the class thinking about where the energy comes from for the jobs our bodies must do to keep on keeping on. This leads to a discussion about dietary fuels — how there’s energy in the fuel molecules, and how this energy can transform into other forms of energy — such as the energy for lifting our forks, the energy for then absorbing the nutrients from this delicious meal into our bodies, and the energy then for using those nutrients to build the molecules of our bodies. I sometimes tell the class that if I trace this energy back as far as I know how, it came from the sun. It still boggles my mind that this energy can manifest itself so many different ways.

Well, I think a gift is a lot like energy. A gift can manifest itself so many different ways. The gift that led to my being invited to speak tonight may presently be manifesting itself as money for student scholarships. But my original gift wasn’t money — nor will it remain in that form.

Let me back up a little. Sometime last spring, I was trying to think of a way to give more to the Bastyr community. I decided that I didn’t want to just write a check. Instead, I wanted to give using my natural born talents — I thought there would be more joy in the giving that way. Well, things really fell right into place after that decision. I think that I have a talent for teaching — and so I reasoned that it would be ideal if I could give by teaching somehow. Then it came to me — I could waive the fee that I had charged in previous years for teaching a review of biochemistry, and suggest that the students make a donation to the scholarship fund instead. In this way, over $2100 was raised for student scholarships last July.

But there would be a different keynote speaker tonight if the honor had required me to take $2000 out of my pocket. I honestly couldn’t have done that. But, you see, all I had to do was teach. I talked about a subject I love for about 14 hours over a weekend — without umms — as best I could in order to get through everything. In short, it was exhilarating — it was a kick — it was joyous giving!!

Next I'd like to tell you why I chose student scholarships, and so I'll back up to when I was a needy graduate student. While it is true that I was a recipient of a Bastyr University scholarship when I attended here in the 1990s, I want to back up to even leaner years — the late 1970s.

I had left home in Virginia to come to graduate school in chemistry at the University of Washington. I took a studio apartment on Eastlake Avenue and was, for the first time, truly on my own. I had never really had to manage my own budget before. I didn't really know how much to allot for food etc. and, in the beginning, would fairly regularly come up a little short at the end of a month. My friend George sometimes had an extra $10 to lend me at no interest until we got paid at the end of the month. George was also a new graduate student, and we had much in common. For example we enjoyed walking from my apartment to a tavern near it called the Eastlake Zoo, where a game of pool cost a quarter, the beer was reasonably cheap, and you could chow down on free popcorn.

One memory from those days remains with me very strongly because it was, for me, sinking to some all time lows. I had run out of money at the end of the month, again — and I was down to the last quarter of the $10 that George had lent me. Payday was going to be very soon, and I was going to spend the quarter. My dilemma was, I very much wanted to walk to the Eastlake Zoo and play a game of pool with the quarter, but I had also gotten down to my last squares of toilet paper — which was available for, you guessed it, 25 cents a roll.

Now, I had made myself a solemn vow, when I became responsible for myself, that I would NEVER run out of toilet paper. So you see my dilemma, don't you? Well, I remember it seemed like a dilemma at the time, and it was clear to me what I had to do — I walked to the Eastlake Zoo, I played the game of pool, and I stole a roll of toilet paper from their bathroom.

Now, to tonight's scholarship recipients, I know that you would never stoop so low. But I think back on those desperate times, and they are the reason that student scholarships are my favorite charity around here.

One thing nice about scholarships — you don't have to pay them back. Raise your hand if you like that idea! [enthusiastic response from audience] But you will pay it forward, automatically, just by being the types of professionals that I see you becoming. And you will pay it forward with interest — automatically compounded every time you help someone help themselves and you model for these people the ethic of helping others.

Are any of you planning on becoming teachers? You’ll pay it forward — big time! It will be automatic. You don't have to do anything differently than you already would have. Your destiny is to be a giver. And when you begin to realize your destiny as a giver, I hope that you will remember the students in this community. As you yourselves demonstrate, they have so much potential, but are in a very difficult period of training.

I wish you clarity regarding your natural born talents and how best to use them so that your giving might be as joyful as mine has been.

Thank you and God bless."

Alumnus Kent Littleton earned his ND degree from Bastyr in 2003, but that wasn't the beginning of his connection with the University. Kent started teaching here in 1991 continuing until 1997, when he left the faculty to become an ND student. He came back in 2003 as an associate professor in the basic sciences department of the school of natural health sciences, where he teaches biochemistry. In addition to his ND degree, Kent holds an MS in organic chemistry from the University of Washington.

Imagery and Cancer Treatments: Valuable, Powerful & Beautiful

If we can cause disease manifesting in our bodies, then why cannot we manifest health????

Jeanne Achterberg, Ph.D. came to my medical school last Friday - a little woman with graying hairs and slightly funky clothing. Her appearance was not strikingly powerful.

Yet when she stepped up to the podium and began speaking, all eyes were focused on her. An eloquent speaker with much to say.

She was asked, why do research on imagery as imagery has been used successfully for centuries, she stated: I am a scientist in a scientifically driven society. Yes imagery works and we know it works. Science simply backfills what we already know. If we want to change how medicine operates, we must prove that these other options are effective.

She is with all the big wigs of medicine and those who currently shape it: 'Andy' Weil as she calls him, federal government health committees and world famous healers. Cool mixture.

She stated that 60% of cancer patients are able to look back 16 months and locate a significant life stressor that may have triggered their cancer.

She also stated that within 5 years of retirement, most men die as life loses focus, direction and meaning. Women get ill when the kids move out of the house for good. I cannot understand that one as my mother was ecstatic!

So if one can pinpoint a significant stressor in their life which leads to a worsening of their health, then there must be a way in order to reverse that. If we can cause disease manifesting in our bodies, then why cannot we manifest health????

That is a huge statement and one I find extremely powerful.

We see a policeman in our rearview mirrors and get a sick feeling in our gut. We get stressed at work leading to a migraine headache. Someone yells at us and we lose our appetite.

So why cannot we embrace someone and reduce blood pressure? Why cannot we meditate and lose the migraine headache? Why cannot we imagine our immune systems embracing cancer and remove it?

Well - we can. Our ability to perceive allows us to obtain health...and obtain illness.

Imagine this:

Your significant other dies. You retire one year later. Your kids are moved out. Two years down the road, you are diagnosed with cancer of your bone marrow. Kids visit you every now and then and bring you flowers. You sit in a nursing home eating, drinking and conversing with folks believing that their last moments are near.

The cancer moves fast and involves many organs. You have no desires. You have no desire to live. Cancer moves on and the treatments only make you feel more ill.

Along comes Jeanne Achterberg, Ph.D. She spends an afternoon with you. This is what she may do:

What Id like you to do is dive inside you bone marrow and find the cancer. What does it look like? How did it get there? Go inside yourself and see. Close your eyes and go.

You're afraid but you do it. Moments later you open your eyes widely and say you don't want to do that again.

What did you see?

I saw angry women.

What were they doing?

They were yelling at me.

So this gentlemen wanted to go to counseling and find out more. The counselor is brilliant and asks:

What do you think will quiet the angry yelling women inside your bone marrow?

A man.

What type of man?

Well, there is this brute guy who really knows how to handle angry women. He is a fine orator and women respect him.

Ok. So what does this brute do? How will he go inside your bone marrow and talk with the angry women?

He won't talk with them. He will embrace them until they stop yelling.

That sounds great. Now go inside your bone marrow and have Brute embrace the angry women.

Now isn't that poweful????

Another powerful imagery tool is to draw.

Draw the cancer, draw the body's immune system fighting the cancer, draw the treatment fighting the cancer.

Those three images together speak volumes of how motivated the patient is to live. This simple tool shows with 100% accuracy patients who will die within 2 months. This has been researched.

For example, a patient drew a mountain range for the cancer. Then they drew fish for the immune system. Those two don't flow well together. The patient was told this and desired some assistance. It is then the counselor steps in and helps strengthen the patient.

Cool.

I need to learn these tools and apply them to my patients. Finding the cause of the cancer and treating the cause is the treatment. Pouring chemicals down a throat or in a vein will not treat the cause. Chemicals don't remove harmful emotions. We do.

Patient Visits Physician: Why?

Read this quote and found it pretty cool:

"The patient does not come to the doctor to be cured;
The patient comes to be known."

Dr Leanna Standish, PhD, ND, L.Ac
Bastyr University Research Director

Flu Shot: Hype, Bunk, Toxic, Worthless. I miss anything?

I found this article via my daily forum posts which I receive from Dr Garry Gordon, MD He has an excellent forum for health professionals. I found it highly relevant and a necessary post as I know many of you are wanting to get a flu shot.

Think about it. Do you really need it? Do you really want the toxic mercury laden flu vaccine which is basically worthless?

#1 NewsTarget.com printable article

Originally published October 27 2006
Flu shots are virtually worthless, says new British Medical Journal analysis

(NewsTarget) Flu vaccines are largely ineffective in the populations for which they are most highly recommended, according to a new study published in the Oct. 28 issue of the British Medical Journal.

Dr. Tom Jefferson, coordinator of the Cochrane Vaccines Field in Rome, Italy, conducted an extensive review of previous studies on the effectiveness of inactivated [dead virus] flu vaccines on hospital admissions, death rates and time off work.

"We've got an exaggerated expectation of what vaccines can actually do," Jefferson said. "I'm hoping American and European taxpayers will be alerted and start asking questions."

Most developed and developing countries have influenza vaccination programs that are believed to help reduce the number of flu deaths and hospitalizations. United States health authorities currently recommend flu vaccine shots for most Americans -- children 6 to 23 months; kids 23 months to 5 years old; those 50 and older; people with chronic health conditions such as diabetes, asthma, HIV or heart disease; health-care professionals and caregivers; and anyone with household contact of high-risk individuals, such as stay-home mothers with young children.

Jefferson notes that recommendations for flu vaccines have significantly increased in recent years -- a move he says may not be justified.

"I looked at the evidence described by systematic reviews and confronted it with policy and I found that there is a massive gap," he said. "Almost none of the benefits that these policy documents list are actually given by inactivated vaccines or, if they are, they are given in slighter measure."

Consumer health advocate Mike Adams, author of "Conquering the Common Cold," called flu vaccine shots "one of the greatest medical cons perpetrated on the populations of the world," and questioned new U.S. policies pushing the vaccines on young children and expectant mothers.

"Flu shots only prevent colds in about 1 percent of people who get them, making them 99 percent useless," Adams said. "They also inject unhealthy substances such as mercury preservatives directly into tissues, poisoning the patient with a chemical burden that accumulates with each flu shot."

Visit www.newstarget.com - an excellent resource.

A Toxic Dental Assistant: Mercury & Lead Accumulation

Met with a patient today and reviewed her Urinary Toxic Metals lab report. She has 7 metals showing on her report with mercury and lead into the very high exposure column.

Her occupation: Dental Assistant.

Her husband's occupation: Dentist

In her mouth: Mercury Amalgams (since removed and replaced with porcelin)



Connection?

You tell me.

Her husband doesn't think so. My goodness man - wake up.

She has been on a 6 month protocol removing lead, mercury and the other 5 metals. However, the natural protocol is not working that well. Either she is constantly re-exposing herself to these toxic metals or the natural protocol which she is following is not potent enough. She seems healthy enough to do a full heavy metal detox as her energy level is decent, albumin level is about 4.2, her thyroid level is stable, her cholesterol levels are good and she is sleeping well.

I recently read a report where a MD was chelating a patient's heavy metals with chlorella. After one month of chelating, the MD ran another urine toxic metals test - and to their surprise, the metals were even more elevated. Chelated another month with the chlorella and again - same thing - even more elevated. Typically, heavy metal chelation will show a reduction of the toxic metals after a couple months.

The MD analyzed the chlorella, removed the patient from the chlorella and then re-tested again in one month. The heavy metals went down. The chlorella was full of mercury and lead. Careful what supplements you prescribe, docs. Folks, be careful of what you ingest - there are a lot of crap products out there.

If you work in a profession that deals with heavy metals - realize your exposure is cummulative. Realize that in order to remove those toxic heavy metals it takes a nourished liver, sweatiing, preventing re-exposure and specific supplementation that chelates metals.

Heavy metal exposures in professions - name a few:

• dentists...
• painters
• builders
• landscapers
• gardeners
• some lab techs
• plumbers
• hardware manufacturers
• manufacturing facilities of many kinds
• et al

Detoxing and In Pain? A connection...

A patient presenting with intense constant full body pain came in last week to the clinic.

She was about 54 years old, a bit overweight, medium height and had an absolute flat dull depressed appearance - which one sees in someone in chronic pain. She explained that it takes her 20 minutes to get out of bed as she has to lift each limb carefully and slowly due to the pain. She wakes every 2 hours in pain and has to get up and move about otherwise she would not be able to get up at all later. She walked in pain as both her knee joints were in pain. She was constantly shifting in her chair during the patient interview trying to find a comfortable position.

I asked her when the pain began - she said it began about 2 years ago. Ok - what happened around two years ago? She thought about that for awhile and said she began a detox and yeast cleanse that was pretty strict. The 'doctor' who prescribed this for her was a naturopath in Colorado. Now - I am going to be a naturopathic physician myself but I will be licensed. I have a feeling that this 'naturopath' was an unlicensed online course graduating nd. Super dangerous.

Anyhow - this 'doc' never saw the patient - it was all done over the phone. Now that is bad medicine and I have a feeling it happens all the time. This 'doc' told her that she had to take this and that and avoid this and that. She racked up a huge supplement bill.

Well - it caused this patient to have a full body flare up. We checked autoimmune panels for lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, raynauds, and others. Looked for fibromyalgia tendor points, asked and examed for chronic underlying infections, took a UA, CBC, TSH and ESR. All fine - the ESR was a tad elevated at 28.

I looked at the supplements she was taking and pulled her off of all cleansing supplements, gave her a natural herbal pain relieving formula and instructed her to come in 2 times this week for a full immersion peat bath. We also referred her to a rheumatologist to examine her to see if we missed anything.

I saw her on Friday with a big smile on her face. She had just finished the second full immersion peat bath and was still sweating from it. She told me she has not been this pain-free for about 10 months. She could get out of bed with only a bit of stiffness and soreness, walk around pain free and sleep longer. She explained that she wanted to begin exercising again! The supervising physician cautioned her on this and tried calming her excitement as it may be only temporary. She said, "I don't care if it is temporary because I have not felt this well in a long long time."

I smiled and held out my hand asking for her to 'give me 5.' She let her hand smash against mine and I returned the favor.

She's on her way back to health. I don't think it is a temporary fix at all. I also think it is beneficial to support the patient in how they feel and not take the momentum away. Unfortunately, the supervising physician took the gas out a bit but luckily, the patient was so strong and excited that the information he passed on to her was in one ear and out the other.

Lesson is this:
If one detoxifies too quickly, the body cannot process the highly toxic metabolites. They circulate around the body instead of being excreted in the feces or passed through the urine or sweated out or breathed out. I have a feeling that this patient has been improperly detoxing for so long that the level of circulating metabolites is insane. With nowhere to go, the metabolites head for the muscles, joints and other soft tissue. This causes intense inflammation, stiffness and soreness.

With my recommendation of removing the cleansing supplements, the added addition of more toxic metabolites was stopped. With the recommendation of a full body peat bath, the muscles, adipose and other soft tissues were able to sweat out the toxic metabolites out through the body's largest detoxifying organ: the skin. The supplement to decrease pain was temporary and will be stopped soon.

She will continue the peat baths and we will continue to see if there is another underlying cause of her pain and stiffness. I believe there is not - I believe it is purely detoxifying too long and too fast with deposited metabolites all throughout her body. We remove all those metabolites with sauna and full body peat immersion baths, and she will be exercising pain free once again.

Don't take aspirin to relieve the pain all the time. Think. Why do I have the pain? Address it. Remove the cause.

Selenium and Thyroiditis

There is a huge link between low selenium and thyroid issues.

These thyroid issues can be:
Hypothyroid
Hashimoto's Thyroiditis

If someone is low in selenium, the thyroid hormone does not get activated well. There is Thyroid Stimulating Hormone which triggers the thyroid to release T4. The problem is T4 is not active. T4 gets converted to T3 to become active.

What makes T4 -> T3 ?

Yep - selenium.

Selenium is found in high amounts in brazil nuts. You get about 400 mcg of selenium in about 7 brazil nuts.

If you want to get selenium in a supplement, make sure you get seleniomethionine. It is the superior bio-available form. It isn't easy to find unfortunately. Amazing how many crappy supplements there are out there.

Selenium is also a huge component of your immune system. If low in selenium, your immune function is comprimised allowing it to act inappropriately. Autoimmune thyroiditis patients have been found to have very low selenium.

Ill post some research here soon supporting my statements...now gotta run to clinic.