Pharmaceuticals Anonymous

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Adelle Davis


We love Adelle Davis.
heart icon Pictures, Images and Photos


Daisie Adelle Davis (25 February 1904 - 31 May 1974), popularly known as Adelle Davis, was an American pioneer in the fledgling field of nutrition during the mid-20th century. She advocated whole unprocessed foods, criticized food additives, and claimed that dietary supplements and other nutrients play a dominant role maintaining health, preventing disease, and restoring health after the onset of disease:
"Research shows that diseases of almost every variety can be produced by an under-supply of various combinations of nutrients... [and] can be corrected when all nutrients are supplied, provided irreparable damage has not been done; and, still better, that these diseases can be prevented." [1]
Davis is best known as the author of a series of books published in the United States between 1947 and 1965. One of her books, Let's Have Healthy Children (Signet 1981, revised edition) states that Davis prepared individual diets for more than 20,000 people who came to her or were referred to her by physicians during her years as a consultant. She was also well known for her scathing criticism of the food industry in the United States. In the early 1970s, she addressed the ninth annual convention of the "International Association of Cancer Victims and Friends" at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. After citing U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics about tens of millions of people in the United States suffering from afflictions such as arthritis, allergies, heart disease, and cancer, she stated, "This is what's happening to us, to America, because there is a $125 billion food industry who cares nothing about health".

- From Wikipedia article and links about Adelle Davis

Visit the Adelle Davis Foundation - you will find a recipe on the ;landing page - here.

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Bees: Colony Collapse Disorder Cause and Cure Found


This is great news and we are delighted to pass it on to you.






"A new study published in the journal Environmental Microbiology Reports may clarify things, as a team of Spanish researchers report the cause of the colony collapse disorder, and also suggest a cure. The researchers isolated the parasitic fungi Nosema ceranae from a pair of Spanish apiaries, while finding none of the other proposed causes—Varroa destructor, IAPV, or pesticides. With the identification of the invading pathogen, the team treated other diseased colonies with fumagillin—an antibiotic—and observed a complete recovery of the colony.

Honeybees play a key role in horticulture as they are significant pollinators of fruit, crops, and wild flowers. They are indispensable to many sustainable agriculture farms, so keeping them healthy is of great concern. While they are important, other research has suggested using wild bees—those that are solitary cavity- or soil-nesting insects—as opposed to large colonies of honey bees, can result in successful pollination as well."

Get more of the buzz here.

A Prescription Drug for the Annoyingly Cheerful


A Prescription Drug for the
Annoyingly Cheerful
Dr. Carolyn Dean MD ND | April 17, 2009


Today, I have a news (video) clip about a new drug that helps people who have a "persistently positive outlook on life."

The following ONN news clip reports that the FDA approved the first ever depressant drug. (Note: NOT an anti-depressant.) It’s a proposed treatment for the "approximately 20 million Americans who are insufferably cheery."

The depressant treats a wide range of symptoms including: "Participating in Community Theatre" and "Organizing Neighborhood Potlucks."

Click the play button below to watch the 2-minute video clip and then make sure to read my commentary afterward.

Please note: The video contains profanities (one written, one verbal)…


Link

Friday, April 17, 2009

Psychology Today interviews Dr. David Healy

The interview is here.
A follow-up blog here got this response from us:
In the 1950's, an American TV show host shocked the nation and made everyone laugh by testing a product he advertised on his show. The host was, I think, Arthur Godfrey; the product was dog food.

We applaud the work of Dr. Healy and other physicians who ask hard questions, of Senator Grassley and the patient-consumer movement in exposing the ties between pharma and the mental health industry.

Exposing and cutting pharma perks might not be as effective as establishing - let's call it the Fido Rule: Anyone who writes assessments of drugs the pharmaceutical companies have on offer must *try* them.

Ready for your medicine, Dr. Ghaemi?

Little Puppy Pictures, Images and Photos

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Canadians spend $30 Billion a Year on Medications



That CAN'T be healthy.
Link
PDF
Two thoughts:
The father of medicine said "Let your food be your medicine"
and
Are we medicating for nutritional deficiencies? Do we take laxatives when extra fiber and Vitamin C would put us right?

Monday, April 13, 2009

Mania: A Short History of Bipolar Disease

Britney Spears' manager gave her medication
It seems there wasn't much bipolar disease before certain psychiatric drugs were put into use by physicians.
"Has the pharmaceutical industry become the Pied Piper of Hamelin–ridding us of lethal diseases only to turn around and “take” our children?
Would a physician from the 1950s “have identified the frenzy to treat bipolar disorders in infants that developed in twenty-first-century American as a mania?”

In his latest book, Mania: A Short History of Bipolar Disease (the John Hopkins University Press) David Healy, author of Let Them Eat Prozac, looks at the historic roots of our current “medicalized distress” in which half the population is said to suffer a mental illness at some point in life and babies are diagnosed in utero as bipolar.

Bipolar disorder, once called manic depression, has been embroiled in controversy from its first descriptions in Paris in the 1850s. The pharmaceutical companies and academics behind its current popularity as a “catch-all” disease say it dates back to the ancient Greeks.

But David Healy, professor of psychiatry and the director of the North Wales Department of Psychological Medicine at Cardiff University, is not so sure.

References to the frenzied behavior of mental patients found in Hippocrates’ Epidemics books 1 and III, Plato’s Phaedrus and other early writings almost certainly referred to infective states and not what we mean by bipolar disorder
infective disorders with high fevers, hysteria, postpartum manias, catalepsies and melancholies developing into manias, he writes.

Even if the disorder existed before direct-to-consumer television advertising beamed its warning signs into living rooms, it was rare says Healy. Between 1875 and 1924 only 123 patients from North West Wales were admitted to the asylum in North Wales with what we would today call bipolar disorder from a population of a quarter of a million or 12,500,000 person years."

Hmmm... Link
We suspect, too, that nutritional deficiencies have something to do with this.