We have a gift for all our readers. We’ve taken our book, Bypassing Bypass,  and put the contents online, absolutely free. We are currently rewriting it, and those who have purchased the previous edition will get the new one free when it comes out. The updated edition will go on sale as soon as we’re finished.

You can find the book, in its chapters, by clicking on Articles from our Home Page. They are right at the top.

To kick off this newsletter, we thought we’d report on some of the latest findings from the American Heart Association that have been in the news recently.

For years, women have not been included in studies on heart disease. One reason is that men have more heart attacks than women. However, once women were included, it was quickly discovered that in spite of that fact, women have a higher death rate than men.

·        Heart disease is the leading killer of women [if you don’t count medicine itself], killing half a million per year.

·        More women die from cardiovascular disease than all forms of cancer.

·        Since women tend to develop heart disease later than men, many women are still excluded from clinical trials on the prevention and treatment of heart disease. [http://www.fda.gov/womens/scienceprogram/heart.html, http://atvb.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/24/3/394]

The American Heart Association (AHA), in conjunction with the American College of Cardiology (ACC) have developed guidelines for preventing cardiovascular disease, some of which are quite effective while others are simply bull on a major scale, supporting the theory that medicine is better for us than proper nutrition. Please note that like you, we’ve uncovered versions of this story that don’t seem to mesh at times, so we’ll just present what we’ve found:

·        Women should be encouraged not to smoke and avoid second hand smoke.

·        Women should get at least 30 minutes of moderate exercise each day (brisk walking). One report states that women should try to do 60 – 90 minutes a day. Yeah. Like this is going to happen.

·        Women should eat a heart healthy diet that incorporates a variety of fruits, vegetables, grains, low fat dairy products, fish (omega-3s), legumes, and sources of protein that are low in saturated fats.

·        Women should keep their cholesterol levels below 200, with one report specifically recommending that women keep their, so-called, bad cholesterol below 70.

·        Women should keep their weight down.

·        Daily low dose aspirin is recommended for women at risk of cardiovascular disease and those over 65 no matter what their risk. [http://atvb.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/24/3/394#TBL1] 

·        Supplements such as vitamin E, C, folic acid and beta-carotene do not prevent heart disease and should not be taken to prevent it. [http://health.aol.com/news/story/_a/new-heart-guidelines-for-women-stress/20070220101009990002]

Some of these recommendations are fine, indeed, while some are just plain nonsense.

For example, a diet of grains can, for some, be quite dangerous. We have an inordinate number of individuals in the US who are sensitive to wheat or gluten. In his book, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, Weston Price traced the migration of cardiovascular disease with the introduction of wheat in Europe. Additionally, most grain foods are dead foods. People with high intake of breads also have higher rates of cancer. [International Journal of Cancer, October 20, 2006; Arch Intern Med, 2006.]

Corn is a grain, but as you read in our article on Chronic Inflammation, it is one of the culprits behind the inflammation, and chronic inflammation is one of the culprits behind cardiovascular disease.

Women are encouraged to eat fish twice a week or take a fish oil supplement. Which fish to eat, they don’t tell you. And no where in the reports was ever mentioned the Scandinavian secret of eating a hand full of nuts after a meal (to get your good fats).

First, let’s take a look at the fish highest in your omega-3s.

Cold water fish rank higher in omega-3s than warm water fish. If you bake or poach the fish, it retains more of the omega-3s than if you fry it in oil. Eating your fish raw, at a sushi bar, is the best way to get your omega-3 fish oils, period.

Fish highest in omega-3s are Salmon, cold water tuna (best to buy a specialty brand that is packed in its own oil), halibut, shrimp, snapper, and scallops. Interestingly enough, shrimp is high in saturated fats (cholesterol). Funny thing, this cholesterol stuff. The benefits of the omega-3s outweigh the hazards of cholesterol, which, in this author’s opinion are blown up way out of proportion.

Finally, there’s the green mussel from New Zealand. The fatty acids in this little guy have been compared to ibuprofen for pain relief from arthritis; according to the experts, it’s 300 times more powerful if taken over a period of time.

For those who do not like fish, there are fish oil capsules; however, you get what you pay for. Pharmaceutical grade fish oils are the best. What you get at Target or Wal-Mart might not be the best. There is cod liver oil in capsules. These caps also contain Vitamin D, which we’ve written about pretty extensively lately. (Please take your fish oils with a meal; they’ll work much better.)

Finally you have Omegasentials. This is a flax product with fish added. This is our favorite product and you won’t see my fridge ever without a bag in there. Flax is another form of omega-3s, and the human body needs both forms.

One final note on DHA and EPA, the beneficial fish oils, is that your probiotics (the good bacteria in your gut) poop them. So, keeping a healthy dose of good fauna in your system is also important.

Finally, when we talk about beneficial fats, we can’t overlook nuts. Walnuts contain beneficial oils, but the Hazelnut is the hero of the good fat race.

In a recent study published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition (Sep 2006), participants were put on a low fat, low cholesterol for four weeks. Then, for four weeks, the participants ate 40 grams (about 1.5 ounces) of hazelnuts after each meal. The results were startling. In addition to a 31.8% reduction in triglycerides, overall cholesterol was reduced by 5.2% with HDL cholesterol (the “good” kind) rising 12.6%.

These figures are truly impressive.

Makes you wonder why they were overlooked by the AHA/ACC guidelines.

The pharmaceutical recommendations will not be printed here. Read our Cardiovascular Articles and you will find nutritional therapies that are better, more effective, and saner than any drug protocol.

The recommendations for an aspirin a day seem to have been proposed without mentioning a recent study that showed when you come off of aspirin (say prior to a surgery) your heart attack chances jump through the roof.  This was discovered after doctors who had been telling their patients to stop their aspirin therapy prior to surgeries noticed that a lot of them didn’t live long enough to have the surgery. A cohort study soon proved that coming off your aspirin therapy was much more dangerous than the reasons for going on it in the first place.

The recommendations also don’t tell you that aspirin therapy increases your chances for hemorrhagic stroke by some 40%. (You will find the aspirin myths and the dangers of aspirin in our Cardiovascular Articles).

And finally, along with the last recommendation listed above (concerning vitamins and supplements), another article we read from the Canadian Broadcasting System: http://cbs13.com/topstories/local_story_050194656.html quoted a physician on the use of vitamins and supplements: “People are wasting their money when they are looking at it from a cardiac standpoint.”

A few articles we found were quick to quote recent studies showing that folic acid doesn’t work as we once thought it did.

We also found many studies and articles that still recommended folic acid.

Again, we must take the stand that until the medical community stops running studies involving vitamins and supplements that are designed to fail, whatever modern medicine has to say about supplements will be suspect.

Folic acid cuts homocysteine levels. Homocysteines cause cardiovascular disease. The research on Vitamin E is plain and simple. Vitamin E helps thin our blood. Read our articles to learn more on Vitamin E and cardiovascular disease. We’re very tired of doctors giving us nutritional advice when they’ve never studied nutrition.

This same physician, quoted above, went on to say that “antioxidants from fruits and vegetables are best.” This is something we happen to agree with, in part.

“Let your food be your medicine....” Hippocrates 

However, if you’re a jogger or you live in Los Angeles County, you probably need at least 6,000 milligrams of vitamin C daily. If you wanted to get this from eating oranges, according to my calculations, you will need to eat from 105 to 120 oranges daily.

Again, we have one more reason not to listen to physicians when they preach on a subject with which they are totally unfamiliar, nutritional wellness. They’ve never studied nutrition, and they shouldn’t study it. They need to stick to medicine.

In our Cardiovascular Articles, we have nutritional guidelines for you that came from unbiased research; guidelines that actually recommend folate and B vitamins, vitamin C and vitamin E. You will find these recommendations already in our cardiovascular wellness articles and they’ve been there since the first day we published them in 2002. As for an aspirin replacement: check out the systemic enzymes and our article on the dangers of aspirin.

All in all, some of the recommendations are good, some are silly. Poor red meat is constantly getting a bad rap, but if you eat grass fed beef that’s not been injected with hormones, or poisoned with pesticides, or overdosed in antibiotics, you’ve got the perfect protein.

The simple fact that chlorinated water was completely overlooked by this study as a cause of heart disease (and boy is it), leaves room for speculation and conspiracy theorists. Chlorinated water should not be allowed in our country let alone our bodies.

If women simply increased their activity a little, tossed out their corn oil and replaced it with coconut oil (for frying), and increased their antioxidants, B vitamins and Essential Fatty Acids, we could cut their heart disease death rates to the lowest in the world.

Wishing you all a happy and healthy heart.

 
Don't forget to plug in our site: International Wellness Directory.

After publishing our last newsletter, in which we discussed this new immune booster EpiCor, I got about four letters in the first week telling me, hey, if this comes from their products, wouldn't it be cheaper to buy a fifty pound bag of their fermented yeast product than buy a bottle of pills that lasts a month?

Well, that's exactly what I thought, and I went right out and ordered a fifty pound bag of Diamond V XPC.

Like everything else I get, the first thing I put the XPC into was a smoothie. It's not very good tasting. However, I'm now giving it to my chickens and my dogs. As for me, I'm still using it in my smoothies, but I've started adding it to our super muffin recipes.

The first thing we created after the last newsletter, was a brand new muffin we called: The Most Expensive Muffins in the World. This was because we calculated that the cost of all ingredients added up to about $2.75 cents per muffin. Because of all the ingredients we put into the muffins, we called them Longevity Muffins.

The recipe is located here: Longevity Muffins.

For those of you who want to try the Diamond V XPC but don't want to have to buy a fifty pound bag for $90.00, for a fifteen dollar donation to this web site, I will share with you some from my own personal supply of the Diamond V XPC and mail it to you. Having said this, I make no promises concerning the benefits of XPC and if you're sick, go find a health care professional.

Ahhhhgggg! Boy, did we get mail! Ron wants to thank all those who bought his products over the holiday season, and into the new year. He's been surprising buyers with free lip balm, that he makes only for friends and family.

“It’s time consuming and expensive,” Ron told me. “But for your readers, I'm gonna send them a little gift if they order two or more products.” [Update Nov 07: The free gift offer has ended, and Ron thanks all those who have ordered his amazing products.]

Already people are telling us their experiences. A woman with diabetic sores that responded to nothing, suddenly healed in just under three weeks with HealonPF. One person sent for a bottle of HealonPF for hemorrhoids, got such quick relief, that she quickly ordered two more bottles, one for a friend. Two people reported that the swelling from spider bites (brown recluse) went down within hours from applying the HealonPF.

Those using the lip balm tell us that it's perfect on their crow's feet.

And the number of people who wrote us that the SugarFoot is the best thing they've ever found for dry, cracking skin. However, to get to the root of dry cracking skin, increase your vitamin E (mixed tocopherols and mixed tocotrienols), your omega-3s, and keep your probiotics in your gut flourishing.

A few people have inquired into selling Ron's products under their own label, and as always, they would really like to know how to make them. Ron has told me that he's more then willing to give out the formulas, but that those who put them together won't get even half the healing power of his products, because of the ingredients.

Not all ingredients are created equally. For example, take a trip over the web searching for Tea Tree oil. You'll find retail prices anywhere from $.68/per ounce to $4.95/ounce. Then you have to ask yourself, how much did the distributor pay for the original Tea Tree oil.

Ron pays his supplier $3.80 per ounce for his own Tea Tree oil that has been distilled according to his strict instructions. Because they have to maintain temperature stability, it has to be made in very small batches. Ron won't sell you his Tea Tree Oil at all. It's his proprietary product. So, knowing how to make Ron's formulas, doesn't do you any good without Ron's proprietary ingredients.

Once again, every first aid kit should have a bottle of HealonPF. There is no expiration date on the bottle. Bottles that are 7 and 8 years old show no signs of breaking down. And if you need it, then you'd better have it on hand.

We will post before and after pictures when they start coming in. If you have your own, feel free to send them to us. info@mnwelldir.org

For Ron Salley's Miracle Skin products, please visit Simply the Best.

We got a bottle of noni from our good friends at Wilderness Family Naturals and wow, it was potent.

This is the real thing. No fruit juice added, no preservatives added, just pure noni juice from the fruit and leaves. And, it’s organic.

That is ALL we can tell you now, because now that we’ve found a source that is really, really good, we’re going to do some more research.

Here are some highlights of the research we will be publishing at this site: Costa Rican noni has a more vitamin C than noni from Tahiti. Noni not only boosts the immune system, it’s an antioxidant, an anti-inflammatory, an antiangiogenic agent (stops the growth of new blood vessels to a tumor), and an analgesic (pain killer).

We also received notice that only this noni was given as therapy to a breast cancer patient, and she is now in remission.

So, for your noni needs, contact Wilderness Family Naturals (because they support us here) and you can also check out South Pacific Trading Company who are handling the same exact product.

So, really, not much to more to say, except this is the best noni we’ve found to date. Period.

Editor's note: the FDA is finally addressing the issue of conflicts of interest. Sure, as you'll read below these are pretty half-assed gestures, but they are a start in the right direction after millions have died from pharmaceuticals. 10 of the 30 people who voted to pass Vioxx had taken money from the makers of Vioxx.

Go to Original

In today's New York Times, there appears a story by reporter Gardiner Harris about FDA's new guidance intending to reduce conflicts of interest on agency advisory boards. (Note: The story refers to the proposal as "rules" but it is actually "draft guidance" which, unlike rules/regulations, does not carry the force of law.)

The guidance is a response to an increasing problem at FDA: Scientists determining the public safety of drugs and medical devices often have financial ties to the products or industry on which they are commenting. There are pros and cons to the draft guidance.

The good:

• Most advisors having obvious financial conflicts of interest of more than $50,000 will not be able to serve on committees.

• Most advisors with less significant conflicts of interest will be able to serve but not vote.

• The guidance addresses not just current financial conflicts of interest, but those that have occurred in the past year.

The bad:

• The guidance is loaded with loopholes, including reserving the right of the FDA commissioner to grant waivers.

• The guidance only addresses financial conflicts of interest, not personal or professional. (This is politics! Relationships and egos are important.)

• This is guidance, not a regulation. Therefore, it "does not operate to bind FDA or the public."

The ugly:

• An advisor with a significant financial conflict of interest may still be able to serve (but not vote) if "the need for the individual's services outweigh the potential for a conflict of interest." Doesn't a big pile of cash undermine the objectivity of an "expert?" Shouldn't pharmaceutical expertise funded by a pharmaceutical company be considered ill-gotten gains?

Stay tuned to Reg•Watch for more on this.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. The International Wellness Directory has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is the International Wellness Directory endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

Editor's Note: Health Care is political. I have been very active politically for many years. The following letter has been sent to all my congress-people, and to many candidates for office. Feel free to copy it and send it to your people in congress and your favorite candidate.

The last time I checked, the World Health Organization ranked our health care system 37^th in the world. We are ranked 20^th in infant mortality. We are ranked 20^th in longevity. However, our health care system is ranked the 1^st (highest) in cost.

An estimated 200,000 Americans are killed yearly by prescription drugs; 300,000 more die from hospital errors, infections picked up in hospitals, malpractice, and mistakes. Many of these figures have been published in JAMA and the New England Journal of Medicine, and are, admittedly, low estimates.

With such a poor health care system, I find it astonishing that politicians feel that the main problem with our health care is that too many people still do not have access to it.

This kind of logic is reminiscent of that Woody Allen joke where two women are in a restaurant and one says to the other, “The food in here is awful,” to which her friend responds, “Yes, and such small portions.”

The plain truth about our health care system is that it is a disease care system whose bottom line is the almighty dollar. It is fraught with fraud, redundancy, and just plain bad science. Where our health care system excels is in trauma care and diagnostics. 

Those famous tobacco industry scientists who for years told us tobacco was not detrimental to our health have gone to work for the AMA and now tell us that vitamins and supplements are worthless, and that real health demands drugs. Our health care is founded on the science of the lowest bidder: if we grease enough palms, doctors will say anything.

Medicine is a powerful monopoly. Doctors, drug companies, and the FDA are all in bed together. This is not an empty attack; it is not a conspiracy theory; it’s simply the goal of every monopoly: to crush the competition and gain market share; it’s just business as usual.

If you study the history of medicine, you cannot help but see how medicine has become a powerful monopoly: Health Care for Dummies, or How the Rich Got Richer While the Sick Got Sicker.

Before we can have universal health care, we must first create real health care. We have to rid the system of fraud.

We can cut our health care costs 9 billon dollars overnight by outlawing cholesterol lowering drugs.

I’ve spent years researching cholesterol, and there is not one study that has shown that cholesterol causes heart disease. All cholesterol lowering drugs, until the recent Statin drugs, shortened life spans. Statin drugs have extended life spans because they are also anti-inflammatories; expensive anti-inflammatories that could be replaced by Boswellia, an herb from the rain forest that costs $12 per bottle, or replaced by aspirin; although, it is not my personal choice.

Our elderly are drugged into oblivion. Visit any elderly care site and you’ll not find a single individual on fewer then three drugs with far too many are on five to fifteen drugs. Once you put a person on three or more drugs, all double blind studies go out the window. No one can tell you the overall results of overmedicating. This is quackery.

Recently, all over the media has been the story of a drug from Canada that might just be a cancer cure, but the problem is its patent has run out. [http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/mg19325874.700-cheap-safe-drug-kills-most-cancers.html]

This is a terrible problem. We might have a cure for cancer but no one can profit from it. That’s a terrible problem, because who will spend the billion dollars required to prove this drug?

The problem is we have a health care industry that profits from our being ill, not from our being healthy. If we are healthy, the industry suffers.

And yet congress keeps funding pharmaceutical companies and their research.

It is time to cut corporate welfare to the pharmaceutical industry and put that money into our universities. Universities can test cheap alternatives objectively; therapies that can profit no one but can save countless lives. We must study and test non patentable therapies, or we’ll have just more of the same: expensive, dangerous medicine that might just kill more people than it cures.

The problem with our health care system is not that people don’t have access to it. The problem is that our health care system has nothing to do with health.

The primary objective of our medical schools is to teach physicians to fix disease. Our medical schools know nothing about health and wellness, and thus our physicians know nothing about health and wellness. Our health care system is diseased from the start; it is a disease care system.  

We are what we eat, breathe, drink, and think. Any physician who does not believe this is not a healer. Any person who does not believe this is deluded. Any politician who does not believe this does not have a health care solution, and universal health care is just corporate welfare and an empty election promise.

Sincerely,

David Bonello

Editor's Note: Meet Dr Al Sears. We have long admired his work and suddenly we are told he's pretty intrigued about our work. So, we are forming a working relationship. In future newsletters and at this site, we'll be posting articles written by the good doctor and promoting his work.

Al Sears, MD
12794 Forest Hill Blvd., Suite 16
Wellington, FL 33414 March 12, 2007  <