Healing and Preventing Cardiovas

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.

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 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.

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).

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%.

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.

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.

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.

The doctors in the previous article are old school. They want to promulgate only that vitamins and minerals are worthless.

There is a new school of doctors who want us to know that:

Vitamins are POISON!

Ok, let’s take a look at this.

The Journal of the American Medical Association (~~NAMBLA~~ JAMA) just published a study that came to the conclusion that vitamin E, A, and beta carotene will lead to an early demise.

Next time you tell your doctor you use these, just watch him tell you about this study.

The study went on to say that it needs to investigate selenium and vitamin C further to determine if they have an effect on mortality.

I did a quick google and found the original study.

It was written up very professionally, using the terminology only a statistician could possibly understand, but luckily there are experts in the field who can see thru the gobbledygook and spot the flaws.

First off, you must know that this was not an actual study but rather a meta analysis of many studies. Right off the bat, this is bad methodology because it weighs all studies the same no matter the length of time, the quality of the vitamins, or the dosages. The key feature here is that the researchers claim to have used “all” relevant trials.

Apparently, when we wrote Bypassing Bypass we found a study these fellows didn’t that was published in NEJM in 1993 in which nearly 90,000 nurses were divided into two groups, one that got vitamin E and another that got a placebo. After two years, the group receiving the vitamin E had a 40% lower risk of heart attack. Similar results were realized in a smaller follow-up study involving nearly 40,000 men.

Medicos consistently create studies designed to fail. They use synthetic “parts” of vitamins (not the whole complex), and doses small enough to be meaningless. Sometimes they use the worst possible vitamins on the market. You’ll never see a study on vitamins using the Cadillac of vitamins made by Standard Process Labs.

I found a response to this study called: META-ANALYSIS ON ANTIOXIDANTS PROVIDES MUDDLED CONCLUSIONS written by the Council for Responsible Nutrition. It’s worth reading, because it answers this study line for line. The highlight is a quotation by Dr Andrew Shao, PhD when he called the original study a: “pre-determined conclusion in search of a method to support it.”

This kind of research has one overwhelming motivation behind it: to eventually limit our access to vitamins and supplements that are cutting into the profits of medicine and the pharmaceutical industry.

Look who sponsors our evening newscasts: drug companies. Since the doctors who once worked for the tobacco companies are out of work, ABC news seems to have hired a few to promote their anti-vitamin stance. I’m not sure if Dr Beth M. Wicklund, MD once worked for the tobacco companies, but she’s certainly picked up their style. She warned millions of Americans that fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E, and K) are stored in our fatty tissues and can “Lead to toxic buildup in the liver, brain, and heart.”

I’m not sure if she learned this in medical school, or just made it up for the fear effect, but it is pure, unmitigated bull.

Yes, we store these longer than water soluble vitamins, but no one’s ever died from vitamin E toxicity. In fact, well, let’s shoot a glance at something from an organization that actually researches how vitamins are utilized by the body and what they do for us; an organization based upon the work of Linus Pauling, a two time Nobel laureate:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, February 23, 2007

NO DEATHS FROM VITAMINS: Poison Control Statistics Prove Supplements’ Safety

(OMNS Feb 23, 2007) There was not even one death caused by vitamins in 2005, according to the most recent statistics available from the US National Poisoning and Exposure Database. The 129-page annual report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers published in the journal Clinical Toxicology (1) shows zero deaths from multiple vitamins; zero deaths from any of the B vitamins; zero deaths from vitamins A, C, D, or E; and zero deaths from any other vitamin.

Over half of the U.S. population takes daily vitamin supplements. Even if each of those people took only one single tablet per day, that makes 145,000,000 individual doses per day, for a total of over 53 billion doses annually. Since many persons take additional vitamins, the numbers are considerably higher, and the safety of vitamins all the more remarkable.

Reference:

1. Lai MW, Klein-Schwartz W, Rodgers GC et al. 2005 Annual Report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers' national poisoning and exposure database. Clin Toxicol (Phila). 2006; 44(6-7): 803-932. Free download from http://www.aapcc.org/Annual%20Reports/05report/2005%20Publsihed.pdf . Vitamins statistics are found in Table 22, towards the end of the report.

For further reading:

Download any Annual Report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers from 1983-2005 free of charge at: http://www.aapcc.org/annual.htm The "Vitamin" category is usually at the very end of the report.

Nutritional Medicine is Orthomolecular Medicine

Linus Pauling defined orthomolecular medicine as "the treatment of disease by the provision of the optimum molecular environment, especially the optimum concentrations of substances normally present in the human body." Orthomolecular medicine uses safe, effective nutritional therapy to fight illness. For more information: http://www.orthomolecular.org

The peer-reviewed Orthomolecular Medicine News Service is a non-profit and non-commercial informational resource.

Editorial Review Board:

Abram Hoffer, M.D., Ph.D.
Harold D. Foster, Ph.D.
Bradford Weeks, M.D.
Carolyn Dean, M.D., N.D.
Erik Paterson, M.D.
Thomas Levy, M.D., J.D.
Steve Hickey, Ph.D.

Andrew W. Saul, Editor and contact person. email: drsaul@doctoryourself.com .

To subscribe at no charge: http://orthomolecular.org/subscribe.html

So, we’re told how dangerous vitamins are, but it seems that no one died last year taking them.

How many died from pharmaceuticals? Or from over-the-counter-drugs?

Tylenol kills over 100 each year. NSAIDS hospitalize nearly 100,000 a year, with a minimum of 30,000 dying. Very low estimates put pharmaceutical deaths at 200,000, total.

But your doctor wants you to be careful taking vitamins.

Hmmmm.

Yes, Vitamin A can kill you if you take too much. How much is too much? An awful lot. Dr Allan Spreen, MD tells us that he can take 10,000 IU of vitamin A safely, but the same amount of aspirin will kill you.

We know that smokers shouldn’t take Beta Carotene because legitimate studies have proven it is deadly to them. However, we also know they should quit smoking. Duh.

Oh, and just how deadly are these vitamins really?

The study ends by telling us that we need to eat lots of fresh vegetables and fruits to get our daily vitamins. Apparently they’re not as deadly in the food we eat.

Think about it. Medicine has to tell us that we need our vitamins, otherwise everyone would know they’re lying to us. So they tell us to get our vitamins in our food (which is good advice). But vitamin therapies are drawing profits away from the medical industry; so they have to turn around and tell us that supplementing will kill us.

I wonder if this logic will ever stimulate medical researchers to use “real” food derived vitamins in future studies, rather than the synthetic partials they use today.

Before I go, I have to tell you this: I got an interesting letter from someone asking about an investigative report on NBC that was based upon a ConsumerLab report on vitamins. The report gave high marks to Flintstones Complete because they contained everything that was on the label, were chewable, hence easily dissolved, and were free of impurities.

I wrote back that I wished ConsumerLabs would stick to testing toasters and air bags.

Pick up a bottle of Flintstones Complete, or visit their web site, and you’ll see that they also contain aspartame, soybean oil, artificial colors, and trans fats. They are not complete vitamins in any sense since all vitamins are complex and most of the Flintstones Complete ingredients are synthetic.

Sure, it’s good that someone is out there assaying our vitamins and minerals to keep the producers honest, but they are not experts in nutrition and haven’t a clue as to our bodies’ needs.

Postmenopausal? Pre-cardiac Arrest?

In a recent study published March 7^th in JAMA, we learned that postmenopausal women, who have had no signs or symptoms of any cardiovascular problems are at a greater risk of death from a cardiovascular event if they have had even minor abnormalities show up on an electrocardiogram.

Interestingly enough, post menopausal women had been studied previously, but only in comparison to men. This time, however, they studied women only, and took into consideration those on HRT, and, guess what: researchers fond there was a “significant increase” in coronary disease among those taking HRT as opposed to a placebo. [http://www.seniorjournal.com/NEWS/Health/2007/7-03-07-OlderWomenWith.htm ]

Planning a heart attack? Don’t wait for the weekend.

In Brunswick, New Jersey, researchers discovered that patients admitted to hospitals on weekends with cardiovascular issues were more likely to die of a heart attack than those who were admitted during the week. Weekend patients were less likely to receive percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) on admission as well as less likely to undergo invasive cardiac procedures than were those arriving on weekdays.

Dr Kotis concluded, “The increase in mortality, which may persist for more than a year, could account for several thousand deaths annually in the U.S. More appropriate hospital staffing or regionalization of care of patients with acute myocardial infarction may prevent some of these deaths.”

While Drs Redelmeier and Bell wrote that “clinicians strive to provide care to patients every day of the week. Doing so entails effort, and people who work in hospitals (unlike those in many other lines of work) are not always compensated for taking the weekend shift.”

So, remember to tip your emergency room staff members on weekends and holidays. [http://www.medpagetoday.com/Cardiology/MyocardialInfarction/tb1/5256]

When it comes to cardiac care, your local hospital might not be color blind.

A recent study published in the February 2007 issue of the medical journal Academic Emergency Medicine showed that race, gender, and insurance coverage determines the type and quality of care you get when admitted to the ER.

The study focused on patients admitted into the ER complaining of chest pain. What did the study find?

· African-American men were 25 to 30% less likely to receive the tests for coronary artery disease compared to non-African-Americans.

· All forms of the tests — electrocardiograms, chest x-rays, cardiac monitoring, and oxygen saturation monitoring — have been declining in use for African-American males.

· African-American women saw a 5% lesser chance of getting an electrocardiogram than non-African-American men.

· African-American women saw a 17% lesser chance of receiving cardiac monitoring, a 14% lesser chance of receiving oxygen saturation monitoring, and a six percent lesser chance of receiving a chest x-ray in comparison to non-African-American men.

· Patients who did not have private insurance had a 13% lesser chance of receiving electrocardiography. Whereas 82% of non-African-American men with commercial insurance received electrocardiography.

[http://www.seniorjournal.com/NEWS/Health/2007/7-02-04-RaceGender.htm]

An Aspirin a day doesn't keep the doctor away.

A recent study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine concluded that people who who use analgesics (pain relievers, commonly called NSAIDS) regularly had higher blood pressure rates than those who did not use them regularly.

The industry apologists tell us that NSAID usage causes salt retention, but those who have read our cardiovascular wellness articles already know that salt alone is not the problem. The problem is the sodium/potassium ratio, which, in Celtic Sea Salt® Brand is perfect for the human body.

The study went onto single out certain pain relievers:

When Tylenol was singled out, risk of hyptertension jumped 34%.

Aspirin? risks jumped 28%.

All other over the counter NSAIDS (ibuprofen, advil, naproxin, etc) raised your risks of high blood pressure nearly 40%.

["Frequency of Analgesic Use and Risk of Hypertension" Archives of Internal Medicine, Vol. 167, No. 4, 2/26/07, www.archinte.ama-assn.org]

Anvirzel Update
Many have written to us over the years asking for an update.

Top

The news is not all that good.

First, we have the story of Anvirzel™ by the daughter of Dr Ozel, the inventor of the drug: The Story of Anvirzel.

Second, we have a little more information on the drug, what's been happening, and it's progress with the FDA along with input from people working with their own extracts of the Nerium Oleander plant: Anvirzel Update.

Finally, we have this article on Anvirzel, sent to us by somebody (however, we forgot who sent it. It is very close to an article on the Annieapplseed Project: http://www.annieappleseedproject.org/anpat51.html, but Annie says it's not hers.

So, we'll reprint it and hope we're not infringing upon anybody's copyrights:

Nerium Oleander

An aqueous extract of Nerium Oleander has been patented internationally as ANVIRZEL ™. (US Patent #5,135,745) The Nerium Oleander extract used in the Agaricus OPC proprietary herbal mix is similar to the ANVIRZEL ™ extract and the following excerpt is taken from the description of ANVIRZEL ™ on the Internet:

Extensive laboratory and clinical experience indicate both cytotoxic and immunological activities for the drug. In developing a protocol for clinical trials, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center states, "It is thought that the polysaccharides present in ANVIRZEL™ are capable of activating the immune cells, which in turn can recognize the epitopes present on the cancer cell surfaces, thereby enhancing the efficacy of the immune response. It is believed that the cytotoxic action present in the extract may be essential for synergistic activities. It is believed that the cytotoxic action both arrests tumor growth and prevents cancer cell reproduction as well as having and/or producing a Tumor Necrosis Factorlike activity. Research has proved conclusively that Anvirzel™ is active on dual pathways at the cellular level to both inhibit the growth of tumor cells (through the antiangiogenesis activity of the oleandrin) and to promote apoptosis of the tumor cells.

Extensive in vitro research has been conducted by Dr. Robert Newman, Chief of Pharmacology, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center (MDACC), Houston, Texas. Dr. Newman has tested ANVIRZEL™. against a broad spectrum of human malignant cell lines, and has demonstrated that ANVIRZEL™ has a high order of efficacy.

In addition to the research being conducted by M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, concurrent research is being conducted by Dr. Wendell Winters, a noted immunologist with the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio,Texas. Dr. Winter's work has confirmed that ANVIRZEL™ has been "shown to stimulate the immune system by stimulation of the function and capability of specific subsets of mononuclear cells." In addition, Dr. Winters' research has shown that ANVIRZEL™ specifically stimulates T and B lymphocytes, the cell-mediated and the humoral mediated immune systems.

In April 2000, a USFDA approved study entitled "Phase I Study of ANVIRZEL™ in Patients with Advanced Solid Tumors" was commenced under the direction of Ronald Buckowski, M.D. at Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio.

Because of its strong cytotoxic effect in combination with an equally strong immunomodulatory effect, ANVIRZEL™ is indicated as a therapy, both primary and adjuvant, for cell proliferative disease (cancer), certain viral disease, and autoimmune/inflammatory disease. Clinical application of ANVIRZEL™ in the United States, Ireland, and Honduras has demonstrated efficacy against various neoplastic disease, hepatic disease such as Hepatitis C, late and early stage HIV/AIDS, as well as autoimmune/inflammatory disease such as rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis. The results have been determined both by the clinical practitioner and independent laboratory analysis using PET, CT scan, MRI, and hematological screening.

International Clinical Experience Using ANVIRZEL™ Therapy International clinicians have been treating patients suffering from the above referenced disorders on a compassionate use basis since 1997. Many of these patients were previously diagnosed as terminal. These clinicians have experienced a very high level of success with disease stabilization, partial remission, and complete remission, almost always accompanied by a very marked improvement in the patients' quality of life.

Dr. Anibal Villatoro of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Former Executive Director of the Honduran Institute of Social Security (administrator of the public health system) has since January of 1999 been conducting a compassionate use trial with ANVIRZEL™ for HIV (SIDA) patients in Tegucigalpa. His early results indicate a strong level of response to ANVIRZEL™ therapy with a feeling of homeostasis (feeling of well being) and an improved quality of life, as well as significant improvement in their immune systems. (Reports that slipped out in late 1999 showed that Anvirzel reversed AIDS, no matter what the phase of the disease, arthritis, psoriasis, hepatitis C, and even diabetes in some cases. Initially, Anvirzel was thought to work only on cancers found early, however, very positive results have been found in people given just weeks to live. To top this all off, Anvirzel seems to be the first cancer remedy to show positive results for leiomyosarcoma, probably the deadliest of cancers. Anvirzel also crosses the blood-brain barrier (like Poly-MVA) and gives hope to people with brain tumors.)

The "Common Thread" running through almost all of the clinical records of the patient population using ANVIRZEL™ on a compassionate use basis has been the marked improvement in the "quality of life" of those patients. This includes, but is not limited to, homeostasis, marked improvement in pain management with elimination of or marked reduction in use of analgesics, positive response to antibiotics, increased appetite with concomitant weight gain, and increase in energy with reduction of fatigue.

Toxicity studies. A toxicity study was performed by Southern Research Institute, Birmingham, AL, on 28 beagle dogs, and the study states, "No clinical signs of toxicity were noted in any of the dogs in this study..." Another lethality assessment of ANVIRZEL™ in a murine (laboratory mouse) population was conducted by Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX., and the study states, "On the day of NOI (Nerium Oleander Extract Injectible) administration and over a subsequent 14 day post dose period, none of the treated animals showed any pathological signs or ill effect of the injections as assessed by daily morbidity and mortality observations."

No reports of toxicity have been received from clinicians supervising patients experiencing Anvirzel™ therapy.

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 newseltter, 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.

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 bag up one pound of my own personal stash 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.

Just make sure you enter your mailing address and a mention that you'd like me to bag up some XPC and ship it off to you.

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.”

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.

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

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, 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.

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:

(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.

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.

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.

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.

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

A new study “proves” this to my satisfaction but will not end the controversy because financial incentives distort this simple truth.

You will hear results from a new study in this week’s JAMA by researchers at Stanford University. It was the largest and best done study ever to compare popular diets. It proved that women on the Atkins diet lost and kept off significantly more weight than women on other diets.

At the end of one year, women on the Atkins diet lost an average of 10 pounds versus just about 3 pounds for followers of The Zone, Standard, or low-fat diets. What’s more, women on the Atkins diet ended the year with higher HDL (good cholesterol) and lower blood pressure.

In spite of the persecution Atkins faced during his life, he had correctly diagnosed the cause of the modern epidemic of obesity. For the first time, he made it clear that Americans were not getting fat because they were consuming too much fat.

February 2003: A landmark study that compared the American Heart Association’s low-fat diet to the Atkins diet. The Atkins diet caused greater weight loss and lowered cholesterol and triglycerides much more effectively than a low fat diet of equal calories.

May 2003: The prestigious New England Journal of Medicine published a study that found the Atkins approach beat out the American Heart Association’s low fat approach for both weight loss and blood fats improvement.

Nutrition Week 2003: National meetings recently reported preliminary results of a study performed by Heritage Medical Center on patients with Metabolic Syndrome. Participants ate a low-carb diet for 18 months. Their LDL (“bad” cholesterol) reduced by an average of 82%. HDL (“good” cholesterol) scores increased by an average of 30%.

He was right in noting that dietary fat was not the modern change that had made us fat. But there are other issues with modern fat he neglected:

By implying that the modern over consumption of omega-6 fatty acids and trans fats in processed and artificially created foods is okay, Atkins failed to get the solution right.

An excess of omega-6 fats, which you’ll find in today’s grain-fed meat, causes inflammation. And this internal swelling leads to arthritis, heart disease and cancer. Artificial trans fats clog your arteries and boost your risk of heart attack.

To get the most out of Atkins’ diet and legacy, cut down your carbs as he recommends. But stay away from the bad fats and focus on getting more of the healthy omega-3 fats.

How do you get back your omega 3 fats we used to get from the internal organs of our catch? Cod liver oil is the most effective way I’ve found.

Cod liver oil builds up your HDL (good cholesterol) and lowers triglycerides (blood fats). It also improves memory and relieves depression.

Cod liver oil plays an important role in fat loss. I’ve seen remarkable results in my patients. And that’s one I never heard Atkins elucidate. Cod liver oil helps you to lose fat by improving your response to blood sugar your sensitivity to insulin. That’s why I use it to treat diabetes. (And others have had good results.¹²³)

Controlling your blood sugar and lowering your insulin is the key to losing fat and keeping it off.

I use 5 grams of cod liver oil daily. You can get our own mercury and PCB-free pure Dr. Sears’ Brand Cod Liver Oil, HERE

1 Lombardo YB, et al. Dietary fish oil normalize dyslipidemia and glucose intolerance with unchanged insulin levels in rats fed a high sucrose diet. Biochim.Biophys.Acta 1996;1299:175-82.

2 Chicco A, et al. Effect of moderate levels of dietary fish oil on insulin secretion and sensitivity, and pancreas insulin content in normal rats. Ann.Nutr Metab 1996;40:61-70.

3 Shimizu H, et al. Long-term effect of eicosapentaenoic acid ethyl (EPA-E) on albuminuria of non-insulin dependent diabetic patients. Diabetes Res.Clin Pract. 1995;28:35-40.

We would be remiss not to tell you of two new studies recently published on Vitamin D and Cancer Prevention.

If you have breast or colon cancer in your family, you are warned that you are at risk for these two cancers.

As we’ve seen I this newsletter, the only information most doctors have access to is that vitamins will shorten your life.

However, the study published online in the Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology concluded that those women with the lowest amounts of vitamin D in their blood had the highest rates of breast cancer. The author’s of the study claim that increasing our vitamin D intake to 2000 IU daily could reduce a woman’s risk of breast cancer by 50%.

The colorectal cancer study was published in the Journal of Preventive Medicine. Quite astonishing, they discovered the same thing that the breast cancer study produced, that a daily intake of 2000 IU could cut the risk of colorectal cancer 50%.

Remember: you can get vitamin D in the sun, and in certain foods: salmon, sardines, shrimp, milk, cod, and eggs. You are also free to supplement with cod liver oil and vitamin D tablets.

Yup, the rat poison that was found contaminating many brands of pet foods, turned out to be a chemotherapeutic agent in this country (but rat poison in China).

Currently, the news media is abuzz with this one; some people calling for organic pet foods, others initiating a class action lawsuit, and the actual number of animals affected depends on who's telling you.

As a pet lover, this is disturbing. Just luckily, none of the foods I feed mine were tainted.

A Genetic Engineered Food Disaster?

By Michael W. Fox B.Vet.Med., Ph.D., D.Sc., M.R.C.V.S.

I have received several letters from dog and cat owners thanking me for ‘saving their animal’s lives’ because they were feeding them the kind of home-made diet that I have been advocating as a veterinarian for some years. These letters came after the largest pet food recall in the pet food industry’s history.

On March 23, the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets announced that they had found ‘rat poison’ in contaminated wheat gluten imported from China was responsible for the suffering and deaths of an as yet uncounted numbers of cats and dogs across North America. The poison is a chemical compound called aminopterin.

Veterinary toxicologists with the ASPCA and American College of Internal Veterinary Medicine shared my concern that there may be some other food contaminant (s) in addition to the aminopterin that was sickening and killing many pets. Experts were not convinced that the finding of rat poison contamination was the end of the story.

On March 30, the FDA reported finding a widely used compound called melamine described as a chemical used in the manufacture of plastics, as a wood resin adhesive and protective, in the suspect pet foods. The FDA claimed that the melamine was the cause of an as yet uncounted number of cat and dog poisonings and deaths. The FDA could not find the rat poison, aminopterin, in the samples it analyzed. However a lab in Canada, at the University of Guelph, has confirmed the presence of rat poison.

The Associated Press cited the Environmental Protection Agency as having identified melamine as a contaminant and byproduct of several pesticides, including cryomazine. People began to question if there is also pesticide contamination of the wheat gluten. Is there a possibility of deliberate contamination, or is it the result of gross mismanagement and lack of effective food-safety and quality controls that accounts for levels of melamine reported to be as high as 6.6% by in FDA analyzed samples of the wheat gluten?

A brief internet search quickly reveals that the widely used insect growth regulator cryomazine is not only made from melamine, but it also breaks down into melamine after ingestion by an animal. Wheat gluten is wheat gluten, fit for human consumption, so the question remains, what was wrong with this gluten that it was only bought for use in pet food?

On April 3 Associated Press named the US importer as ChemNutra of Las Vegas, reporting that the company had recalled 873 tons of wheat gluten that had been shipped to three pet food makers and a single distributor who in turn supplies the pet food industry.

While Congressional hearings are now being called for by grieving pet owners, and class action suits put together, this debacle could have catastrophic consequences not only for conventional agribusiness, of which the pet food industry is a lucrative subsidiary, but also for the agricultural biotechnology industry, with its millions of acres of genetically engineered crops around the world.

I reach this conclusion, until there is evidence to the contrary, for the following reasons:

1. The wheat gluten imported from China was not for human consumption, because, I believe, it had been genetically engineered. The FDA has a wholly cavalier attitude toward feeding animals such ‘frankenfoods’ but places some restrictions when human consumption is involved (yet refuses appropriate food labeling).

2. The ‘rat poison’ aminopterin is used in molecular biology as an anti-metabolite, folate antagonist, and in genetic engineering biotechnology as a genetic marker. This could account for its presence in this imported wheat gluten.

3. The ‘plastic’, ‘wood preservative’, contaminant melamine, the parent chemical for a potent insecticide cyromazine, could well have been manufactured WITHIN the wheat plants themselves as a genetically engineered pesticide. This is much like the Bt. insecticidal poison present in most US commodity crops that go into animal feed.

4.So called ‘overexpression’ can occur when spliced genes that synthesize such chemicals become hyperactive inside the plant and result in potentially toxic plant tissues, lethal not just to meal worms and other crop pests, but to cats, dogs, birds, butterflies and other wildlife; and to their creators. (For details, see my book Killer Foods: What Scientists Do to Make Food Better is Not Always Best. Lyon’s Press, 2004).

How else can one account for samples of pet food containing as much as 6% melamine? It was surely not mixed in such amounts when the wheat gluten was being processed, but rather was already in the wheat, along with the aminopterin genetic marker. My suspicion is that the FDA was aware that the gluten came from genetically engineered wheat that was considered safe for animal consumption. To admit that the gluten came from a genetically engineered food crop could harm the US agricultural biotechnology industry, and raise valid consumer concerns.

I could be wrong. But a greater wrong is surely for the pet food industry to use food ingredients and food and beverage industry by-products considered unfit for human consumption; to continue to do business without any adequate government oversight and inspection; and for government to give greater priority and support to agricultural biotechnology ( that requires far more food quality and safety tests and surveillance than conventional crops--- all at the public’s expense0---than to organic, humane, ecologically sound and safe food production.

I believe that there is evidence of gross negligence, not simply on the part of the pet food industry, but by all who are responsible for food quality and safety in the global market that is clearly dysfunctional. The Pet Food Institute should start an emergency fund to compensate all veterinary expenses incurred as a result of this---and any future---mass poisonings of people’s beloved animal companions.

Dr. Fox writes the syndicated newspaper column Animal Doctor, with United Features, NY, and is author of the forthcoming two books on pet care, Dog Body, Dog Mind: Exploring Canine Consciousness and Well-Being, and Cat Body, Cat Mind: Exploring Feline Consciousness and Total Well-Being, published by The Lyons Press. His website is www.doctormwfox.org

Alzheimer's disease has been in the news lately. Alzheimer's disease is affecting more and more people; the ranks are growing; it could become an epidemic.

Jon has some of the best research I've read on Alzheimer's. His writing is crisp and clear.

We asked his permission to reprint his articles on Alzheimer's and here they are:

I must have received 30 emails with the subject: Cheap, 'safe' drug kills most cancers.

Cancer cells metabolize by fermentation. Fermentation requires sugar and the by product is lactic acid.

There is a condition in humans where because of lack of oxygen, muscles overproduce lactic acid. If you are a long distance runner, you know this, because the day after you're muscles are in pain. That pain is caused by lactic acid. Having too much lactic acid in your system is called Lactic Acidosis.

The “new” cancer cure is called DCA or dichloroacetate has been used to treat Lactic Acidosis. Thus, someone got the idea to test this on cancer. If it stops the creation of lactic acid, perhaps it could stop the same process in cancer's metabolization (neat word; you'll only find two incidences of it in online reference books).

Long story short, it worked. Canadian scientists at the University of Alberta in Edmonton found that DCA killed lung, breast, and brain cancer cells, but not healthy human cells, outside the body (in vitro).

The article goes on to quote the publication in which this study was first published:

Despite the fact that many in the cancer industry would argue the point about mitochondria in cancer cells, the theory goes on that once re-awakened, they activate apoptosis (cell death) in the cancer cells.

“Once reawakened by DCA, mitochondria order the abnormal cancer cells in a tumour to die.”

DCA is considered “relatively safe” and very cheap. It is related to chlorine, and heaven knows we don't have a lack of chlorine in our society.

By the time I got the 30th email on DCA from my wonderful readers, a quick search of the web showed a flood of articles warning people about DCA.

DCA does have side effects: pain, numbness, and gait disturbances in some patients.

So now we have articles telling us that we have a really cheap cancer cure, which, they admit, no pharmaceutical company will ever invest in because they couldn't possibly make a profit from it (funny how everyone seems to agree on this point, while the AMA calls this a conspiracy theory) and others are warning us about DCA's dangers and that we must proceed with caution and not give cancer patient's false hope.

The first paper I discovered that began the debunking of DCA was at the American Cancer Society's pages, written by Dr Len Lichtenfeld. He writes:

Ironically, this has been the response of the ACS since it's inception. They've trashed every cheap alternative to come down the pike, even taking Gerson to congressional hearings for promoting food therapies. Today, the ACS publishes pamphlets on diet and nutrition and cancer as if they discovered the connection.

The first thing that Dr Lichtenfeld points out is that a quick scan of medical literature and you'll discover that DCA causes liver cancer in mice.

What he doesn't tell us is that you have to dose the mice quite a bit to get this; and this is why the mice in the Canadian study didn't get the liver tumors.

The good doctor goes on to tell of his experiences; how someone came out and claimed to have a cure and sure enough, after a thorough examination it turned out to be a dead end.

Sadly, when doctors test inexpensive cancer therapies, they do have a tendency to fail, mainly because the study was designed to fail. All you have to do is read the story of Hydrazine Sulfate. If not for the Russians testing HS years later, we'd still think the stuff was useless. However, the scientist who initially studied HS was proved out. His estimates of the efficacy were exactly what the Russians found in their study.

“It is way too soon to know whether this is a cancer treatment breakthrough or an urban legend or something in between,” Dr Lichtenfeld tells us, but then again, he's an oncologist and not a cancer patient.

The number of articles warning people about self medicating with DCA or telling us to sit back and let the system work (as if it's ever worked) are quickly approaching the number of articles praising this new and possible cancer cure.

Where do I stand on it? Read our article Rational Medicine. In there I propose that universities, with funding by the government (the one of the people, by the people, and for the people), test non patentable therapies.

It takes about a billion dollars to pass a drug thru the FDA (and then it still might kill you).

There's that conspiracy theory again: pharmaceutical companies are mean and hateful and only interested in profits.

Before I leave this subject, I should tell you that there's a web site that is already up and running that will keep us all updated on DCA's progress: www.thedcasite.com

Next, I ran across an article on DCA that came to the same conclusion we have, but then the author says:

And as long as we're talking about the buildup of lactic acid and loss of oxygen. Nothing brings oxygen and a solid negative electrical charge into the body like flax oil. We've talked about this a lot at this web site, especially concerning Johanna Budwig's work, and the fine product Omegasentials that has come out of her work.

The list goes on, and on, but sadly, even science has a bottom line: profits. So stay tuned for the next cheap alternative that will be ignored by your cadre of oncologists.

Under Alternative Cancer Therapies, we modified our articles on ABM Mushrooms, Organic Germanium, and Coley's Toxins (we added a site that sells them, and one that is conducting a clinical tiral). We have about seven more alternatives to post. Hopefully we'll do those soon.

Under UV Light we've added new pictures of Sunlight Therapy (Heliotherapy) for TB, as well as a quick little list of what sunlight can do for you.

Additionally, under UV Light, in the article on Photoluminescence Therapy, we list two more sites that offer this therapy, one in Oklahoma and the other in Arizona.

We've taken down all our water articles. We are currently researching and will be rewriting them soon. It seems that one of our sources for this information told us a lot of myths. Because we had no one else at the time to bounce these off, we were taken in. So, we have found a credible source who is offering us a lot of his research, and we will hopefully present it to you in the next newsletter.

We've published a Near Death Experience in our section on the Spirit. This NDE is considered one of the most unique, and most extraordinary NDEs ever described. It is called Through the Light. We thank the author for his permission to republish in our book Bypassing Bypass, and now that we've put the book online (for free), we again thank him for his contribution. I hope you'll all read it.

The Monsanto Video on our home page is missing. Why is it missing? Does Monsanto have enough clout to force Google to remove the video? All we know is that it no longer exists and we don't know where to find another copy. If anyone out there knows who made the video, or where it can be found, please pass this information to us: info@mnwelldir.org.

The most important article we've posted in a long time is called Rational Medicine. This should be the medicine of the future, the medicine of today. Perhaps it will take over profit driven medicine. Perhaps it won't. We can only pray.

Under the heading of Medical Fraud: Chemotherapy, we have two responses to the articles by people familiar with this stuff. Worth the read: Responses.

And finally, we've published a series of three articles on the politics of cancer that we got from our good friends at cancertutor.com. They are very important articles about a disease that seems to touch us all. They're a bit overwritten, at times; personally I don't think any sentence needs six exclamation points, but the people are passionate, and no one can blame them for that. Here is the first article (the rest are linked): Introduction to Alternative Cancer Treatments - Part 1: The Medicine.

Good for your pipes, good for your septic system, good for the city sewage system, and good for the environment. And if your child gets a hold of it, you won't have to call poison control.

Because of my hobby of photography, I get as many letters about that as I do about our articles. Many have asked about the camera equipment I use, about how I got a particular shot, techniques, etc. However, a lot of people ask me about the software I use when working with my photos. Some have continued writing asking about video editing software and rippers and DVD editing software.

Well, to tell the truth, I'm not rich enough to buy a lot of programs, but I am blessed with some great readers. Some have sent me copies of software, others have contacted software developers and asked them to send me copies.

You see, before I got into writing about journalism, I was a computer expert. My roots go way back to working with C/PM and beta testing MS DOS 1.0.

I'm much too old to learn new software quickly, but when it comes to reviewing software, my readers would really appreciate software that is easy to learn.

I have created a page where I will be posting my reviews. Like everything I write, they'll be understandable, enough to get you started, and broad enough to give you a taste of the software as if you had hands on experience.

Please note that only that page exists for now. I'll be writing the reviews over the next few months. There are st