Regina Loves YL Cleansers

Photo by veo_Really great article I posted at the forum from the Natural News newsletter - according to the  U.S. National Poison Data System, there were zero deaths in 2009 from vitamins, minerals, herbs, or amino acids. ZERO! Isn’t that something? You’d think otherwise from all of the scare tactics and warnings from popular publications, or even from your family physician.

Thing is, the reason why vitamins, minerals, herbs, and amino acids are not researched and tested by big pharma or receive vigorous research, is because NO ONE can patent a naturally occuring plant or element on the planet! You just can’t! Which means you can’t really generate multimillion dollar profits from stuff that is not patentable. So  what big pharma and the like has to do is to create medicines, that could be plant based – but is stripped of its constituents that make it naturally and synergistically powerful for the body, and easy on the body.  They add bulking agents and who knows what else  – and tah dah! Patent ready! Coporate ready! SO SCAREY!

And it’s even scarier when they get to bypass standards and promote drugs without accountability (think H1N1 vaccine), or get doctors to prescribe drugs without FDA approval. (For example, my daughter was prescribed phenobarbitol for her seizures, but that has never ever gained FDA approval for that specific use. And there’s about 15% of the drugs out there fall in this category and loophole. Synthroid is another popularly prescribed pharmaceutical for the thyroid that has never been FDA approved for that specific use – at least the last time I looked which was within the past two years).

And the thing is, is that the public still seems cautious when using natural remedies like whole food based vitamins, minerals, organic herbs, amino acids, and therapeutic grade essential oils to improve their condition! These are naturally occurring things that are in our foods, woven into our gardens, and sustain the life of the forest, seas, rivers, desserts, plains, and mountain ranges! Sadly, most people are more inclined and pressured to go the allopathic route of medicine for simple, effective remedies, and perhaps tiptoe into supplementation and natural health as conditions worsen and become more complex and expensive. (By the way, I believe that emergency medicine is phenomenal, and takes incredible cooperative efforts and artistry. I believe there ARE wonderful medicines that have helped me tremendously in crisis; however, too much medication has nearly killed me several times, along with the recommendations for MORE medication – which kept compounding my health problems. My daughter’s health, too.)

To top it off, somehow we’re comfortable or numbed  in some bizarre way as being tolerant as a society with 100,000+ people per year being killed by pharmaceuticals, the 16,000+ people being killed annually from internal bleeding from NSAIDS (pain killers), 107,000+ hospitalized for digestive problems with NSAIDS, just in 2009.

There was a great article in published in December of 1999, by JAMA – the Journal of the American Medical Association -  stating that Doctors are the 3rd leading cause of death! Here’s an excerpt:

The author is Dr. Barbara Starfield of the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health and she desribes how the US health care system may contribute to poor health.

ALL THESE ARE DEATHS PER YEAR:

• 12,000 — unnecessary surgery
• 7,000 — medication errors in hospitals
• 20,000 — other errors in hospitals
• 80,000 — infections in hospitals
• 106,000 — non-error, negative effects of drugs

These total to 225,000 deaths per year from iatrogenic causes!!

What does the word iatrogenic mean? This term is defined as induced in a patient by a physician’s activity, manner, or therapy. Used especially of a complication of treatment.

Dr. Starfield offers several warnings in interpreting these numbers:

• First, most of the data are derived from studies in hospitalized patients.
• Second, these estimates are for deaths only and do not include negative effects that are associated with disability or discomfort.
• Third, the estimates of death due to error are lower than those in the IOM report.

If the higher estimates are used, the deaths due to iatrogenic causes would range from 230,000 to 284,000. In any case, 225,000 deaths per year constitutes the third leading cause of death in the United States, after deaths from heart disease and cancer. Even if these figures are overestimated, there is a wide margin between these numbers of deaths and the next leading cause of death (cerebrovascular disease).

So, I’m not intending to knock doctors because I have friends who ARE doctors and I find most doctors to be very compassionate and compelled to help people; unfortunately, they are caught up in a system that is promoting methods that are unnatural to the body’s physiology over time,  and sadly goes against the grain of their oath to do no harm.  I love health and all research supporting vitality and renewal, and I would find it extraordinarily difficult to be trained in traditional medical school now or within the past 10 years.

I have also benefitted tremendously from western medicine, and do see value with it. It is problematic when it becomes black and white, inefficient, and alternate, natural methods are mocked, disregarded, or promoted fearfully with patients.  I’ve witnessed that first hand and it’s heart breaking and shattering to the spirt of hope.

I am so grateful that natural health and healing is expanding and being more readily accessible in our neighborhoods, communities, and thru the internet. I’m really looking forward to the day when medicine can be practiced multi-dimensionally, across disciplines with respect and integration, with curiosity and possibility, and corporate greed is taken out of the picture – in all aspects, from training, selling, and pimping doctor’s talents to fatten their bottom line. And doctors will once reclaim the honor they deserve, and not even make the top 20 causes of death, but be a the top of the charts for increasing longevity, vitality, health, and curing disease.  It can be done. That I believe.