Join us Friday, September 18 at 10 am EST on the SOTT Talk Radio Network's Health and Wellness Show as we explore this strange and fascinating topic.
Running Time: 02:10:00
Download: MP3
Here's the transcript of the show:
Jonathan: Welcome everybody. My name is Jonathan; I'll be your host for today. Today is the September 18th 2015. Joining me in our virtual studio from all across the planet we have: Tiffany, Erica, Doug and Gaby.
Today we're going to be talking about weird remedies and folk medicine, like sticking an onion in your ear while you're sleeping, rubbing a raw potato on warts and then burying it in the yard to get rid of the warts; drilling holes in your skull, leeching, and all sorts of other things. So we're just going to have some fun here and delve into the world of weird remedies, some are Amish others are not.
Let's start with some connecting the dots; we have some recent articles here, Tiff do you want to get us started with some interesting information about Polio, which Polio seems to be returning.
Tiffany: Yeah, it kinda never really left, but thanks to the CDC they convinced us all that it did but the name of the article is: "Polio is returning as countries see rare mutated form of virus resulting from the Vaccine." it's by Aaron Dykes published on Truthstream media. There are doctors in India tracking this issue in their health system and they found a spike, a huge spike in young children who were crippled after receiving oral Polio vaccine. They called this so called new disease Non-Polio Acute Flaccid Paralysis (NPAFP) and in 2011 they found 47,500 cases of this, Acute Flaccid Paralysis. This is ironically the same year that India was declared Polio free. So, they stopped giving the oral Polio vaccine in the US in 2000 because they found that the children who received that vaccine shed it and spread it to other people but they're still giving it in developing countries allegedly because these countries don't have the refrigeration equipment to store the regular non-oral polio vaccine.
So, they found that not just in India but they found it in Ukraine, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary and all these countries where it was supposedly eradicated. So for the first time in about 5 years they found that this new type of Polio was caused by the Polio virus type one and it is directly related to receiving the oral Polio vaccine. Because the oral Polio vaccine contains a weakened form of the virus and it can build up in your intestines and you can shed it in poop and it spreads to other people. It can circulate in your gut for a long time, up to 12 months or longer, and during this time it can change from a virulent form to a more virulent form that can paralyze you.
There's another article related to this linked at the bottom, again mentioning the CDC and how they perpetuate this myth that Polio has been eradicated when it hasn't. They do the whole bait-and-switch, they just change the criteria, they manipulate the statistics and they lengthen the amount of time that a person can be ill with Polio to disqualify certain people. Say if you're only paralyzed for a week versus one month, then technically you don't have Polio. They require a bunch of tests that you normally don't do because (Bad audio) ... tell if somebody is flaccid or not they make you analyze the cerebral spinal fluid and stool. On top of that the CDC is the only agency that can make a definitive final diagnosis. So Polio never left it just has another name.
Jonathan: Yeah, that's quite interesting.
Gaby: It reminds me of other cases where vaccination has changed the clinical manifestation of certain diseases like Mumps. And appearing in later stages, in live or more aggressive or more or less pronounced version, as clinical criteria; they are so strict that it misses a lot of people. So the Polio thing is very interesting because everyone associates the word Polio with something from our medical history, something from the past...
Tiffany: Something from the 40's or 50's, "We don't get it these days."
Doug: It kind of serves their agenda on a couple of different levels: for one thing it makes everybody think that the polio vaccine was very successful, that it actually managed to eradicate this disease. Then at the same time they can formulate all kinds of new drugs for this new syndrome which is polio like but it isn't actually polio, it's pretty sinister really.
Tiffany: Polio's sort of become the poster child for success of vaccines everywhere; if people can say, "Oh we eradicated polio." or "We totally eradicated small pox." then they think that all vaccines are safe and effective. When in reality none of them are.
Erica: Well another interesting element too was when we did the virus mania talk with Dr.Köhnlein, and how pesticide toxicity was related to polio. India is an excellent example of where the green revolution - the pesticide, industrial, and agriculture model was implemented. I wouldn't be surprised if that might play a role in it too as well.
Gaby: It is often said that the person has a very weird disease, especially neurological, and you cannot find a single cause, you can't get well with diet, even supplementation, alternative methods. You really, really must think on heavy metal toxicity. And that is a very sensitive subject.
Jonathan: Interesting, well let's see here, Gaby I'm sorry I think I had skipped the article that you had for our old friend turmeric, looks like there's some news for that despite ... (bad audio) drugs.
Gaby: I read an article recently that was very interesting, it was posted a few years back by Dr. Mercola and he talks about Curcumin, turmeric for Rheumatoid arthritis, not necessarily a preventative measure but a therapeutic measure and he mentions a study where they compared a group of people with Rheumatoid arthritis using standard anti-inflammatory drugs like Voltaren, really harsh drugs, but effective in dealing with the inflammation and the other group used a highly bio-available form of Curcumin and the Curcumin group did better. So we can get interested in the doses, the type of Curcumin and all that, because it really works so well, it actually influences more than 700 genes positively. All the inflammation pathways were blocked.
So firstly he said, 'that a relatively high dose is needed to achieve these therapeutic effects and Curcumin is generally not absorbed very well' and the doses were up to three grams of bio-available Curcumin extract, 3-4 times daily which is very difficult to achieve using standard Curcumin powders. So he was talking about a few recipes to increase the bio-availability. So he talked about doing, a micro-emulsion by combining a tbsp of Curcumin powder with one or two egg yolks and a tsp or two of melted coconut oil, and put that in a hand blender on a high speed to emulsify the powder. I was thinking also that you could liposomal of Curcumin put it in an ultra-sonic cleaner to make a liposomal version of Curcumin.
He also said, ' that another strategy is to put 1 tbsp of Curcumin powder in a pot of boiling water, it must be boiling when you add the powder else it will not work as well in room temperature water. Then heat the water and Curcumin together and after boiling for 10 minutes you'll have created a 12% solution and you can drink this once it has cooled down', so that's another trick.
And I thought that was interesting to experiment with because a lot of people use Curcumin powder, and yes we do it in recipes but I think this is worth experimenting with because it's so potent. The anti-inflammatory drugs used are the kind of drugs used in the emergency room to stop pain from things like kidney stones. So if Curcumin can do something similar, I think it's a definite must-have in an emergency kit.
Erica: I wonder if juicing the turmeric root Gaby might be another way to get a high dose of the Curcumin, you know you get the root and put it through a juicer?
Gaby: I will experiment with that as well. That's a good idea. And just knowing that it's a more bio-available in fat, like coconut oil and egg yolks and if you use the ultra-sonic cleaner or a blender, that's very interesting.
Tiffany: I've also read that it's more absorb-able if you have it with black pepper. So whatever you're eating or cooking with add some black pepper to it.
Gaby: Yeah, that sounds good too.
Jonathan: I've done the raw root in the past. I basically put it in with hot water and coconut oil in a blender. I just peeled the root and then chopped it up and put it in there and blended it at a high speed for about 3 minutes I noticed that when I'm sick and I noticed that I get really flushed and then really tired. It seemed like it was my system going, "Whoa hey, now we have some stuff to work with, now go to sleep for a while."
Erica: Yeah, I've done the fresh juice with apple cider vinegar. I think I've mentioned it on a show before. When you have a sore throat or even a sinus issue use this as a tincture and you can put it in your mouth and hold it in your throat and then swallow it to help drain pressure in the sinuses and the ears.
Gaby: Will that be diluted with filtered water?
Erica: No just straight turmeric juice and some apple cider vinegar. So it's a strong solution for sure.
Doug: That's kind of a tincture yeah.
Erica: Don't get it on your clothes!
Gaby: People have had amoeba problems when the do the non-filtered version to wash their sinuses. I have heard really scary stories of people getting brain amoebas from the water.
Erica: Oh, yikes!
Doug: Doing an alcohol tincture of turmeric would be really good, if you slice it up and put it into some kind of alcohol solution, the more pure the alcohol the better, vodka is used quite often. You let it sit on the counter for about a week or so, and it draws out all of the medicinal components and then you've got a very strong tincture that you can use. Or you can just buy a turmeric tincture too from your health food store. Those can be very helpful as well.
Erica: I've also seen it used in massage oils, again a caution that it will dye whatever clothes you're wearing but mixed in a massage oil either the liquid form or the powder form and then rub it on your body for sore muscles or sprains and pains.
Jonathan: So if anybody's worried about their summer tan declining you just rub yourself down with turmeric. (Laughter)
Tiffany: This is a long lost Halloween remedy; you could come out looking like a pumpkin.
Doug: Well that's funny because I know a guy who actually does baths in turmeric, he'll put turmeric into the bath and just soak in it for a while and apparently he got into quite an argument with his landlord because he totally stained his bathtub yellow and His landlord was not too happy about that.
Jonathan: Let's move on to our articles for connecting the dots. Erica, do you want to talk a little bit about the decline of play, this looks like an interesting piece.
Erica: Yeah, so the name of the article is; "The Decline of Play in Pre-schools and the Rise of Sensory Issues." and this came out the 1st September in the Washington Post and basically she's an occupational therapist who has written many popular posts on a blog. Some of the titles of her articles are: "Why so many kids can't sit still in school today." and "The right and supposedly wrong to get kids to sit still in class." then another one "How schools have ruined recess." She's the founder of an organization called Timbernook and it's a nature based developmental program designed to foster creativity and independent play outdoors in New England. There's a little discussion about a Mum who is suffering with her child who is having challenges in kindergarten.
The premise of the article is that preschool years are optimal for playing, but what's happening is that there's a high focus on teaching kids reading, writing, arithmetic and how to maintain themselves in the classroom environment. As a result there are all kinds of problem solving issues and difficulties with social interaction that children are experiencing. So she says, "We constantly see sensory, motor and cognitive issues that pop up more and more in later childhood partly because of inadequate opportunities to play and move within early age." And she said, "when children reach elementary school we have to teach special breathing techniques, coping skills, run social skill groups and utilize special exercises in an attempt to teach children how to be still and improve focus. However these skills shouldn't have to be taught because it's something that should be developed at a young age in the most natural sense through meaningful play experiences, which is something that children aren't getting. If children are given ample opportunities to play outdoors everyday with peers there would be no need for these specialized exercises or meditation techniques for the youngest in our society. These things would naturally develop through play."
We really see this in the American education system in the last 20 years that this idea that playing is a waste of time, the environment is so controlled, children can't be outside because there's all these concerns like, "What if they get dirty". In a previous show we covered the ideas of germs being bad and that kids need to have this sanitized environment.
The author say, "Let the adult direct learning experiences which kids are now experiencing in preschool happen later- Preschool children basically need to play." We see this again and again with children not even knowing how to be outside and create their own environment, to interact with each other, this idea of social isolation and to use the environment around them to stimulate learning, you know, putting kids outside and saying figure it out. I don't know about you guys but when we were kids it was like after school you go outside and you don't come back inside until dinner time, we didn't have all these toys and things, you interacted with your natural environment.
On an added note there was recently an article on Sott.net about children growing up on farms, in particular dairy farms, having stronger immune systems; they get dirty, they're bare foot in the mud, they get to develop stronger immune systems, in particular to things like asthma because they're in their natural environment and their body is building their immune system and their gut microbes.
It's again another sign of the times about how we're isolating our kids so much that they're now not being able to cope when they get into school and in later in years. I really think there needs to be a shift, I don't think it will happen in our lifetime, where schools and in particular preschools focus on letting kids BE and interact with each other and environment without this constant regimented, moment by moment control of the situation.
As we've talked about in our addiction radio show, the technological influence as well, kids playing farm games on the computer, instead of being outside actually interacting. So, it's disconcerting for sure.
Gaby: (inaudible) ... even for drawing children get tablets and stuff instead of doing it on paper.
Doug: There's kind of an overprotective aspect to it all too, I know a couple of people who have kids right now and the normal way to treat your children these days is pretty unbelievable. I always walked to school when I was a kid, always, I would ask my parents for a ride and they would laugh at me and say, "No get out there and start walking." But these days it's expected that the kids are accompanied to school, even until they're 15-16 years old. You can't trust the world enough to leave a kid alone on their way to school. There's this fear that there's a bogey man around every corner who's going to jump out and grab you and do absolutely horrible things to them, and it's not to say that those kinds of things don't happen but I think that there's this over protective aspect where you can't trust your child outdoors at all.
Like you were saying Erica, when I was a kid in the summertime I'd wake up, eat breakfast and I'd go outside and I wouldn't be back home till dinner, that's what we did. I was out in the forest and in corn fields, bike riding through trials and stuff like that. Kids these days just can't do that.
They have to be watched, you can't trust the world enough to allow your child to interact with it, you need to be there watching every second of the day. You get these play dates where the kids can't just hook up with another kid and play there has to be a date set where, "So and so is going to so and so house and they're going to do this activity ." they can't just BE.
Erica: Yeah, it's helicopter parenting. The parent has to constantly watch, I even went through this with my own children, feeling like you're supposed to intervene when there's a problem between kids. And the gist I got from this article was that those kinds of things happen without parents around they learn how to cope in situations. They learn how to deal with the issues that arise whether it's not sharing or arguments and then they work it out and it seems like now a parent or a teacher always has to intervene and we have to have timeouts and things like that. And it's a major regulation of all aspects of their lives, it's not surprising that when they get to elementary school that they don't have those coping skills and you get the kid that's always tattling you know.
Jonathan: The safety hysteria thing is kind of interesting to me too because Doug I can echo what you said about playing when I was a kid, I mean part of fun was putting yourself in imminent physical danger.
Erica: But you learned from that right.
Johnathan: Yeah exactly, now I know you're not supposed to jump out off a tree at 20ft because it hurts when you land.
Tiffany: Well that's what we did, swing up as high as we could and jump off, jump off garages, climb trees. There were always gangs of free roaming kids running around the neighborhood when I was growing up and there wasn't an adult breathing down your neck. Parents would tell their kids, "Get out of here; go outside and play, get from under my feet, you're getting on my nerves."
There is also this hysteria around people getting arrested or having their children sent to protective services because they let them walk to school on their own or go to the park by themselves. It's ridiculous!
Erica: Or this whole helmet law where every kid has to have a helmet on which I understand the safety aspect of it but at the same time it's again that fear, "You got to put your helmet on even though you're only riding a tricycle on the front yard."
Doug: I never wore a helmet when I was on my bike, EVER and the stuff we were doing on our bikes was so dangerous, we would build these jumps and ramps and be getting crazy air lifts, and riding through the forest at insane speeds. Never once did we think about the idea of wearing a helmet. Helmets were for losers. (Laughter)
Erica: And now you in some towns you can get a ticket if your kids riding a bike without a helmet on. (Laughter)
Gaby: (inaudible)
Erica: Safety first!
Tiffany: I think that overall kids are sent away to school way too early. I'm against school in all situations, sending a kid off to preschool at three years old is just too much. They are not meant to sit down and learn. They're little balls of energy, they need to be out and running around and playing because that's how they learn. They're not meant to grasp higher concepts until they learn how to move their bodies and interact with people or interact with their peers in a social way, get hurt and start crying and skin their knees and all that stuff. Then when they do all that maybe they'll be able to sit around for a while and learn their ABC's, maybe.
Erica: I worked in a preschool and it was a Montessori school so it's a little bit more of an alternative approach to education but at the end of the day the idea was that we've got to normalize these kids to be on the same page. And that was such a disturbing thought, what is normal, is it a normal thing that a 4 year old can sit for five hours without fidgeting and jumping around, pulling their hair and staring out the window? It's almost as if people want to make little adults.
Doug: Yeah exactly, well-behaved adults.
Jonathan: And avoid the law-suits, I'm sure that's part of it, everything has become so litigious and you can sue the school for your kid getting a cut at school on the playground.
Doug: Don't get me started on playgrounds these days, they don't resemble the playgrounds of my youth at all, everything is plastic and padded. There's no possible way that you could injure yourself on this thing even if you ran into it at full speed, they're safety zones not play grounds! And they don't look the least bit fun.
Tiffany: Yeah, I haven't seen a tire swing or god forbid a merry-go-round in... I don't know how long. We'd get that merry-go-round going you'd have almost zero ... it'd be going at warped speeds; if you didn't hold on you'd fall off. (Laughter)
Erica: Or get dragged around.
Doug: You're learning valuable lessons about physics while you're doing that.
Erica: Some states don't even have swing-sets, they've completely outlawed them from all playgrounds, it's frightening, I always joke that these are going to be the people that are going to be taking care of us all when we're senior citizens, we are screwed!
Doug: Get ready for your padded room and your helmet.
Jonathan: What's interesting to me is that all these things have taken place and there's this safety hysteria over kids and yet all of us in older generations are the ones that we're the ones remembering when play was dangerous or at least a little bit risky and there wasn't this crazy hysteria over getting slightly injured or a raspberry on the gravel road. Where did all these restrictions come from? Is it just from lawyers or is it just that the few really anal people took over society; how did this happen that it's so overblown now. That's something I wonder about because almost everybody you talk to who's older than 30-35 remembers having dangerous play when they were kids. So, I'm just curious how that came about.
Doug: We've got a caller on the line named Al who had a comment for us, go ahead Al.
Al: Hey, how you doing? Thanks for taking my phone call. I had to laugh when you were talking about the playground. I'm giggling because I remember as a kid playing on the playgrounds and everything was metal, the nuts and the bolts sticking up all over the place and now everything is foam and they've got rubber rocks and rubber all over the ground now. You've got to be kidding me. We fell, we jumped and played all over everything and never got hurt. Even if you got cut you ran home to your Mum, stuck a band aid on it and you went out to play five minutes later. Now you got to worry about everybody suing everybody and it's like, "Oh My God what is going on today!"
It's basically raising a generation of fearful children, children are going to be afraid to do anything a little bit physical or rough and tumble that might actually hurt them. It's crazy, and the thing with the helmets- I know exactly where you're coming from with that, you're afraid to do anything anymore.
Jonathan: Al how do you think this safety hysteria came about, what's your opinion on that?
Al: That's a good question, I don't know. Even with my kids... I'm 50 and we were allowed to play. I think it's just one generation and then the next, I don't know if it's social media, I have no idea. It's insane, that's all I've got to say about it.
Erica: Al, have you seen this happen just in your kids' generation? I know you said you had kids and you were 50 has it changed in your kids generation since your kids were young and they've grown older?
Al: Oh, of course! Even myself with my sons and their friends in the car, when we were young; I remember my mum having 15-20 kids in the VW, we'd all climb in the car, today you don't do that because if little jimmy/Johnny gets hurt in the car you've got to worry about their Mum or Dad suing you now. So times have really changed, you've got every attorney advertising on TV, "Hey did you get hurt here... Call me...Free easy money." It's like you're afraid to go out and check your mailbox because if you close the mailbox on your finger you can go sue the mailbox company.
Tiffany: Back to your question Jonathan, I think it's a few different factors playing into it, one is, playing outside with the stick and climbing the trees; It's not like we didn't have toys and Barbie's and all that stuff when we were growing up but I think consumerism and the shift towards video games and tablets and videos and DVDs all moved that outdoors stuff indoors and then once society starts crumbling the really crazy people make it into positions of power -not that they weren't there in the first place- but then you have the authoritarian followers and everybody just becomes hysterical and super-crazy and impose all these draconian and weird freedom sapping laws on people. That's just my theory
Al: Do you remember being young and getting at Christmas these creepy crawlers and you would mold your own spiders and things like that. And you would initially have this rubber and you would mold your own creepy crawlers, you'd touch these things and you'd get third degree burns; today you would never get away with that stuff. You've got to have safeties upon safeties on these things today.
Erica: And you always get the kid that eats it too.
Al: Exactly! And those science kits that you used to have, today you couldn't have that, the bottles that used to come in that stuff, you could kill half the people in your town with the stuff they used to give you.
Tiffany: I used to mix violate chemicals in the bathroom.
Doug: All in good fun.
Al: But you know what nobody thought about that, the worse you did with the science kit was make the house smell or give off some gas or something like that but you never thought about those things, who thought about hurting anybody back then. Today it's rampant.
Jonathan: It's interesting, it seems to me that there's actually a little bit of hypocrisy going on about that because there is all this concern about safety and toys having rounded corners and all that kind of stuff, and yet that doesn't translate into the environmental toxins or the diet. Parents will be hovering over their children and then feed them fruit loops with sugar on top and the idea that their concerned about their safety but then are giving them this really potent drug essentially just seems discouraging.
Doug: Or letting them play violent video games and all this other social media craziness.
Jonathan: Well, as long as they are not actually hurting people, you can do it in a game.
Doug: Yeah, it's just hurting their brain. Ok, Al well thanks for your call.
Erica: As we've covered in previous shows the idea of kids not sitting still and then we just drug them right, just give them some Ritalin or some Adderall -legal speed basically- I'm saying just give them a cup of coffee! (laughter)
Gaby: They can get brainwashed with mindless games.
Doug: Well I think the media plays a big role in whole spreading of this fear too. Now if an incidence happens it's in the nightly news across the entire country and everybody is getting implanted with this idea that this is something that's possible. So while it might be something that is relatively rare or unlikely suddenly everybody has that fear drilled into them and its like, "Oh my god I've got to protect my kids from this."
The sensationalist news -they sell headlines this way so people read this and they're constantly bombarded with these ideas of how unsafe the world is. So suddenly they're like, "Yeah, you know what every time my kid goes outside they've got to wear a helmet they've got to wear snow pants until June."It's just ridiculous.
Erica: Just wrap them in some Saran wrap and send them out.
Jonathan: Alright well let's move on a little bit, Doug you get the next one, do you want to talk a little bit about the posture mood connection, this looks interesting.
Doug: Yeah, this was an article we posted on Sott.net, it's from: care2.com; published on august 31st and it's called, "Why You Should Stop Slouching: The Posture Mood Connection." So, they start off by saying, "Want to feel more confident and energetic? Stand up straight and strut your stuff because there's a connection between posture and mood." They interviewed a couple of different specialists in this article; one of them was named Vivian Eisenstaedt who's an Orthopaedic and sports physical therapist, a postural specialist, and spiritual psychologist. Which I thought was a really interesting combination of things. She believes our physical, mental and emotional states interact and affect each other on a moment-to-moment basis. She says that, "Poor posture carries with it an energy." "Depression, fatigue, and insecurity are just some of the feelings that are associated with shoulders forward and forward head posture." "Standing straight exudes a sense of pride, confidence, and promotes happiness by standing straight, you actually feel better. Try it right now. I'll bet you feel sexier."
It's very interesting though because I have actually noticed this thing in myself, it's like you can visually see it in other people. Just by seeing somebody when they've got that stooped posture with their shoulders forward, they don't look like a happy person, they don't look confident, they look like they're very inwardly turned. It's interesting that it kind of goes both ways, by adopting that posture you can actually end up taking on that mood and by standing up straighter and stuff it actually does affect your mood; whereas from the other direction when you are in that mood you will be more likely to take on those postures. So it kinda goes both ways, and you can kind of address these things from both sides. So, I thought that was pretty interesting.
Also they interviewed a guy called Dr Steven Weiniger and he has a website called; Body Zone and he gives a couple of interesting tips: he says, "you can drive taller by adjusting the review mirror in your car so that you have to sit tall to be able to see it." He says, "walk taller by imagining a string lifting your chest and the top of your head to the sky." and I've done that exercise myself when I remembered to and it's really good for adjusting your posture, you imagine that you've got a string pulling on the top of your head, bringing everything upward.
He says, "You can change the angle of your computer monitor by putting a book under it or something underneath the monitor or laptop to prop that up so that you don't end up hunched over it." He said, "For part of the day you can sit on one of those exercise balls at your computer or at the TV or wherever you happen to be because it encourages pelvic support." He says, "You can move your car seat back for long trips so that your legs are more extended."
He says, "That you can take a break every once in a while to do posture exercises, a one minute break every 30mintues." is what he recommends. He says, "It's good idea to take a picture of yourself right now, probably better to take a candid photo, so you can see where you're at, and then you can start trying all these steps and take a picture of yourself in two or three months and see if there's a difference." he says, that there will be.
Another doctor of chiropractic that was interviewed for this article was Dr. Dennis Enix; he's from Logan University in St. Louis. And he said that one of the biggest posture sins is text neck and we've talked about this in the past shows, the whole idea that you're hunched over your phone and your head is drawn forward. He points out that, 'the head weighs 10-20lbs however the force of the head titled down at a 60 degree angle puts 60 pounds of weight on the neck and shoulders.' So I think that massage therapists and other body-workers are seeing an epidemic of this, 'text neck'; when people are having these sore necks sore shoulders from being hunched over the phone like this. It says, "it leads to herniated discs in the cervical spine."
The articles really interesting and I recommend reading it, they actually give a couple more pointers on the right way to sit, the right way to stand, and methods for improving your posture and by doing that you're automatically improving your mood as well, so a very interesting article.
Jonathan: That's cool, I can recommend a really good book on posture that's called, "8 Steps to a Pain Free Back." It sounds like just a 'whatever physical self-help' book you might find in the store but there's a lot of really detailed explanation of different types of posture, sleeping different exercises you can do, micro adjustments to correct a lot of back and neck pain. If you feel like looking that up it's on Amazon.
Well, let's see we've got one more connecting the dots and then we'll get into out topic for today. It's an article that was on Sott.net called; "Shaking the foundation of medical research. Half of failed peer reviewed papers 'spun' as success." It's for the statisticians and the crowd, Dr. Malcolm Kendrick reports a new study that he says, "Should shake the foundations of medical research." but laments that it probably won't. He says, "It almost certainly won't." In the year 2000, the US National Heart Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) insisted that all researchers register their, "primary aim" and then later there, "primary outcome" with clinicaltrials.gov. It seems like a no-brainer they had to say at the beginning this is what we're intending to do with this study and then at the end they say this is what happened. What they found was that before this standard was instituted that 57% of studies found the success they said they were testing for, after this was instituted, their success rate fell to an 8%. From 57% to 8%! And what they found was that when people didn't have to declare what their aim was at the beginning they could fish through their results to find some positive, tangential association and report that as if they had been investigating that effect all along. Its like, "Oh yeah, no we were looking for this actually."
It's an interesting little article I think it's something that we understand and our audience probably understands from a lot of the research that we've talked about on the show that the medical establishment will prop up data and alter data, or selectively pick data to suit their needs as to what they're looking to do.
An interesting small point is that if you force people at the beginning of the study to say what they're looking for then that's written down and they can't change that at the end, at the end they have to say what happened and see if it matches up with what they were looking, and the success rates for these studies goes way, way down to 8% which is pretty incredible. That to me I think would warrant an entire re-writing of the methods of how these papers are written.
Doug: Yeah, well it doesn't follow the principles of science you know. The idea of science is that you're investigating something just to see what happens, what it is, to investigate, to find out, you shouldn't go in there with a pre-conceived goal. I want to show that the vegan diet is the superior diet for ... (Bad audio) and you'd alter the study so it'll give you the results you want to see. That's completely contradictory to what science is supposed to be about. The goal of any scientific study should be to find out, to see what actually is going on. There shouldn't be a goal, maybe something like, "to investigate such and such" that should be your goal to find out whether X or Y is true, but really I see a big problem with that.
Gaby: You're not the only one.
Jonathan: I think there's a merit to having a hypothesis that you're testing. I see what you're saying too, setting out to prove a pre-determined goal, you have to also be willing to be disproven.
Doug: Yes, exactly but people become very attached to their hypothesis and they don't want to consider a failure, if you can prove your hypothesis is correct. I see it all the time in diet studies, they do some kind of study and what they report in the abstract, because they know not many people are going to be reading the full study. They're going to just look at the abstract, "Just give me what happened" which is kind of understandable especially doctors and things, they don't have a lot of time to be reading entire studies and looking at methodologies of things like that but the abstract allows for like a spin zone.
A place where you can spin your results to what you want to be said. And there are so many examples of where you read the abstract and if you actually start digging into to the study and look at the methodology and you'll find so many errors and so many assumptions. You find that in a lot of these cases the abstract says the exact opposite of what was actually found because maybe the results weren't totally politically correct, or they went against what the researchers were actually trying to prove. Or the funding for the study came from somebody who had an agenda; it's gotten to the point where you can't actually trust the studies.
Gaby: This is where all the corruption gets spun; spinning the web, through this entire statistical nightmare. You can pretty much prove or get away with anything, it sounds pretty horrible but I've seen it firsthand myself. When I was very young in Italy I got involved in a multi-centred study and the sponsors were a corporation from California who were studying a particular technology to be used in bi-pass surgery and the corruption I witnessed was jaw-dropping. At some point I was a coordinator of the study, gathering samples and results, gathering all the data and just to witness how other centres publish their results from what I saw firsthand. These studies have to be overviewed by a third party just to make sure there is no corruption. And I sat with her sharing all the data I'd collected and she just shared stories with me, we pretty much had an informal conversation, and she was telling me that she was going to quit the job which she was going to go to Dominican Republic to be a teacher because she was so horrified. Shortly after that I was leaving the speciality altogether you know. First ...,(Bad audio) yes!
Doug: Yeah, it's almost like doing a study is one step in propagating the lie, it's like, "Well we need the public to think this, lets design a couple of studies and we'll get a couple of headlines in the paper and that'll show what we want" It's pretty disgusting.
Gaby: To be fair just to mention there's also the other side of the coin, there is also very good research. But yes you really have to apply scientific principles and use your intelligence and when you read other studies or when you do studies, you need to be aware against cognitive biases - you are not so smart.
Jonathan: It's kind of like what we talked about on our episode about alternative medicine, that there's a lot of really, really good really effective cures in, "alternative medicine" for different conditions and diseases and yet at the same time that should not cause people to say, "Well I'm never going to a hospital for anything." Because there are cases in which modern technology is really beneficial and there are doctors who actually know what they're talking about and are experts in certain areas. So people need to steer clear of black and white thinking and take each situation in its own context and try not to develop cognitive bias in one way or another and just say, "Well is this valid or is that valid" and just approach each thing on its own.
So that brings us into our topic for the day, we're talking about weird remedies and folk medicine and I think that a lot of the stuff that we talk about normally on the show could be considered, kind of weird for a lot of people.
Liposomal vitamin C what is that, you know. (Laughter)
But you know there are some things, fortunately, that are not done very much anymore like bleeding, I should clarify that because I guess there are some cases where there are some cases where bleeding is effective but that bleeding with a rusty knife in a barn. Yeah, so there is a line between some of these things that are kind of crazy and some of the things that seem crazy but aren't. So we are going to dance all over that line today and talk about some of these things. So I guess my first question to start of the discussion is: what do you guys see as the really crazy stuff that used to happen that we don't do anymore? What should we be grateful that we're not doing anymore?
Tiffany: I would say that for me I like trepanation: where they make a hole in the skull and it exposes the outer layer of the brain and they use it to relieve pressure. I think sometimes this is still in use in head trauma, if someone has excessive swelling on the brain they use a splint or something and have to release the pressure in some way. But throughout history they've being using this to treat evil spirits, to cure epilepsy, migraines and mental disorders. And I guess archaeologists have found old skulls all over the world with holes drilled into them. I was just wondering if they got hit with a rock or something but I guess there are too many bones. They had to be doing at least some of them on purpose but the weird thing that I've found while looking into trepanation was that there's this group of people called, the International Trepanation Advocacy Group. They're still in operation and they want to make it easier for people to volunteer to be trepanised because they say it increases blood flow and it can restore youthfulness to the brain. I didn't go too deep into it because it was just so silly but they're doing these studies and seeing if people who had holes drilled into their skulls had increase in brain function. A lot of times they didn't. - Gee, I wonder why?! - Of course we were just talking about studies and statistics, you can make your study to look like whatever you want it to look like but I think that's probably the weirdest thing for me.
Doug: There's actually some somewhat legit science to this, there's one researcher who's a Russian neuro-physiologist called Yuri Moskalenko, he actually wants trepanation to be used as a therapy for Alzheimer's. It looks like there's actually something to it, the idea is that the head is kind of a closed system and blood goes into the brain and then cerebral spinal fluid goes out to make room for it. And the problem is that in Alzheimer's the proteins in the brain start to harden and they don't allow that system to work as well anymore. So, by drilling a hole in the head that increases the pressure because the blood's going in and the cerebral spinal fluid doesn't come out and they've done some studies and it looks like by drilling a hole in the head you're actually relieving some of that pressure. People seem to improve from their Alzheimer's symptoms, at least to a certain degree.
Mind you I think from doing the research that we've done on the Ketogenic diet, and looking into the recent research on Alzheimer's where they sometimes call it type III diabetes because it's related to the body's ability to process sugar. I think the hardening of those proteins is probably from an excess of sugar- the glycation of those proteins. We talked about that in past shows where basically these proteins caramelize from being exposed to too many carbohydrates and then that causes the stiffening and that's why this system of the brain being able to release the pressure isn't working so well anymore. So, I think diet would be the first step before you start drilling holes in your head.
Gaby: I'd be very wary against any mechanical means to release that pressure, it sounds like a typical mainstream solution, like stimulating your vagus nerve, "I know let's use a pacemaker" While you can ...(Bad audio) your breathing exercises, how hard is that. It's like the chemical solution, drill a hole.
Doug: Well it's like a hack basically, it's like somebody who's eaten a crappy diet all their life and is paying the price for it now you know, "How can we solve this problem, I know let's drill a hole in their head". It's fundamentally not getting to the heart of the matter, not finding and treating the cause, it's a short sighted solution, like giving a mastectomy in case there might be breast cancer in the future, which we've talked about in the past.
Tiffany: That's where that saying comes from because everybody know that it's stupid, "I need another piece of cheesecake like I need a hole in my head."
Jonathan: They should change that up and instead of saying that, "I need that like I need to be trepanated"
Doug: Or, "I need another piece of cheesecake and I need a hole in my head."
Jonathan: I think just to clarify we're not talking about a situation when there might be emergency surgery when there's bleeding in the brain and in the operating room they have to drill a hole to relieve that pressure or something like that. Trepanation is definitely different to that. What makes me curious about it, isn't it an open wound, wouldn't that be considered an open wound?
Doug: Pretty much.
Erica: Smack some bacon on it.
Jonathan: Let's go to that one next Erica you were talking a little bit about some of the Amish remedies that seem crazy but might actually have been shown to work, like putting bacon on a wound.
Erica: Yeah, we talked about this in a previous show, I found this really great little book, and it's called; "Home Remedies from the Amish Country. Powerful Time Tested Remedies." it's the revised, fifth edition. And it's literally like a pamphlet size but it's all of these people that wrote in and shared their little home remedies that worked and one of them if you have a sprained ankle; to put some cured bacon on it. Again we talked about this in a previous show with sores.
Tiffany and I were looking through the book and tried to find something that was repeated time and again was the use of raw garlic, basically it says raw garlic eases pain by stimulating the immune system and it's a natural biotic, it takes care of parasites. For something like arthritis; they suggest chopping two cloves of garlic and leave it to set for five minutes in warmed olive oil, and fill the toe of a clean sock with the mixture and then rub the poultice over affected areas for several minutes. It also said if you have itching; whether it's from a flea bite or a rash of some sort to take six cloves of garlic, steep it in hot water for 20 minutes, strain and add vitamin E and then rub it into an affected area.
Tiffany: They use garlic oil for lots of ear aches and ear infections too but the one that really was a weird remedies, for haemorrhoids, somebody wrote in it's probably Mrs. Jeddah or something, take a garlic clove and insert it several inches into your rectum and then go to bed and then in the morning wake up, have a bowel movement and put another garlic clove in there.
Erica: Apparently, it's a well tested remedy for relieving haemorrhoids especially for pregnant women.
Doug: Well I mean garlic does have natural anti-inflammatory properties. I guess I can see why that would be effective. It's funny you kind of wonder who the first person that came up with that was.
Erica: And how!
Tiffany: Did he accidentally sit on a clove of garlic and say, "Oh, gosh my haemorrhoids feel better".
I've heard of garlic cloves for yeast infections too, and plain yoghurt, frozen and then made into a vaginal suppository, that's actually worked.
Doug: Yeah, they've got lots of supplements that have pro-biotic suppositories for yeast infections. So it's kind of a more modern version of the old yoghurt trick.
Jonathan: What interests me is that some of these remedies might sound kind of crazy but they actually have elements of them that do work; like rubbing a raw potato on a wart and then burying the potato in the ground. And a lot of people say that actually that works but I guess that I would tend to think that there are some compounds that are in the potato that work against the warts and that the burying it in the ground part is a holdover from old mythology, like your archetype ...(bad audio)
Tiffany: Yeah I've read that too! Bury it, not just buried in the ground, but bury it where no one else can find it, where did that come from?!
Gaby: Very special bacteria.
Doug: I guess maybe it has something to do with the physics term 'quantum entanglement', maybe it has something to do with that, and as the potato rots it rots the wart because the warts have been entangled with the potato.
Tiffany: That's very good, Doug.
Jonathan: We should do a study, let's take a hypothesis and do a study.
Doug: My goal will be to prove, that the potatoes are entangled with the warts.
Erica: Well, they also have a blurb in here about food poisoning and how garlic works but I found this little remedy interesting for food poisoning swallow raw egg whites until you feel better, this has got good results.
Tiffany: Swallow raw egg whites until you throw up, and then you'll feel better.
Doug: You know that one actually makes sense because there's a lot of things in raw egg whites that are binders so it might actually bind onto some of the toxic stuff that's giving you food poisoning, it's probably the same idea as using something like activated charcoal or bentonite clay or something like that.
Erica: Yeah, they had a lot of activated charcoal remedies in here too and also apple cider vinegar. A lot of recipes for apple cider vinegar, we could probably do a whole show on that! Also for food poisoning one tsp of apple cider vinegar in water, repeat every 2-3 hours.
Tiffany: I think in that book they recommended that if you were travelling somewhere and eating foreign food and drinking foreign drinks, take some apple cider vinegar before you start eating and maybe you won't get sick.
Doug: Yeah, well that one makes sense too because the apple cider vinegar is acidic. So you're increasing the acidity of your stomach and more likely to denature some of those proteins that might be causing problems.
Gaby: Yeah, when so many people with low acidity in their stomach, they cannot digest food properly. They are vulnerable to infections and plus they take drugs that inhibit the stomach acid which is worse. So yeah apple cider vinegar is really good.
Doug: Yeah, definitely.
Jonathan: Yeah a little while back I'd done some research on cleaning mould, because we had some mould that showed up on the stone walls of our basement and one of the points that I thought was really interesting was not to use bleach even though you would kind of think that bleach would kill mould, it actually doesn't it just turns it white. All of the recommendations that I found were to use white vinegar and that that would kill it. I guess you could draw parallels there, that if you're taking vinegar into your stomach either before or after eating a certain kind of food that would kill some of the harmful pathogens and prevent complications.
Doug: Well, if you think about it the stomach acid is one of our first defences against bad bacteria and viruses and things like that, our stomach acid is the first defence because it acidifies it completely so a lot of pathogens can't survive that acidity. So yeah, apple cider vinegar absolutely and don't do anything that will inhibit your stomach acid like taking these proton-pump inhibitors and things like that.
Jonathan: So, I was just thinking about something and I wish I could remember this. So maybe you guys can help me remember... I think we talked about this in a show in the past, that there was a cure for flu or for bio-infections that involved haggis or pig intestine or something like that and it was really, really nasty it was like rotted meat and garlic and some other things mixed together and it was from the 16th century. Maybe it was in relation to Ebola, I don't know, I really wish I could remember that but it was something that crossed my mind that we had been talking about for a little while. I'll see if I can find it here.
Doug: It actually kind of makes sense like rotting meat; what it essentially is, is meat that has bacteria that digests meat properly, to kind of grow and proliferate on it so by taking that in you're taking in some bacteria that will help to digest these things. So I can see how maybe having those things introduced into your body could be helpful in some way, as disgusting as it sounds. I've heard that people in need of help when they're transitioning to the Ketogenic diet taking in some raw meat because that raw meat will have the bacteria necessary for actually digesting protein and fat and that those will colonize in your digestive tract and help to break down the things that you're taking in, in your diet. So yeah I could see it, it makes sense.
Tiffany: Doug you have a way of un-weird-ifying these weird remedies.
Doug: A de - bunkifier.
Tiffany: See what you can do with this one because this one is probably my second most disgusting one- urine therapy.
Doug: Oh, I don't know.
Tiffany: Okay so, according to the proponents of urine therapy, they say in most people; if you're relatively healthy, if you're not taking street drugs and you don't have heavy metal toxicity or something like that in those cases urine is not a dirty and toxic substance. Urine is a by product of blood filtration not waste filtration and medically it's referred to as plasma ultra-filtrate. So it's a purified derivative of the blood itself. It's made by the kidneys of course, it's excreted and it can be compared to leftovers from a meal and may be things that your body didn't need at the time and it kind of excreted it out through the urine. So this blood is clean and it's filtered by the kidneys and it has excess water salts, vitamins, minerals, enzymes, anti-bodies, urea, and uric acid. So there have been products made with urea like beauty products. There's medication like Premarin that's made out of horse urine.
They say it's kind of like a homeopathic remedy, like if you do a clean catch on your urine first thing in the morning, they say first thing in the morning all the good stuff is in your pee then. If you do a clean catch, your genitals are clean and you start peeing and then you put the clean cup mid-way through your stream and you collect that then you have some of that to drink it's kind of like a homeopathic remedy for yourself, specifically made by your body for you. So, go with that Doug.
Doug: I don't know, yeah, all those things you just said they kind of make sense I guess, yeah I don't know, the whole pee and the poo thing, that's kind of where I draw my own personal line.
Tiffany: Well there's this old wives tale that I heard that back when people used cloth diapers they would take their diapers that their babies had peed in and they would wipe it on their faces because it is kind of an astringent and it helps the complexion.
Doug: Is it worth it?
Tiffany: I guess, I don't know.
Doug: How bad do you want a clear complexion! Like how bad do you want to do it, you're going to take your kids diaper and wipe it all over your face, I don't know. The thing about the urine therapy is that I've read quite a few somewhat prolific individuals who have done this, apparently Ghandi used to do it. I can't remember any of the others off the top of my head, but in ayurveda it's like a totally normal thing, it's something that you do. Yeah I don't know, I'd be hard pressed to actually try it.
Tiffany: Well I can confess I kind of dipped my toe into this whole urine thing but it was just so weird I could only do it just the once, I put a little on my skin ok, I confess to that. I may have tasted it but you know.
Doug: And what kind of miraculous results did you notice.
Tiffany: Miraculously noticed that I'm an idiot.
Erica: I will say it has been used if you get stung by a Wana sea urchin, in Hawaii they call it a Wana sea urchin, and you get a puncture wound at the beach, the thing that a local person will tell you to do is pee on it.
Doug: Yeah, somebody else can pee on it. I mean that one does make sense because it neutralises the poison, but the whole drinking your own urine thing, I just don't know if the benefits are strong enough for me to actually go there.
Tiffany: You've got to be like starving and have no water and be on the brink of death to actually really consider this.
Gaby: I have heard a story of a woman that survived a tragic plane crash, she got locked in the jungle for many, many days and she survived by drinking his own urine.
Jonathan: Seems like you'd quite making it at some point.
Erica: Maybe that should go on the survivalist check-list, if needs be.
Tiffany: When the shit hits the fan, be prepared to drink your own pee.
Doug: Well, oddly enough there is actually a medical procedure now which is essentially eating poo; it's called a fecal transplant. The idea is that somebody that has a really messed up digestive tract with all kinds of overgrowth of pathogenic bacteria can take in fecal matter from somebody who has a healthy digestive tract and that will kind of rebalance the messed up digestive tract by introducing beneficial flora. Now I've heard of this being done with enemas. So basically you're taking a poop enema, but I've also heard of a method where people stick a tube down their throat and drink a fecal transplant from their buddy. You skip your tongue and go straight to the stomach, when I heard about that it just kind of blew my mind, I was just like you've got to be kidding me.
Tiffany: But what if you burp afterwards.
Doug: And I'm sure you would.
Tiffany: I have heard of it in freeze dried capsules or something, I still wouldn't want to go that route.
Doug: I could see doing the capsule, I'd certainly be more likely to do that than a poo shake.
Jonathan: Yeah, I've got a strong constitution but that one is particularly hard to think about.
Doug: Yeah, there is definitely a natural revulsion to bodily waste you know, that I think would take a lot to get over it. You'd have to be in a really dire situation to consider these sorts of things.
Tiffany: Or don't.
Jonathan: There are some other weird ones here; I'm looking at this list that's pretty interesting that's called 14 crazy cures from ages past mad medicine. Some of them we've talked about already like trepanation, and some other ones that kind of make sense like Doug was talking about, certain things make sense when you really delve into it like, curing coughs with snail syrup, it says, 'one of the best remedies people had for sore throats and coughs was consuming the mucilaginous essence of snails.' From the 1728 and the quote is they, "They abound with a slimy juice; and are experienced very good in weaknesses and consumption, especially for children and tender constitutions. To make a syrup of snails, take Garden snails, early in the morning while the dew is upon them, one pound; take off their shells; slit them; and with half a pound of sugar, put them in a bag; hang them in a cellar and the syrup will melt and drop through; which keep for use. It possesses in the best manner all the virtues of snails." That's the quote.
Doug: All the best virtues of snails.
Tiffany: I didn't know snails had virtues.
Jonathan: So they're patient. So some of these other ones like curing haemorrhoids with a hot irons, that's a sort of primitive version of what is actually done now in hospitals where they'll drain the haemorrhoids with an incision and then cauterize the wound, it's kind of the primitive version of that. Where they basically use a hot iron to burn the haemorrhoids out which sounds horrible.
Erica: I think I'd try the garlic first.
Tiffany: Didn't they use hot iron in torture techniques.
Jonathan: Yeah, well one of my favourites and I say favourite tongue in cheek of course, is the fact that Bayer pharmaceuticals used to sell heroin in cough syrup for children. And you can do a simple Google search on this and you can see the old jars with the old tiny writing on them that says, 'Heroin, Friedrich Bayer & Company' or like a little poster with the kind of pyramid of healing products, aspirin, lycetol and heroin. And it was used for coughs, before of course it was discovered that it was one of the most addictive substances on the planet but it just makes me curious how many of the children were given heroin and were there any repercussions from that that we are probably not aware of throughout society.
Erica: Well kind of on that note; people still make tea of poppy, you know the poppy flower which is essentially what they make heroin out of. There is poppy tea, and lots of people eat poppy seeds on their bagels so.
Doug: No wonder those taste so good!
Erica: And you can't say no.
Doug: You can't eat just one.
Jonathan: And then of course, there's the ice-pick lobotomy, an ice-pick to the brain, that's a classic. They also have a, sugar coma for schizophrenia that would deliberately induce insulin comas designed to change the personalities of people with schizophrenia. Unfortunately, the majority of them were actually fatal which is kinda sad.
Doug: When was that Jonathan, when were they doing this?
Tiffany: Last week.
Jonathan: Well, strangely enough it does say that it lasted as long as the 1940's, into the 40's.
Doug: I wonder how many patients had to die before they decided it wasn't a good idea.
Jonathan: Yeah, unfortunately probably quite a few, I'd say. There's also another one of my favourites on this list is tobacco smoke enema and it was actually considered to be a cure all, kind of like a panacea that for anybody that was sick with any condition and their go to was to take a little bellows and fill it with smoke and ...
Tiffany: So, you're literally blowing smoke up someone's ass.
Jonathan: ... yeah exactly.
Doug: I'm sure that's where the expression came from. Oh boy, well actually speaking of where saying come from, Zoya was actually telling me that there's an old folk remedy. If you get bitten by a dog you're supposed to take the hair from that dog, like actually cut some hair off the dog and I can't remember what you do with it, I think you just put it on the wound and make a poultice of it and that's supposed to help with the healing of the wound. And apparently that's where the term 'hair of the dog' came from. So the idea that if you're suffering from a hangover from indulging too much you have another little drink to kind of take away some of those hangover symptoms. So it's called 'hair of the dog' that bit you because you're doing the same thing, taking more of that poison to relieve yourself.
Jonathan: It's just homeopathy right, like treats like. Except that in that case, like makes like worse.
Doug: I would think so; I've never actually tried that hair of the dog trick.
Erica: It would help if the dog was on a raw food diet.
Tiffany: Here's a pretty nasty one. I'm actually kind of a fan of it, not that I've ever seen it in action, thought I would like to, and it's a maggot debridement therapy. So people who have these wounds, really bad and they won't heal, really bad sores or diabetic ulcers or just wounds from trauma that won't heal and become chronic and have a bunch of dead tissue on them. There are actually medicinal maggots that they grow in a lab they get the flies and they hatch them in the lab and they sterilise the maggots and they have them in these little sachets I guess. And you pack them in the wounds and wrap it and you let it stay on the wound for up to 72 hours and the maggots they eat all of the dead tissue and then they let out some kind of digestive enzyme in their saliva that disinfects the wound. And after up to 72 hours they've probably eaten their fill, or eaten all of the dead tissue and at that point you open up the gauze wrap and you take the maggots out and the wound it clean and it's able to heal.
Gaby: Yeah, actually I saw a documentary about it and I saw it like live so to speak. The results before and after, and it was really remarkable, they did a pretty good job cleaning the wound. It was like oh my god, you can get those results only with skin grafts it's a surgical procedure basically to remove all the dead tissue and it's very traumatic. So to let the maggots do it and they produce enzymes that promote healing that's would be much better.
Tiffany: Yeah, I think back in World I or II, doctors noticed that the soldiers that accidentally got infested with maggots did a lot better than the soldiers whose wounds were not infested with maggots. So then they decided to put it into practice but I guess it kind of fell out of favour because antibiotics and surgical techniques came into favour.
Gaby: Well, I have an anecdotal story from Costa Rica. You know the healthcare assistants in the late nineties, it was a relatively good healthcare assistant comparatively speaking but we didn't have enough research into a lot of stuff, like for example in US or Europe they'll use special colloidal stuff or proper silver stuff to clean up wounds and we didn't have anything. So we just packed wounds with honey, open wounds like complications after caesarean or something that got complicated with bacteria like necrotizing fasciitis, flesh eating bacteria we needed hardcore antibiotics but what worked really well was packing the wound with honey, the whole wound with like half a litre of honey and we did have great results.
Doug: Yeah there are a lot of natural anti-microbial components in honey that can help with that. Especially the type of honey called manuka honey and it's bees that have fed on Manuka flowers, or dropped pollen from Manuka flowers. And there are a lot of anti-microbial properties in the Manuka plant as well and that transfers over into the honey. Yeah, there's a lot of good medicinal used for honey. It's just really high in sugar so don't eat it.
Jonathan: We actually had a case here where my girlfriend ripped her finger open and it was really bad, it was like a really big split in the tip of the finger and we put raw honey on it and it healed within about a week. It was really miraculous, like completely healed over. So, we've actually kept raw honey on hand just for that purpose, for cuts and things like that.
Gaby: Yeah, it's not to ingest it, it's just topical.
Tiffany: Yeah, I was going to ask if there's a deep puncture wound, can you put the honey inside that, it seems kind of weird to me.
Gaby: Yeah, the complications we solved; for example was like a caesarean cut and there was an infection, the whole wound was open, you could see all the tissues underneath and that is very difficult to heal. That could potentially take a lot of time. So what was generally done is to pack the whole thing, that's why it could take up to half a litre of honey, that's a lot under these tissues. Just packed it full of honey and closed it well and that was the joke because in Costa Rica we had lots of ants and creatures that like honey, that was the main concern of the patient, "What if the ants come over me?" and then the honey will do such a great job that if some surgeons attempt to close up the wound, you know like a normal cut where you go to the emergency room and you have stitches to close up the wound. They would attempt that because it was so clean and looking so good; so, a quicker healing time.
Tiffany: So, the honey can actually go in and be underneath the skin, like inside the body.
Gaby: Yeah, direct contact with the subcutaneous tissue and later when we clean up the wound we would clean up with a physiological solution and we won't even use... (Bad audio) nothing surgically just like remove the ... (Bad audio) and then it will be cleaned up again and re-packed again with honey and so-fourth.
Doug: Well, speaking of bees stuff, apparently bee stings can be quite helpful too for some things too. The venom from bees or wasps apparently has anti-tumour properties. We had an article on Sott.net a little while ago, I don't have it up right now but apparently taking bee venom can be quite helpful in cancer therapy. I don't know how stringent the studies are that have been done on this sort of thing but it made me think that if you're diagnosed with cancer you could just go out with a baseball bat and start beating on a wasps nest and maybe you get the therapeutic benefits from that.
Tiffany: I'm going to raise my hand again here and say that this is a wacky remedy that I have tried. This was in 2007 or something; you guys have all heard of, fatty lipoma which is a benign fatty tumour that people get on their bodies. So I have one of those and I was reading about bee therapy and there was this place that was like an hour away from my house where they did it. So I went there and I can't remember all the details but it was like a place attached to a dinky little health food store there, was some dingy little guy that kept some bees there and then some other people all sitting there on folding chairs and he'd come in and ask you if you were allergic to bees. I think they're supposed to test you, I can't remember if he tested me first to see if I'd have a reaction. So I just exposed my shoulder and he put about 8 bee stings into the lipoma and of course it didn't work. It didn't hurt that bad but it was just something I wanted to try, just because like before I said, I'm a complete idiot. So, I tried it.
Doug: You're adventurous Tiff.
Tiffany: Yeah, I'm adventurous, it didn't do anything whatsoever.
Doug: Well, I've had people come into my store and ask for bee venom honey, like apparently there honey you can get that has the actual bee venom in it and you can use that therapeutically so it might be an easier way to do that.
Tiffany: I've tried bee pollen, what were you going to say Jonathan.
Jonathan: How did they accomplish the bee sting, did they just put them in a jar on your skin and then kind of whack the jar or...
Tiffany: Ah, I think he just held the bee with his finger; maybe it would've worked better if the bees did it of their own free will. It was a little sore and itchy for a little while after that but it really didn't do anything but I've tried bee pollen too. I can't remember exactly why I tried that then; maybe it's for bee pollen as B vitamins. The first time I took it, it was fine and then the second time I took it I got so nauseous, I was actually driving and had to pull over and throw up.
Doug: Oh no, jeez. I mean there's lots of different bee products that they have, you know the royal jelly, which is the substance that the feed to the queen of the bee colony. There's bee pollen, there's all kinds of different bee products, and some people swear by them they just use them as a kind of tonic to take on a daily basis type thing. They've even talked about taking bee pollen as a way of getting over environmental allergies if you're allergic to pollen from different plants. You always get hay-fever or something like that; apparently bee pollen can be helpful to some people.
Tiffany: Yeah, that's kind of why I took it.
Jonathan: An anecdote as well, similar to Gaby's anecdote about honey. I believe that I have mentioned this on one of our shows in the past but this one has always fascinated me, that I had a friend who got a really bad gash on his leg, like a really deep open gash, and instead of going to the hospital or anything, he rinsed it out with apple cider vinegar and then packed it with sea salt and then wrapped a bandage around it and of course it hurt quite badly but it actually healed very quickly. He said it healed completely over, so I thought that was interesting. That's where you've got to bite down on a little wooden stick when you're doing that one.
Doug: Yeah.
Jonathan: Let's see, from this list I was looking at here to, there's another interesting one similar to the maggots was the tape worm diet. I don't have the date on this one but there's an image of a poster here that looks like it might be from the 20's maybe. It says, "Eat, eat, eat and always stay thin, fats the enemy that shorten your life, banished. How? With sanitized tape worms' jar packed". So, it also says in a very nice cursory script at the bottom, "Easy to swallow". So, I guess you could just take some tape worms and you can eat whatever you want.
Doug: The cure for the modern obesity epidemic.
Tiffany: And there are people that are desperate enough to try it.
Gaby: Yeah, I heard stories about top models drinking ... (Bad audio)
Jonathan: Let's see, we also have malaria as a treatment for syphilis, which was also from the 20's. A side effect of malaria is that it kills syphilis; you just have to go through the malaria part.
Gaby: I didn't understand; it kills what?
Jonathan: Syphilis, so yeah also mummy powder for health.
Gaby: Oh!
Tiffany: From actual mummies?
Jonathan: Yep, from actual mummies, in the 12th century people in the Middle East would dig up mummies and grind them up and use the powder for various health problems.
Doug: Oh, my god.
Gaby: They must be desperate right.
Doug: They must be! And again you have to wonder why anybody tried that in the first place.
All: Yeah.
Jonathan: There's also bloodletting which I think is another interesting one because that is actually still used for different conditions, is it Hemochromatosis that bloodletting can be useful for?
Tiffany: Yeah, that's it.
Jonathan: Ok, Doug you had mentioned when we were talking before the show the idea of humours and bad humours, that's related to the bloodletting, at the time, we're talking like 15th - 16th century, that they thought letting the blood was letting the illness out of the body, and that they were clearing out the bad humours.
Doug: It was basically like they had this model of medicine and this persisted for 2000 years so it wasn't even just a short blip on the radar as far as medical knowledge goes but they basically thought there was four different components in the body, four different liquids: there was black bile, yellow bile, phlegm and blood and that these things all had to be in balance and if they got out of balance by one humour being in either in excess or not enough of it then that's when disease would happen. So, they had different methods for getting rid of some of the certain humours in the body and bloodletting was one of them. If you had an excess of blood, they would basically bleed the patient to try and get rid of it. You know, I'm sure there are some situations like you were saying, Hemochromatosis where bleeding might actually be a good thing.
I know that Samuel Hahnemann who was the inventor of homeopathy, one of his motivations for developing this system of medicine, was that the system of medicine at the time was so primitive. He talks about cases where people were being bled to death because they weren't getting better by the bleeding. So rather than reassess the doctor would just be like, "bleed them more, and bleed them more, we've got to get more blood out of them." And they would die, it was all these kind of archaic principles that they were basing their medicine on, well maybe in some situations it may actually be beneficial but Hahnemann was basically accusing his fellow doctors of being barbarians and that they needed to really reassess the system of medicine because things were so crazy. But that's where the whole leeches' thing came from, putting leeches on somebody to therapeutically bleed them, but they would actually cut a vein too and let them bleed out.
Erica: And is that where the term came from, "you're bleeding me dry."
Doug: I'm sure.
Jonathan: Yeah, that seems to be another one of these cases where the practice itself is essentially stuck around but at the very least it's kind of sanitized now. Well, it's our cursory list of some of the weird remedies that have been around for some time.
Tiffany: Can I talk about another one? (Laughter)
Jonathan: Yeah, I had one more that I forgot too, go ahead.
Tiffany: Well, everybody's heard of fasting and different types of fasting, juice fasting, broth fasting, fat fasting, and bullet proof coffee, water fasting. So this was years ago again, when we were first getting into Ketosis. It's good if you want to jump-start getting into ketosis, you can have a two or three day water fast. So I did that but all the while, had nothing to do, I wasn't eating anything so I had some time on my hands, so I was reading about fasting and I came upon this website that talked about dry fasting and that's where you fast for up to 3 days without eating or drinking anything. It's supposed to give your body the ultimate cleanse because your cells just go crazy and just start eating all your dead tissues or tissues that need to be recycled and you still have water in your cells.
This guy was describing how he dry fasted for three days and he would urinate and it would just smell like pure sulphur and he would have these really awful smelling bowel movements and diarrhoea and at one point he would pass out and come back to and his muscles would be aching so much that he couldn't walk and he was just dying of thirst, he was thinking of water all the time and his mouth was so dry.
So, of course I thought this was a great idea. I'd already gone like 2 and a half days almost close to three days with the water fast, so I was like, "Hum, maybe I just won't drink any water for a little bit".
So I did that and probably round the time when I was like, "Maybe this isn't such a good idea, I'm really thirsty and I'm hungry and it's time to break my fast now." right when I started thinking that I got really, really nauseous; I started throwing up, and then by that point I couldn't eat anyway because I was too sick so I just went to bed. And then the next morning I broke my fast.
Jonathan: How long did you say you made it?
Tiffany: The water fast was probably three days, as far as not drinking water that was probably about eight hours.
Doug: I love that the guy was so tortured that you felt like you had to try it. (Laughter)
Tiffany: But he said when It was over it was the best thing that had ever happened to him he felt so good, and his first drink of water after going on a dry fast was like being touched by the hand of god.
Jonathan: Wow, that's pretty wild. Let's see here, the last one that I have that I'd forgotten to mention. If you look up mellified man on Wikipedia, mellified man or human mummy confection was a legendary medical substance created by steeping the human cadaver in honey. The concoction is mentioned only in Chinese sources, most significantly the books of the 16th century pharmacologist; Li Shizhen. He apparently was giving a second hand account but Li reports a story that some elderly men in Arabia, nearing the end of their lives, would submit themselves to a process of mummification in honey to create a healing confection.
This process differed from a simple body donation because of the aspect of self-sacrifice; the mellification process would ideally start before death. The donor would stop eating any food other than honey, going as far as to bathe in honey. Shortly his faeces, sweat and saliva would consist of honey. When this diet finally proved fatal, the donor's body would be placed in a stone coffin filled with honey.
After a century, these guys have long-term planning here, after a century or so the contents would have turned into a sort of confection reputedly capable of healing broken limbs and other ailments. This confection would then be sold in street markets as a hard to find item with a hefty price. And that was mellified man.
Doug: Mellified man oh, boy.
Jonathan: So, when you're nearing the end of your life and you know you're going to go, you need to send yourself off with honey and then you'll be beneficial to your great, great grandchildren, as a mellified man.
Doug: Oh, my god.
Jonathan: I just love the hundred year time line, it's not like where your (inaudible) ... for 10 days. So you see; you're covered for 100 years.
Erica: Make sure to label it.
Jonathan: Yes, put the date on the bottle. Alright well let' see, we have this segment from Zoya unfortunately she was not able to record something herself for us today but she is sharing with us a clip about Pancreatitis in your pets. So we're going to listen to that, it's about six minutes and then when we come back.
http://healthypets.mercola.com/sites/healthypets/archive/2009/12/16/dont-let-this-organ-ruin-your-pets-life.aspx
In the spirit on the show today we'll have a recipe for you of pickled pork which ends up looking like brains in a jar, so that's kind of fun.
Erica: Right in time for Halloween.
Jonathan: Yep, so here's some info about pancreatitis in your pets and we'll be back right after this.
PET HEALTH SEGMENT: Hello. I'm Dr. Karen Becker and today we're going to discuss a very important topic Pancreatitis. Pancreatitis is inflammation of your pets' pancreas. So 'itis: means inflammation and pancreas is inflammation of. So the term pancreatitis is deemed for inflamed pancreas of both dogs and cats that can come about for a whole multitude of variety of different reasons. Pancreatitis recently in veterinary medicine has been linked with a lot more symptoms than we previously thought to be true. So what we're realising about dog and cats is that fever, lethargy, abdominal pain, anorexia, vomiting and diarrhoea all can have its roots in pancreatitis. What's even more interesting about pancreatitis is that inflammation of the pancreas can come about either very, very mildly; it can be acute or chronic which means sudden or protracted. It can be very, very mild or it can be actually life threatening and can be fatal in some cases.
Inflammation of the pancreas is becoming more recognised as a problem in veterinary medicine and in fact just recently on autopsy, brand new research states that up to 40% of kitties that were autopsied had lesions of pancreatitis and those cats didn't die of any underlying pre-disposition to a pancreatic problem. So we're recognising that the pancreas is not only a vital organ but we're seeing a lot more problems with pancreatic inflammation than we have been before in veterinary medicine.
I think part of that honestly is because we're checking more, but what we know to be true is that the pancreas has two vital functions it secretes insulin which balances blood sugar and it secretes digestive enzymes, amylase, lipase and protease.
Now I have to be honest as a holistic veterinary I don't think its fluke or happen-stance that the pancreas has become more and more attacked as an organ because of its roles. We know that the high carbohydrate based diet, that most dogs and cats eat are very, very taxing to the insulin levels and then that and in turn part of the pancreatic function. But in addition the foods that we feed our dogs and cats are entirely processed and devoid of natural enzymes which help supplement the pets' diet and in turn the pancreas.
So the pancreas really can live in a state of chronic inflammation and stress because the average American pet diet is devoid of any amylase, lipase and protease and each canned or kibbled diet that you feed your cat; causes the pancreas to have to secrete an abundance of digestive enzymes ad if the pancreas is called upon to create enzymes and if they can't produce enough enzymes they condition of Pancreatitis results.
So, certainly there are some drugs that are well known to incite episodes of Pancreatitis, for instance anti-seizure drugs like: potassium bromide or Phenobarbital are well known to cause Pancreatitis issues. Those are drug induced episodes, other drugs like Prednisolone, which is a steroid well known to cause Pancreatitis or even Lasix or Furosemide which is a diuretic has been implicated in Pancreatitis attacks in dogs and cats. But diet also plays into low-grade recurrent Pancreatitis, many cats and dogs eat a diet that is much too high in fat and we know that fat is inciting cause also of creating low-grade recurrent Pancreatitis.
The other thing you have to think about is there are some animals like miniature schnauzers that have a genetic pre-disposition to having Pancreatitis. So if you've been through the nightmare of Pancreatitis you know all too well that number one; it's a very, very scary, number two; many, many animals require hospitalisation and very intense medical therapy to pull them through it and often times it can be repeated. So the Pancreatitis episode, the first time your pet gets it you can spend thousands of dollars getting your pet stabilised. I wish I could tell you that just putting your pet on a low residue, low fat diet will take care of it but the fact is that many pets end up with recurrent Pancreatitis.
So how veterinarians diagnose Pancreatitis is a blood test called the PLI test, and that is a blood test that helps identify the pancreatic immune reactivity, or the lipase levels that cause inflammation within the pancreas. So your veterinary may suggest that you run a PLI test to determine if your pet has dealing with a low-grade or sub clinical Pancreatitis. There's also two enzymes both lipase and amylase that can be elevated on traditional blood work, but most veterinarians rely on the PLI test for accurate and quick diagnostics to show that your pet is dealing with Pancreatitis.
My recommendation: if you're pet has failed the PLI which means that PLI levels are elevated beyond what they should be for your dog or cat. Is that you do seek medical attention if your pet is vomiting, lethargic, dealing with anorexia or has a fever but after the crisis has passed the very best insurance that you can buy that can afford your pet the opportunity to not repeat an episode of Pancreatitis. Is supply to them a rich source of digestive enzymes. We know that dogs and cats pancreases cannot secrete enough digestive enzymes to adequately process their food. And by you supplying a rich source of digestive enzymes in their diet which means a supplement, you can help reduce the amount of stress and strain the pancreas is under to adequately come up with enough enzymes to process their food.
So Mercola healthy pets has come out with an excellent enzyme that I recommend if you have pets that are dealing with Pancreatitis, have dealt with Pancreatitis or you are trying to reduce the likelihood of your pet exhibiting symptoms of pancreatitis. You adding digestive enzymes into the mix is the perfect way to help avoid complications dealing with Pancreatitis.
Jonathan: Well thanks Zoya, for sharing that bit of content with us and that was a Veterinary Dr. Karen Becker with some interesting information there. Of course yet another confirmation that the standard dry kibble diet is not good for pets and that we should be getting them more of a raw meat diet.
So speaking of raw meat, our recipe for today is pickled pork, and I guess this is kind of along the lines of weird remedies and folksy kind of stuff. I had been delving into the world of charcuterie and making pancetta and stuff like that and I have not actually tried it yet, I'm just trying to get my research done before I ruin an entire pork belly. But I am pickling some pork in the fridge right now and it is starting to look a little brainy, so it'll be done in a few days.
But this recipe is inspire by some Creole recipes from New Orleans; and the traditional way is to end up eating it with red bean rice, since we advocate the low carb diet you probably wouldn't want to use red beans in rice but you could go, "whole hog" and have it with some pork rinds, that might be for you.
I'm sure there's a number of ways to try this; I personally intend on trying it with some sauerkraut, we'll see how that comes out. This is not the recipe itself but I thought that this was very interesting; I found this inspiration for it on this site called; www.nolacuisine.com.
So the original recipe is from the Picayune's Creole cookbook in 1901. So this is a 114-15 years old, it says pork should be pickled about 20 hours after curing and of course this is when there wasn't really refrigeration. So that had to find different ways to preserve the meat, always in sufficient quantity to last for some time, for if proper care is taken it will keep one year after pickling, but it may also be pickled in small quantities of three or four pounds at a time. 225Lbs of pork allow one ounce of salt peter, pulverised thoroughly and mixed with a sufficient quantity of salt to thoroughly salt the pork. Cut the pork into pieces of 2lb each, slash each piece through the skin and then rub thoroughly with the salt and salt peter mixture until the meat is thoroughly penetrated. Mash cloves very fine and grind all spice, chop onions, take a small barrel and barrel and place at the bottom a layer of salt and a layer onions and sprinkle over this a layer of the spices and minced bay leaves, place on this a layer of pork packed tightly and then above this a layer of salt and seasoning and so on until the layers of pork and seasoning are used up or reach the top of the barrel, conclude with a layer of minced herbs and a layer of salt on the very top and then cover with a board on which a heavy weight must be placed to press down the meat, will be ready for use within 10-12 days.
So that's the classic recipe of pickling 25lbs of pork in a barrel which may be something to try some day but that would be a pricey experiment these days.
So this is the one that I'm actually trying right now which uses vinegar and some salt, instead of all salt. So this is 2lbs very fresh pork, this person used spare rib tips, boned and cut into strips 3inch long by one inch thick, I used a section of both pork belly, basically two strips that were about 5inches long by about 2inches wide, one quarter white vinegar, one half cup mustard seeds, six whole cloves, six whole all spice, one half tsp crushed red pepper, three fresh bay leaves, six whole garlic cloves, half a medium onion coarsely chopped, one tbsp of salt, one tbsp black pepper corns and it says here one pinch of pink meat cure. Now the pink meat cure is not actually necessary, and this is something that we've been talking about, we might do a show on this in the future; most people don't have salt peter or the cure number 1 or Prague powder lying around in their kitchen. So if you don't have that they aren't necessary because your steeping the pork in pure solution of vinegar and the vinegar is enough to keep it preserved so that it won't go bad in the fridge.
Add all the ingredients, except the pork to a two quart sauce pan, bring to a boil, boil for four minutes, and then place in a container to cool in the refrigerator; when the mixture is completely cold and then add the pork. So I basically stuffed the pork into a one quart mason jar and then poured the cooled mixture over the top of it. Make sure that the pork is completely submerged under the brine, kind of mash it down to make sure any air bubbles come out, cover and then put it in the refrigerator for four days.
There is some debate in the comments here as to whether or not you can eat it straight out of the jar, personally that's something that I wouldn't try, after only four days. I have in the past done pickled northern pike, which is basically raw fish steeped in vinegar solution and that I did eat straight out of the jar but it sat for about a month and that was a sufficient time for the vinegar to kill any bacteria that was in the fish meat. So that one I felt a little bit better about but pork after four days, I'm not so sure about that. So I guess use your best judgement on that one. But in the comments, in the recipe some people did say they did eat it straight out of the jar. Other people said that they took it out and then would boil it or bring water to a boil and then lower to a simmer for 1-2 hours. And then take that out and it's become tenderised and then you can break it up and use it in your beans and rice or sauerkraut or whatever else. And the boiling leeches a lot of the salt out also; so it's not an overpowering salty meat. So that's pickled pork and it does look very mad science in the jar there, its fun to show people when they come over - "Look what I'm making."
So I guess if people want to try pickled pork that's the way to do it, it actually took a little bit to find as there is not very many recipes online for pickled pork. It seems to be something that's kind of an old world recipe that's gone by the way side but do you're searching and see what you can find and if nothing else just give it a shot and see what happens. But again I just want to be clear that I do personally not recommend eating it straight out of the jar. I would boil it just to be on the safe side, you don't want to get botulism, you know for a mere experiment.
Alright well that's it for our show today, unless you guys have anything else to add I think we'll call it a show. We really thank everybody for tuning in and listening and for our chat room participants and thanks very much to Al for calling in; it was really cool to have a caller. Let's hope we will get more of those in the future, and be sure to tune back in next Friday at 10am eastern and this weekend also don't forget the other two shows on the Sott radio network. Tomorrow The Truth Perspective at 2pm eastern and on Sunday Behind the headlines also at 2pm eastern.
So again, thanks very much for tuning in and we will see everybody next week.
All: Goodbyes
Reader Comments
to our Newsletter