Physical ailments hinder an alarming amount of people, and often times we turn to Western medicine to understand and deal with aches and pains. But by doing so, we have lost touch with the ancient wisdom that everything on the physical plane is simply a manifestation of something on the metaphysical plane.

When we hurt, in one way or another, it is not as a simple as taking a pill to resolve. It's deeper than that. Our physical body is sent a message from our metaphysical being where our energy and spirituality reside. We often misinterpret these messages from higher planes, and, rather than digging deeper for the truth, we outsource, as is the way of modern medicine.

The Western approach treats pain through drugs and surgery—we numb, we divert pain receptors in the body, or we cut off an organ. This style may be valuable under acute circumstances, but more often than not, the pain must become unbearable in order for us to acknowledge the disharmony occurring.

Remember the old joke about enemas? "It couldn't hurt!" It's OK, go ahead and laugh, both laughing and enemas are good for your health. Laughing has probably been around longer, but we know that Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine prescribed enemas some 2,600 years ago, as did Patanjali, the first written author on yoga around 200 B.C. Many cultures independently invented it and during the pre-plastic bucket days things such as hollowed out gourds or animal bladders were used. "In fact, there is hardly a region of the world where people did not discover or adapt the enema. It is more ubiquitous than the wheel. Enemas are found in world literature from Aristophanes to Shakespeare, Gulliver Travels to Peyton Place." (Ralph W. Moss, PhD)

There is speculation that the coffee enema, originated during World War I. Morphine supplies were limited and nurses discovered that coffee enemas could be used to dull pain experienced by wounded soldiers. Since that time we have learned that coffee enemas are not only helpful for pain management, but have the additional benefits of helping the liver remove and dump toxins. It is the circulating toxins that cause inflammation and pain by irritating the nervous system.

The liver combines toxins with bile and excretes the toxins with the bile flow. The caffeine, theobromine and theophylline, in coffee dilate the ducts to facilitate bile flow. The palmitates in coffee increase the action of glutathione-S-transferase by 600% to 700% in the liver and in the small intestine. It is this enzyme that is responsible for the detoxification of free radicals and it's also this enzyme that inhibits the re-absorption of the toxic bile. The quart of fluid held in the colon encourages the bowels to quickly move the waste out of the body by increasing peristalsis. It is easier, and tastier to drink the coffee, but the effects are not the same. Only coffee administered through the colon has the effects of bile duct dilation and enzyme stimulation.

We begin with this: "Administration of KMV (killed measles vaccine) apparently set in motion an aberrant immunologic response that not only failed to protect children against natural measles, but resulted in heightened susceptibility." JAMA Aug. 22, 1980, vol. 244, p. 804, Vincent Fulginiti and Ray Helfer. The authors indicate that such children can come down with "an often severe, atypical form of measles. Atypical measles is characterized by fever, headache... and a diverse rash (which)... may consist of a mixture of macules, papules, vesicles, and pustules..."

In other words, the measles vaccine can create a worse form of measles. This is not the normal form of the illness, from which children routinely recover with the bonus of lifetime immunity. No, this is a severe, atypical, dangerous, synthetic, vaccine-induced disease.

Now read this: "...the window of vulnerability of an infant may be even greater in vaccinated women than in with women with natural measles infection." (Am. J. Trop. Med. Hyg., 79(5), 2008, pp. 787 - 792).

Translation: Measles occurring in infants—which is unusual and dangerous—is more likely to occur when the mother has been vaccinated against measles. Why? Because she no longer passes down, to her child, the natural components of immunity to measles.

While school quality and parent involvement are important factors in academic success, the effect of lighting on students also plays a significant role.

Have you ever noticed that you feel more alert during certain types of light exposure? Does a few minutes in the sun perk you right up? Light has a demonstrated effect on human health. New research suggests that it may have an affect on human learning as well.

We all know about the risks of eating seafood with regard to mercury. We've been told by friends, doctors, and our government agencies that seafood can pose a significant health risk, particularly to pregnant and nursing mothers and their children.

Studies have shown mercury to be neurotoxic, increase the risk for heart disease, contribute to Alzheimer's disease, a potential contributor to neuropsychological issues, and most notably, negatively affect the brain of a developing fetus.

Coffee is serious business. We Americans drink about 400 million cups of it per day and spend several billion dollars on it each year. It's the most popular drug on earth, and certainly the most socially acceptable. In many ways, coffee's the closest thing we've got to a universal, daily ritual, as just about every morning, billions of people across the planet prostrate themselves before the holy, energy-giving legume. It also hails from the same place the earliest members of our species do: East Africa (Ethiopia, to be exact). That the most industrious animal ever to walk the planet and the psychoactive legume that fuels said industry both hail from the same place on earth is pure poetry.

Coffee's also delicious. I'd say you'd have to pry my coffee from my cold, dead fingers, only the ensuing struggle would slosh it all onto the floor, and that would be such a waste.

Yet it's also considered to be a vice, one of those substances that "everyone knows" is bad for you.

Is it?

A man was lying sedate after injecting drugs. His fellow users, to amuse themselves, threw needles at him like a human dartboard to see if they would stick, according to a recent police report in Wolfe County, Kentucky.

"Back in the day, all we had to worry about was people drinking or smoking weed," said special deputy Gary Smith, who is entering his 25th year with the Wolfe County sheriff's department.

But with a growing US opioid epidemic that has escalated the number of injection drug users, the bucolic county has become acutely at risk from another public health problem.

Wolfe County tops the list of places that are most vulnerable to an HIV outbreak.

Although Lance Simmens has been intimately involved in public life for several decades, you've probably never heard of him. As such, a little introduction is needed.

As mentioned, Lance Simmens' career was spent in public policy. Specifically, he worked for two U.S. Presidents as well as a couple of senators and governors. Since retirement, he's been a prolific writer, publishing 180 articles at the Huffington Post over the past 8 years. As such, it came as a great shock to him to discover that one of his recent articles was removed by the Huffington Post shortly after publication. It was the first article ever rejected by the online publication, and the unacceptable subject matter was nothing more than a positive review of the banned everywhere documentary VAXXED.

The Zika virus could affect up to 10,000 pregnant women in Puerto Rico this year, putting hundreds of babies at risk of catastrophic birth defects, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Zika is spreading so quickly on the island that it's likely to infect one in four people by the end of the year, CDC director Thomas Frieden said. The greatest danger from Zika is microcephaly, in which infants are born with abnormally small heads and incomplete brain development, he said.

"That's horrifying," Frieden said. "This is a silent epidemic that is rapidly spreading through Puerto Rico."

About 41% of pregnant women in Puerto Rico with symptoms of Zika — such as a rash, fever, joint pain, pink eye, headache — tested positive for the virus, Frieden said. But just 20% of people with Zika develop symptoms. About 5% of pregnant women without Zika symptoms also tested positive for the virus, according to a CDC report published Friday.

As cases of meningitis, a rare and potentially fatal disease, popped up in cities nationwide over the past several years, public health officials noticed a trend: many of those infected were gay men.

There's no known medical reason why meningitis, which is transmitted through saliva, would spread more among gay and bisexual men. Yet New York, Chicago and now Southern California have experienced outbreaks disproportionately affecting that population.

"It is perplexing," said Dr. Rachel Civen, a medical epidemiologist at L.A. County's Department of Public Health.

Of the 13 cases of meningitis this year in L.A. County — excluding Long Beach, which has its own health department — seven were gay men. There were only 12 meningitis cases in the county in all of 2015, one of which was a gay or bisexual man.


In Long Beach, there have been six meningitis cases this year, half of which were gay men. Last year there were no meningitis cases in the city, according to city officials.