Welcome to the first issue of the Health Guardian Newsletter. I hope you will enjoy reading the information and health tips we bring to you each month. As The Health Guardian continues to grow, so too will be the number of healthcare professionals contributing their expertise to this newsletter. This month, I wish to welcome on board Dr. Jim McHale and Cynthia Haynes. You can read their bios under "Meet the Guardians" on The Health Guardian website. I personally want to thank each of you for taking such a strong interest in your health and the health of your families. Together we can and will make a difference in achieving optimum health.
By Harry Elwardt, C.N.C.
The United States is #1 in health care costs with the closest country behind us paying 50% less for healthcare. You would think with us paying so much more, that we should expect a much better end result . . . good health, but this is certainly not the case. Among all the industrialized nations, the United States ranks #1 in degenerative diseases, #17 in life expectancy and #18 in infant mortality. Where the United States does lead the way is in medical technology and trauma care. We have the best in the world. But where we lag behind is in preventive healthcare. Don't get me wrong, if I get into a serious car accident, I wish to be taken to the nearest hospital not the nearest GNC store, but I also believe we the people of the United States have a disease care system and not a healthcare system. There is no such thing as a health standard because the parameters of health remain undefined; in fact, the only definition of health today is absence of disease. This leaves a big gray area between being healthy and being diseased. Almost all people over the age of 40 are in this gray area, and the ones who seem to be setting the parameters between healthy and diseased are those that have a vested financial interest . . . the pharmaceutical companies.
Let's use the parameters of blood pressure to prove this point. Years ago there was some concern when systolic was over 200 and if the diastolic was over 110. Next came a major world conference on cardiology where reams of data concluded that the accepted standards were too high. The suggestion was that the norm needed to be lowered to, say 180 over 100.
By common consent this was accomplished. All of a sudden a lot of people started taking medication and providing a particular company with a market. What company? A large pharmaceutical company that, coincidentally sponsored the conference and provided the research data.
As time passed, new drugs that addressed hypertension arrived on the scene . . . so did additional conferences. Today, the accepted norm is 140 over 90, and as soon as the pressure came within the crosshairs of that, a sales ticket for a drug is created in most U.S. clinics.
To make matters worse, a person could have a normal blood pressure of 130 over 80 but because of a condition known as test anxiety (the intimidation factor of a doctor's office), it can be elevated to 142 over 92 and bingo, medication is evoked. Over the next ten years, this person has energy deficit problems; depression, sexual performance problems, and short-term beta-blockers often become a cause of heart attacks. This suggests that the risk can be greater on the medication than if the medication had never been used.
The higher readings are of maximum importance nevertheless, but before medication is given out a hard look should be taken at the patient's lifestyle. A simple change in diet and a nutritional supplementation program should be a first step, but practitioners who honestly want to keep their patients healthy, have no training in these areas. Out of the 127 U.S. medical schools, 102 don't offer even one course in basic nutrition. They do however have many hours of training in prescription drugs; and after leaving medical school they can count on a daily barrage of pharmaceutical sales reps brining them samples of their latest drugs to be tested on their patients. Included of course are the free lunches, pens, coffee cups and other free bees used as a gentle persuasion tactic, along with the kickbacks for prescribing the drug?
On the receiving end is the patient. Cash cow status for this patient is the bottom line. Clearly short-term animal studies - as required by law - fail to hide the nakedness of the pharmaceutical game. Drugs are released without long term studies. This reality has the effect of making the patient a test animal. The changes of all turning out well for the test animal patient are remote.
Case in point, I developed an allergic reaction to ragweed after I turned 30. The doctor prescribed a great new drug called Seldane. So every time hay fever season approached, he would start me on it. Years later, Seldane was pulled from the market because it was discovered to cause liver damage. To what extent was my liver damaged? How did the FDA approve this drug? Were others and I like me nothing more than test victims?
Many people speak of drugs with a reverence on par to that accorded surgery and injected vaccines. They fail to note that anything not assimilated as a nutrient or manufactured by the body itself is an invader, a toxin. The invaders have to be de-toxified.
Drugs considered "miracle" and "lifesaving" 30 years ago seem not to have stood the test of time. Fully 75 to 80 percent are no longer being used. Of those 20 years ago, 60 percent have disappeared. Check out website, www.thehealthguardian.com for a current list of drugs being recalled containing phenylpropanolamine. Many of these are over the counter drugs that you will recognize and probably remember taking yourself.
Canadian researchers have concluded that an average of 100,000 people in the United States are killed each year by drugs "correctly administered". The question is who decides the parameters of when to administer the drugs? Are the parameters being manipulated to create a market? Are we the patients being manipulated to help make the doctors, who administer the drugs and the pharmaceutical giants who manufacture the drugs, wealthy?
According to the World Health Organization, other countries are doing better in healthcare because the citizens and governments place higher emphasis on prevention. They administer drugs when all else fails. In Germany for example, St. John's Wort is prescribed eight times to one over Prozac, for the treatment of mild to moderate depression.
In this country you would be hard pressed to find a medical doctor telling a patient to try taking St. John's Wort, which you can buy at your local health food store, to treat their mild case of depression. After all there is no sales rep coming to their door educating them on the benefits of St. John's Wort while buying them lunch and offering a 10% kickback to recommend it to their patients.
Our healthcare system is nothing more than a vicious game and we the people of this great country have become nothing more that huge cash cows of that game. As healthcare costs skyrocket and prescription drugs continue to rise at four times the inflation rate, we the people must take our own health out of the hands of those who would milk us dry and into our own hands. We must control our own healthcare! Through education and prevention, our destinies can and will change; after all, prevention of disease is easier, more practical and more economical than a cure.
So next time you're getting a routine check-up and your doctor says you have borderline high blood pressure and I'm going to prescribe a drug for you; remember you have a choice. You can take the prescribed drug with its negative side effects, which will ultimately lead to many other prescribed drugs to counter those negative side effects, or you can say, "Thanks Doc for your diagnosis and recommendation, but I'm going to try an alternative course of action that's drug free."
Next, find a healthcare professional that will work with you in treating this condition through a diet and nutritional supplementation program. Not only will your blood pressure normalize, but also your health will benefit in many other ways.
Thomas Edison predicted, "The doctors of the future will give no medicine but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, diet, and the cause and detection of disease." We cannot wait for this prediction to become a reality. We the people of this great country must tell doctors and the pharaceutical giants that, "We are mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore!"
Final note, I cured my hay fever simply by supplementing daily with a nutritional sulfur knows as MSM (Methylsulfonylmethane). It works great on all allergies but especially food and pollen allergies. For more information on the benefits of MSM, see the article in this newsletter.
By Harry Elwardt, C.N.C.
Starvation is not a third world problem. It's an American tragedy. The people in Africa don't have enough volume of food. We Americans have plenty of "food", but it's empty food. The food we eat produces plenty of calories and energy, but it is almost completely devoid of nutrition, which is vital to our survival.
Nutrition deficiency has long-term terminal effects and it is well hidden. If food tastes good, conceals hunger and produces calories and energy, we feel okay for a time. But nutrition is missing and even with full bellies, we begin to starve.
There is no greater illusion and deception than empty foods; that is, foods without nutrition. No standing army is as dangerous to the American people as the giant commercial food industry that makes and sells billions of dollars worth of foodless foods. This is a conspiracy that no one suspects and when the food processors "add back vitamins", they are synthetics, not whole food complexes as found in nature. More about synthetics later.
Another conspiracy is that the American government has known since 1936 that there is a crisis. According to a report submitted to the 74th Congress, Senate Document #264, it state: "The alarming fact is that foods (fruits, vegetables and grains) now being raised on millions of acres of land, no longer contain enough of certain needed minerals and are starving us, no matter how much of them we eat. Is it bad news to learn from our leading authorities that 99% of the American people are deficient in minerals, and that a marked deficiency in any one of these important minerals actually results in disease? Any upset of the balance, any considerable lack of one or another element, however microscopic the body requirements might be, and we sicken, suffer, and shorten our lives." Our government has known our soils are depleted of vitamins and minerals yet have done nothing to change farming practices, which could improve the starvation of the people they represent.
The sad truth is that today's food is not what it used to be. Fruits and vegetables are only as good as the soil in which they are grown. Minerals pass from soil to the plant and in turn help the plant to grow and produce vitamins. The trouble is that modern farming, which relies heavily on chemical fertilizers and pesticides, robs the soil of nutrients and does not replace them. Phosphates found in fertilizers and pesticides bind to the minerals in the soil, making them less available to the plant. Through over-farming, the soil becomes nutrient, deficient anyway. However, adding fertilizer (nitrogen, phosphate and potassium) enables plants to go on growing, but without the full complement of minerals. So the plant does not make its full complement of vitamins and we too end up deficient.
For these reasons, plus the length of time we store foods, there is a staggering range of nutrient content in fruit and vegetables. An orange, for example, may provide from 180mg of Vitamin C to none at all, the average being around 60mg. Yes, some supermarket oranges look and taste like oranges, but in actuality contain no Vitamin C and are doing your body no good. A large carrot can provide from 70 to 18,500iu of Vitamin A. While it is great to eat lots of fruit and vegetables, the quality is just as important as the quantity. The only way to guarantee your eating fruits and vegetables are loaded with vitamins and minerals is to grow your own, free from chemical fertilizers and pesticides and eat them right away.
Add to this problem the fact that as much as two-thirds of the average calorie intake in the American diet is from fat, sugar, and refined flours. The calories in these foods are called "empty" calories because they provide no nutrients, and are often hidden in processed foods and snacks, which usually weigh little but satisfy out appetite instantly. If a quarter of your diet by weight, and two-thirds by calories, consists of such dismembered foods, there is little room left to accommodate the necessary levels of essential nutrients.
Good nutrition promotes good health and prevents the onset of disease. Unfortunately, most Americans are not getting enough nutrition from their diet to achieve the Recommended Daily Allowances (RDA), which leads me to the next big scandal. The RDAs of nutrients are set by the government to prevent deficiency diseases like scurvy; they are certainly not designed to ensure optimal health, and there is a big difference between a lack of illness and the presence of wellness.
RDAs are set by panels of scientists in different countries, based on what is known to prevent classic nutrient deficiency diseases. The trouble is the scientists cannot agree. From country to country, there is often a tenfold variation in the recommended levels of nutrients. The RDAs do not take into account an individual's circumstances, nor do they consider the question of what is optimal. For example, if you smoke, drink alcohol, live in a polluted city, are premenstrual, menopausal, or on the pill, exercise a lot, are fighting an infection, or stressed out, your nutrient needs can easily double or triple.
The Bateman Report, published in 1985, found that more than 85 percent of people who generally thought they ate well-balanced diets failed to meet even the RDA levels.
Gone are the days when healthy eating meant simply getting the right balance of nutrients from your foods. Now an equally important part of the equation is avoiding harmful chemicals. Many of today's diseases are caused just as much by an excess of anti-nutrients as by deficiency of nutrients. Take cancer, for example, three-quarters of all cancers are associated with excess anti-nutrients, be it cancer causing chemicals or excessive free radicals as a result of smoking. Many health problems, from arthritis to chronic fatigue, can follow from an overload of anti-nutrients exceeding the body's capacity to detoxify it. These anti-nutrients, which rob our bodies of what little nutrients we provide it through our diet, come disguised in many forms. Nowadays, in the U.S. alone, we consume every year a staggering one million tons of food chemicals. 9.45 billion gallons of alcoholic drinks, 487 billion cigarettes, 36 million prescriptions for pain killers, and 275 million prescriptions for antibiotics. In addition, 50,000 chemicals are released into the environment by industry and 2.6 million pounds of pesticides and herbicides are sprayed onto food and pastures. Together it constitutes a staggering onslaught of man-made chemicals and pollutants, with undeniable global health and environmental repercussions.
Hopefully, by now I have convinced you of the extreme need to add nutrients to your daily routine. Continue to get as much as you can from your diet of five servings of fruits and vegetables every day, but to achieve optimum health, you must take your health to the next level by supplementing. Which now leads me to the next big conspiracy - natural supplements vs. synthetic chemicals.
One of the most clever deceptions and conspiracies is to capitalize on something that is already established or accepted, using its basic word phraseology and terminology. The good is corrupted and crowded out with a cheap substitute that produces huge profits.
In the easy days of very small public acceptance of supplemental nutrition or vitamins, the FDA sought a frontal attack against those pioneer creators and vendors of honest natural nutrition.
Dr. Elmer M. Nelson, the second head of the FDA, tried to block health food processors from comparing the quality of their products with their synthetic counterparts. He said in testimony in federal court, "It is wholly unscientific to state that a well-fed body is more able to resist disease than a less well-fed body. My overall opinion is that there hasn't been enough experimentation to prove that dietary deficiencies make one more susceptible to disease."
Only a government prostitute to big business would state such a blatant lie.
But in later years, the synthetic vitamin industry shifted gears from a frontal attack to a more seductive deception. They realized that all they had to do was capitalize on the public's exploding desire for better health through nutrition.
Indeed, they have capitalized on just two words. The result has channeled billions of dollars into the coffers of the big chemical manufacturers of synthetic vitamins.
The words are NATURAL and ORGANIC. The deception is based on letting these words float around and appear on most vitamins sold when actually the FDA has not clearly defined these two words. It is left to the public to assume that these words imply that anything with the words "NATURAL" or "ORGANIC" on them are directly from nature unadulterated.
This is not true at all as the FDA loosely defines natural and organic as anything that ultimately comes from nature. This could be anything under the sun, including chemicals. This means that synthetic vitamins made from coaltars, refined oils and sugar may have the words natural or organic on them.
This is an unconscionable criminal act, but it's "legal". It is wrong to put cheap imitations in the place of something truly unadulterated and direct from nature.
The people, who believe that they are buying supplemental health as "vitamins", don't know the seriousness of consuming chemicals under the name "vitamins".
The "vitamin" industry is now big business and big business is getting positioned to capture billions of dollars.
The following appeared in USA Today, December 29, 1998: "Several big pharmaceutical firms entered the dietary supplement business last fall. Among them: Warner-Lambert, Bayer Corporation, and Whitehall Robins Healthcare." The term dietary supplement here means synthetic vitamins, which means laboratory made chemicals.
This conspiracy against public health is two-pronged. It will amass unbelievable profits for the pharmaceutical companies. This vitamin boom is ready to explode. Once big business begins to spend their billions of dollars and gets into the advertising act, as they are beginning to do now, it will be so big that it will appear as competition to prescription medicine. The pharmaceuticals win either way.
Note the hypocrisy. Whereas, the FDA has muzzled health claims by nutritionists, the floodgates for the same claims by big business are now open.
The pharmaceutical companies have seized up a paradigm shift to health awareness and completely reversed it in favor of themselves.
They manufacture worthless placebos by the ton and distribute them as "vitamins" at huge profits. These chemical vitamins will fail as nutrition, as they well know, guaranteeing a return of the masses to prescribed drugs.
Our bodies can cope with starvation better than we can handle chemical toxins under any name. The minute a whole vitamin complex is isolated, it becomes a chemical, not whole food or nutrition. The synergism of the complex is lost.
I hope that this article has shown you the extreme importance of supplementing to achieve optimum health. Your health can be promoted and maintained at the highest level by achieving your optimal intake of each nutrient every single day. Gradually your entire body, including your skeleton, is rebuilt and rejuvenated. Through optimum nutrition you can:
The choice is ultimately yours. I hope this information has given you a better understanding of the importance of nutritional supplementation and importance of avoiding the synthetic garbage that is flooding the market. You need to find a company you can trust. Most nutritional companies package and label their products and have no control over purity and potency. This is why independent testing has revealed that what the label says is often grossly misleading.
I buy my supplements from a company called ForMor located in Conway Arkansas. They have been manufacturing their own nutritional supplements since 1998. They test each batch for purity and potency. They use only FDA approved raw materials and their philosophy is to add a few pennies of extra raw materials knowing it will create a much superior product than what is on the market. They not only have an extensive line of products, which can help treat any ailment, but are always introducing new cutting edge products. I have seen what a difference their products have made in my life and the lives of those I've recommended their products to. Go to www.thehealthguardian.com to learn more about these great products.
Get started today on a nutritional supplement program and benefit not only tomorrow, but for many years to come.
I am convinced that the evidence for nutritional therapy is becoming so strong that if the doctors of today don't become nutritionists, the nutritionists will become the doctors of tomorrow.
By Harry Elwardt, C.N.C.
Did you know you get a new start every few months? Your body continually rebuilds all of its cells and much like a carpenter building a house, your body needs the proper building materials to construct a "healthy house". Surprisingly, one of the most essential, yet most overlooked, building blocks in your body is sulfur.
Methylsulfonylmethane or MSM, falls to the earth as a natural part of the water cycle. It provides the sulfur that our bodies need to create or use vitamins, amino acids, connective tissues, antioxidants and collagen. MSM is an odorless, tasteless form of sulfur. It is found in all living organisms.
In our world today, our earth's soil is depleted of MSM; therefore, it is not found in the food we eat. It is from the food that our bodies receive the MSM it requires to rebuild itself. The MSM available to us in our diets goes to the vital organs that need it most. If we are only getting small amounts of MSM because of our food choices with limited MSM potential, it then becomes obvious why we age and become diseased. With MSM supplemented into our diet, the body now has the opportunity through additional nutritional support, to rejuvenate and be brought into a healthy balance. Happily MSM does not produce intestinal gas or body odor like other forms of sulfur, nor does it cause allergic reactions like sulfa drugs or sulfite food additives. MSM is less toxic than ordinary table salt, and it has no known negative effects.
These condition have reportedly responded to oral MSM:
MSM may provide dramatic relief of diarrhea, constipation, nausea, acid stomach, pain and inflammation with no dependency. When taking MSM as a dietary supplement, 75% of subjects in one study were reportedly able to sharply eliminate or reduce their use of antacid medications.
Use of MSM greatly slowed onset of breast tumors in mice fed cancer-causing agents, suggesting it "might prevent human cancer indefinitely, especially when combined with other types of cancer prevention." It appears it also has a similar inhibiting effect on colon cancer in rats.
MSM relives pain, inflammation and stiffness both from bone and muscle disorders like arthritis and from over-exertion, stress or injury. In a preliminary study of osteoarthritis, the most common of all joint diseases, MSM provided pain relief equal to Motrin without toxicity. In a study at UCLA School of Medicine in Los Angeles, California, Dr. Ronald Lawrence found that 2,250mg daily of MSM helped ease arthritis pain. Research with animals show that MSM lessens the destructive changes in the joints. Reported in the Parade Magazine section of the Sunday Sun-Times dated September 12, 1999, Oscar winning actor, James Coburn, 71, is no longer crippled by arthritis. He credits the dietary supplement MSM with receiving the condition that at one time halted his career.
There have been reports of long-term diabetics injecting insulin daily for years who have in five (5) weeks to two (2) months become self-regulating and stopped having mood swings. The blood sugar has stabilized. There are people who have had bad emphysema, who used a little atomizer for breathing and could hardly get out of the chair to walk across the room, who after about a week on MSM, walked about a half mile, rested and then walked another half mile. Now, that is not because the emphysema had been reversed that fast, but MSM detoxifies and increases blood circulation. MSM gets oxygen into the blood a lot more efficiently with the same amount of work.
I personally consume 4000mg of MSM every day. I take it in a 12-hour period divided dose because MSM only stays in your system for 12-hours. It has cured me of my allergies to pollen, and the terrible inflammation of my heel spurs. My 14 year-old son, has taken MSM for the past three (3) years during baseball season. It helps his pitching arm not to become as sore and his arm recovers much faster after a game. My sister takes MSM to nullify her food allergies. In fact, she just told me that once she ran out and her ankles swelled up and she broke out in a rash. She then rushed to GNC to buy MSM, but she told me it was not nearly as effective as ForMor's.
The most powerful testimonial I can give you to show MSM's ability to heal quickly and completely is about a teenage boy who broke his leg, playing hockey. The mother told me the doctor told them he would be in a cast for four (4) weeks, followed by another two to four weeks of therapy. The mother right away started giving him lots of ForMor's MSM 2000. One week later, the doctor removed the boy's cast to make sure the leg was setting right and to his amazement, it was completely healed. One week later, he was back on the ice as if nothing happened. Needless to say, that doctor wanted more information on MSM.
If you wish to continue your education on MSM, I highly recommend you buy from ForMor tape #452, "Discover MSM 2000". It will not only change your life but the lives of anyone you lend it to. The testimonies you will hear will convince you once and for all that MSM needs to be a part of your daily supplementation routine.
MSM is for everyone. Give your body the proper building materials so you can build that "healthy house" and achieve optimum health!
HEALTH TIPS YOU CAN USE
BAY LEAF
Good for: Migraines, Diabetes
Healing Properties: Bay leaves are rich in painkilling compounds called Parthenolides. They also contain a compound that boosts insulin's ability to control blood glucose. Eating food seasoned with bay leaves helps prevent diabetes and helps keep adult-onset (Type II) diabetics from worsening to the point that they need daily insulin shots.
How to Use: Make a tea steeping several bay leaves in hot water. Or add bay leaves to chicken soup or bean soup.
Caution: Bay leaves themselves should not be eaten.
One of the most important anti-allergic aids since anti-histamines were discovered more than 40 years ago, MSM may help prevent the burning eyes, running nose and hoarseness caused by allergy to molds, pollens and dust. I personally have witnessed its healing powers on hay fever and all food allergies. Scientist believe MSM works by helping cells flush out invaders, by competing with allergens for mucous membrane receptor sites and by binding allergens so they can be readily excreted.
HERB OF THE MONTH