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The Health Revolution by Philip Bate PhD There's a revolution going on in Healthcare. Patients don't trust their doctors and hospitals, and are looking more and more at "unconventional", "alternate", or "holistic" therapies that often actually work better than drugs and conventional medicine. This book describes some of these "revolutionary" therapies by showing successful personal case histories using orthomolecular (holistic) therapies for emotional and physical problems. The author, a successful behaviorist psychologist, had to convert his conventional thinking, and actively pursue and study many therapies that he had previously considered "quackery." Schizophrenia, depression, hyperactivity/behavior problems in children, chronic headaches, phobias, sex /marriage problems, PMS, Herpes, Diabetes, obesity/ƒweight control, gout, allergies, and many other physical and emotional problems can be either cured or vastly helped by the ortho- molecular therapies outlined in this book. The therapies are outlined so that anyone can use them. No prescriptions are needed. DEDICATION This book is dedicated to all the good men that have worked to advance medical science in spite of all the obstacles put in their way. They have all too often been called "quacks" by their contemporaries. I am proud to be associated with all of them, and be called quack by lesser men. In particular, I want to thank the ones who have helped me the most. Dr. George Von Hilsheimer who has taught me more about health than I sometimes wanted to know. A genius, and a good friend in the true sense. Dr Abram Hoffer, a pioneer of schizophrenia megavitamin therapy. He proved it was effective in 1965. I've learned a lot from him. Dr. Carl Pfeiffer who started us thinking about mineral imbalance and toxicity effects on the human brain. Carl was unfailingly helpful, and gave freely of his time to advise and guide me. I miss him. Dr Marshall Mandell who named "brain allergy" as a major cause for all mental as well as physical problems. A giant in allergy research. Dr. Linus Pauling, our only two time Nobel Prize winner, who has probably done more than anyone to advance nutritional thinking, yet who has been abused and called a "quack" more than most. I miss him as well. Dr. Sol Klotz who, with an open mind, allowed two "quack" psychologists to work in his clinic under his aegis. He taught Dr. Von and me a lot about allergy, and in turn, we taught him a little about the effects of allergy/sensitivity on the brain.
There are many more, too numerous to mention, who wrote books, articles, and professional papers that helped me to learn this "new" science. Some of those books, easily readable and interesting to laymen, are listed in the bibliography. For those who are interested in this new and exciting science, those will lead to others. I followed that trail for many years, and found it fascinating in the wealth of excellent science that is largely unknown to the medical community and to the populace at large. TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION INTRODUCTION CHAPTER 1 - Janie (schizophrenia -- megavitamins) CHAPTER 2 - Jose (schizophrenia -- wheat allergy) CHAPTER 3 - David (schizophrenia -- copper) CHAPTER 4 - Gordon (bedwetting -- allergy) CHAPTER 5 - Bobby (hyperactivity -- allergy) CHAPTER 6 - Monica, Barbara, & Sue (phobias -- sugar handling) CHAPTER 7 - Al, Ray & Herb/Jackie (pseudochizophrenia -- sugar) CHAPTER 8 - Elizabeth & Nikki (depression -- allergy) CHAPTER 9 - Kathy & Judy (schizophrenia -- the "pill") CHAPTER 10 - Bob, Dave, and Reggie (cancer -- vitamin C) CHAPTER 11 - Samantha, John & Mark (toxic minerals and thyroid) CHAPTER 12 - Donny (obesity - allergy) CHAPTER 13 - Harold & Maude (sex therapy) CHAPTER 14 - Virginia (senility - megavitamins) CHAPTER 15 - Sunny and an ex-wife (diabetes & hypertension) CHAPTER 16 - Schizophrenia & Depression CHAPTER 17 - Vitamins and Minerals CHAPTER 18 - Allergies AFTERWORD
BIBLIOGRAPHY GLOSSARY APPEMDIX A - Dr. Mandells Self Quiz for Allergies APPEMDIX B - Common foods containing wheat and corn APPEMDIX C - Dr. Bate's individual nutritional quiz INTRODUCTION Welcome to the healthcare revolution. By reading this book, you've joined the revolution, and you won't be as satisfied with "medical science" and present healthcare methods as you may have been in the past. Along the way, you'll also learn a lot about your own (and others) health and how to improve it in many ways that your medical doctor didn't learn in medical school - more's the pity. Why a revolution? Any revolution starts because the people involved simply get fed up with the status quo, and the only way to change it is to revolt. Healthcare is no different. The people in these United States are fed up with the present healthcare system, and we're slowly changing it. It's not a bloodless revolution because too many people are dying from lack of knowledge on the part of physicians. President Clinton tried to change it dramatically for the better (it couldn't be much worse), and failed because of political lobbies. We, the public, can change it, but it will take time. Medicine is in a horrible state in the US. We spend twice as much as any other nation on our health industry - over 12% of our gross national product. We are the most technologically advanced nation in the world. Our doctors make more money than any others, yet they know less about nutrition and alternate healthcare than European doctors. They are actually educationally handicapped. Given this technological superiority, how is that we are 12th in health statistics? Every other major civilized nation, including all those with socialized medicine, is ahead of us. Including Russia! (They may not have won the space race, or the Cold War, but they're ahead of us in the health race). How did we come to this sorry pass? One part of the answer is that we are a "drug taking" society. We have come to expect our doctors (aided and abetted by the drug industry) to give us a magic pill for everything. That's our fault - not the doctors. Madison Avenue drug advertising hasn't helped. Perhaps the biggest factor of all - medical doctors simply have no learned knowledge of the nutritional needs of humans other than a very superficial one. They spend thousands of hours in medical school studying pharmacology and almost no time on vitamins, minerals, and other nutritional needs. Would you ask your doctor about your car engine? Of course not! He isn't trained in car engines. So why even ask your medical doctor about vitamins, minerals, and nutrition. The odds are that what he does "know" is largely wrong.
This situation is made worse by the complete dependence on drug advertising by all US medical journals. No editor of such dares to print an article or professional paper that might even suggest that nutrition may be better than drugs. Advertisers would stop advertising, and he'd be fired. Thus, physicians can't learn about the basics of nutrition in medical school, and their primary source of continuing education is biased against their learning anything positive about it after graduation! In fact, medical journals have often published so-called research on vitamins and minerals that is completely false and misleading. You may have heard that excess vitamins are dangerous. That can be true under certain very limited circumstances, but excess water can be dangerous. Maybe you've heard that vitamin C can cause kidney stones. This is a favorite of mine, because vitamin C never caused any stones - it actually cures kidney stones. Many European medical journals aren't dominated by drug interests, and as a result, papers and articles about nutrition are seen there. Such journals keep those doctors years ahead of the US doctors. Also, in most parts of Europe, medical doctors are at least knowledgeable about homeopathy, and many, if not most, use these therapies to advantage in their practice as well as drugs. In the US, homeopathy is lumped with chiropractic and acupuncture, and still derided as quackery by many physicians. Drugs only attack symptoms. They don't solve the actual cause(s) of the problem. Taking an aspirin for a headache suppresses that headache, but it doesn't stop a person from getting another headache from the same problem later. No one ever got a headache from a shortage of salicylic acid (aspirin). And there are no drugs without some side effects. Over a thousand persons per year die from aspirin side effects. Drugs are life-savers when used correctly, but in current healthcare, they are vastly overused, particularly antibiotics that cause other problems. Another major factor - our modern diet is deficient in many of the nutrients needed for good health. We are what we eat. And we aren't eating as we (the human race) evolved eating. Food from the supermarket simply can't supply good nutrition needed today! Vegetables and fruits are picked green and ripened artificially to save money on less spoilage. In addition, harmful pesticides have been used on much of our produce, and the very soil it comes from is often lacking in minerals that are needed for good health. If it's not in the soil, it isn't in the food! Just compare that lump of red plastic called a tomato in the supermarket to a real one from a roadside stand that was grown right and allowed to ripen naturally. A real tomato squirts juice and seeds all over when its' bitten into, and it tastes like a tomato should. Meat's no better. Beef is artificially fattened with hormones that are actually illegal for athletes to use. Chickens and turkeys are grown "scientifically" (profitably) resulting in huge increases in fat content, cancerous growths, and toxic bacteria from machine plucking. In addition, half of all the antibiotics manufactured are used in animal feed to control infection. Milk often contains antibiotics and may actually come from tuberculin cows, or worse.
Add to these factors yet another. Pollution of our water, soil, and air. This is increasing all the time, and this pollution requires even more vitamins and minerals in our diet just to handle it, and excrete it. Yet, we are getting less from our food. It shouldn't take a genius to see that everybody needs vitamin supplements. But, the medical profession keeps saying that we don't. As said earlier, MD's are educationally handicapped. Doesn't it make better sense to look for the cause of the problem, and treat that, instead of just treating the symptoms? Doesn't it make even better sense to try to prevent disease from occurring by keeping our body defenses in top condition? Unfortunately that sort of sense just isn't taught in medical school. (Common sense is all too often uncommon.) Linus Pauling coined the word "orthomolecular" meaning to correct at the molecular level. Orthomolecular therapies try to do just this - correct at the lowest level with whatever is required to correct the problem(s). This includes correcting mineral balance, adding vitamin supplements, looking at sources of internal stress such as allergies and sensitivities, and correcting these. As you will see in reading this book, these therapies work better than conventional ones, and they are usually much less expensive. What's wrong with our present healthcare system? Too costly - too much paperwork too many forms - too many different insurance types - too few middle class persons covered by insurance - too many malpractice cases (too many lawyers) just to name a few. Even the politicians can see that we're in a mess, and it's getting worse, not better. Unfortunately, politicians think that they have to get re-elected, and that takes money. All too often, they're bought by vested interests. The NRA isn't the only lobby buying politicians. The AMA, the drug companies, and the insurance companies are right in there with lots of campaign funds as well. What can we do to change the present faulty healthcare system? President and Mrs Clinton tried very hard to change it, and were derailed in their efforts by these many vested interests and a lot of money. Their plan may not have been the best, but it was a start. The Republicans seem to want to change it by cutting Medicare and Medicaid benefits to the poor. The problem isn't the really poor. They get healthcare free or at a minimum, without paying for healthcare insurance. The wealthy aren't the problem either. They either have insurance, or have no problem in paying horrendous medical bills. No, the real problem is the working middle class, and small businesses. They largely pay for the healthcare for the poor with their taxes now, even if they can't afford insurance themselves. That's wrong. For many years, I opposed socialized medicine, but in the past 10 years, I have come around to a different view. I have taken a good look at the Canadian system, and it works well. Ask 100 Canucks how they like their system, and 98 of them will be positive. Being human, they like to gripe about their system, and sometimes those gripes are used by critics of the system, but most of the criticisms of that system are simply false. All I know is that anything would have to be better than what we have now, and would probably cost less. (The wealthy in Canada gripe a lot about not
being able to get cosmetic surgery easily - facelifts, tummy tucks, and nose jobs tough for them.) What's a "quack"? (Besides being the sound a duck makes). Many people think it's only applied to crooks and con men that peddle fake cures, like snakeoil, taking advantage of sick people to make money off misery. However, when we look at the history of medical science, we learn differently. We find that all the famous men who made any significant advance in medical science were called quacks by their less brilliant contemporaries. Most of the cures, first called quackery, are now in common use around the world. The basis for most modern medical drugs was information contained in "old wives' tales", and drug companies are still finding and refinding cures from such. I've been called a quack, and I'm not entirely unhappy about that. I find myself in very good company. Freud and Pasteur, to name just two of the most famous, were both reviled and named as quacks by their contemporaries. Look at the history of medical science all the way back to Hypocrates and you find that every significant advance in the science was made by someone who was first called a quack. Mesmer, the father of modern hypnosis, was named a quack by a scientific commission headed by our own Benjamin Franklin! Today, the evidence is mounting that there is still much to learn about magnetism and it's effects on humans. Magnets often produce amazing results that aren't just placebo effects. Hypnosis wasn't taken off the AMA's quack list until the 1960's. This, in spite of over 200 years of testing and successful treatments of all types of problems, physical as well as emotional. Over thirty years later, few physicians are trained in its use, and medical colleges have no courses in hypnosis. Linus Pauling, the only two time Nobel Prize winner of the US has often been called a quack by lesser men. He was undoubtedly one of the most intelligent men of this century. A giant compared to those who denigrated him. We miss him. Any MD who tries to openly practice any therapy other than those recognized by the AMA is branded a quack by other MD's. Many lose hospital privileges, and lose money as a result of doing what they have found to be best for their patients in their practice. It takes a lot of courage to fight the system. Only about 100 years ago, bleeding patients was accepted medical practice, and anyone who didn't use it was called a quack. We now know that was indeed quackery. More recently, the EKG (electrocardiogram) machine was called a quack device for several years. Today, most doctors have one in their office, and use it regularly. Still more recently, all chiropractors were named quacks by the AMA and most MD's. Chiropractic was convincingly proven (in court) that this therapy was much more effective in back and muscle disorders than the conventional medical therapies. Chiropractic success with Workman's Compensation cases was proven dramatically better by actual case studies in that court case!
This is a book about the important cases that helped me to become a "quack". In addition, I have compiled some of the more interesting cases that illustrate solutions to particular health problems. All the cases are actual, but the names of all except my nephew and my wife have been changed to protect patient confidentiality. In a few instances, the circumstances were also changed to further protect confidentiality. I was lucky. I didn't get the standard brainwashing education that most psychologists get. I went back to school and obtained my PhD at 50 years of age. As a result, I wasn't quite as "educationally handicapped" as most. I must admit that when I started to practice, I considered nutritional effects on the brain to be nonexistent, and megavitamin therapy to be quackery. I plead guilty to having the same bigotry as I now accuse the medical profession as a whole of having. However, my mind was just a bit more open than most of my colleagues, and I learned I was wrong. As a famous doctor once said at a medical school graduation "At least half of what you learned here is wrong. The problem is that we don't know which half." Unfortunately, too much education tends to close men's minds to new facts and theories. The very word science means "to know". Too few scientists keep their minds really open enough to accept new ideas that may contradict what they learned earlier. Too many medical doctors have the attitude "I learned everything there is to know in med school. Don't confuse me with facts." I hope you enjoy this book, and that it helps you. It will probably surprise you unless you are already into holistic and alternate health science. One of my biggest surprises was finding that behind the health "fads" and "nuts" was a huge body of excellent work that was largely unknown to medical science. (Unknown because no medical journal can print it.) This body of work is huge, fully documented, and once you get behind the claims of various faddish groups, is both coherent and consistent. I was amazed to find that there is very little argument within the orthomolecular field. Differences of opinion are minor in general. Give a copy to your doctor and pressure him to read it. There's a health revolution going on now. We, the public, are just starting to wake up. It's about time! We must change the system, and we can, but it will take time. Another doctor once said, "All the current doctors have to die off to get a new therapy accepted in practice." Let's try to educate our medical profession better before they (and we) die. CHAPTER ONE - Janie She was sitting on the edge of her chair, perched like a bird ready to fly at any moment. She was a rather good looking 22 year old blonde without much makeup. While her sister described her "peculiarities", she kept her gaze averted. She just listened without either comment or movement. Her body language showed tension when her sister asked the usual question, "Do you think you can help her, doctor?" Watching her out of the corner of my eye, I replied to the sister, "I'm sure that I can," and she seemed to relax just a bit. I turned to her directly, and asked, "And what do you think of all this, Janie?"
She didn't answer, but her body language indicated immediate high tension again. If she'd been a bird, she'd have flown away at that point. From her history, according to her sister, she was a paranoid schizophrenic with aural and visual hallucinations. As a direct result of some of these, she was also a bundle of irrational phobias. This was confirmed by the results of the MMPI (a personality test that generally shows emotional problems as well as general overall personality traits). She had been referred to me as a semi-charity case by her minister. I always found it difficult to turn down a patient just because they didn't have any money. My minister friend knew that. Both my wife and my receptionist often told me that I was a fool to see patients who couldn't pay, and to give so much free advice on the phone. But I have never been able to refuse help for lack of money, and I find it hard to justify those doctors who do so directly, or indirectly by orders to their receptionist. (Dr. Von Hilsheimer once told me that he and I should take a course in "NonAltruism" as neither of us made much money.) I set up a twice weekly appointment schedule for Janie, only charging her $5 an hour. I even allowed her to carry that "on account" if she had to. This was a big surprise to her, and was the first step in getting thru her considerable defenses. Her most crippling phobia came from her paranoid delusion that other adults could simply look in her eyes and see that she was "evil". The direct result of this delusion was a phobia of any public place where people might look at her. These included supermarkets and malls. She could deal with small children, but not with adults. She drove a school bus with elementary school children as her only occupation. This was the only job she had been able to hold. She was afraid of any adults, particularly men. I had my work cut out for me, but with my ego, I was confident that I could help her. I had started my clinical practice after receiving my doctorate in psychology less than a year before. I had been practicing ethical hypnosis for many years, which is essentially simplified behavior therapy. I had never had a schizophrenic patient, and since my educational brainwashing was not the traditional type, I didn't fully realize that psychologists rarely work with serious psychotic types. They direct these to the psychiatrists who prescribe the common drugs in use today. Psychologists are not Md.'s, and cannot prescribe such drugs. Looking back thru history, often a person not educated in the traditional manner discovers something simply because that person hasn't been trained to know that such a discovery is "impossible" (according to the experts). In this case, my ignorance paid off as well. It took several sessions before I started to even gain her confidence and began to get the stories straight. My wonderful receptionist helped considerably by just being always sweet to Janie, and by starting to hug her when she came in, and when she left. I started hugging her a few weeks after that as well, and she began to trust me, and to open up to me.
I had intended to use hypnosis to try to solve some of her phobia problems. In my ignorance, I hoped that I could use it to go back and perhaps uncover the traumatic episode(s) that was the root causes of her condition. She proved to be one of the very few non-hypnotizable persons I ever came across. (Schizophrenics are not easily hypnotized as a rule because their minds cannot concentrate on one subject.). Gradually, her story came out over several sessions as she began to trust me and confide in me. Without hypnosis to use, I was forced to use just "talk therapy". This is very time consuming and expensive to the patient in most cases. She was from a fairly poor farming family from the deep south. She had been raised in a very strict fundamentalist religion. Her father dominated the family completely. From what she said, her mother was evidently a colorless nonentity, who submerged her personality and accepted her husband's tyranny. Her father either ignored her or yelled at her. I suspected some incest at the beginning because of some obvious sexual problems, and her strong dislike of her father, but I was wrong. From what she said, her mother never gave her any real love or even any real support, but was completely subservient to her father. It's always been interesting to me that I never found any person with serious emotional problems that had good memories of being loved as a child. No kissing, or hugging, or praise - just criticism as they remember it. From all the evidence I have ever seen I'm convinced that affection is just as necessary for emotional growth as nutrition is for physical growth. At 17, Janie fell in love. Naturally with that background, she built a dream world of marriage (getting out of that loveless home), and living happily ever after. It was the old story - he was only interested in sex, and had no intentions of marriage. She was blinded by her infatuation and his protestations of love, and gave in. After the first few sexual experiences, she got turned on, and started enjoying sex "too much" (in her words). The inevitable happened. He made it very clear that he wouldn't marry her, crushing all her dreams. Her father also had some undetermined role in the breakup. He had either suspected or known of the sex between them. He had forbidden her to see this fellow any more under pain of punishment, by him and/or by God. Now, guilt came in full force compounded by her fundamentalist religious background, and by her father's attitudes. To her, what she had done was totally sinful. Of course, her guilt feelings were even worse because she had enjoyed it. It was still further compounded because she continued going to her lover any time he called her after the breakup, and they'd have sex. The several times that she did this increased her guilt and greatly reinforced her feelings of being a bad person. Her father caught her out after she had been with her lover, and made some comment about being able to see in her eyes that she had been bad, and this was probably a major contribution to her emotional delusion that other adults could see her badness in her eyes. So, except for flashing glances, she never looked at adults, and couldn't even look very long at a child.
This was just the tip of the iceberg. She heard voices a great deal of the time, including the usual Godlike messages about her being bad, and she occasionally had hallucinatory visions. Her phobias were numerous and included heights, airplanes, bugs, rodents, knives, etc. A bundle of complexes all complicated by the underlying hallucinations of serious schizophrenia. At this time, I was very conventional in my practice. With my background in hypnosis, I was essentially a behaviorist, and was building a very good practice within a relatively short time. I used some Transactional Analysis (TA), and some Rational Emotive Therapy (RET) along with some basic Gestalt and Psychodrama. With my hypnosis background, I also used relaxation therapies, and found that subliminal cassette tapes were very effective if they were "tailored" to the patient. The commercial types don't seem to be as effective as they are too broad in scope. Unlike most psychologists I hadn't fallen into the common trap of finding one psychotherapy that seemed to work best for me. Many tend to limit themselves to that, whether it works or not with a particular patient. I had studied dozens of different therapies, and used whatever therapy seemed to be indicated by the patient's responses, and switched if I didn't seem to be getting results. Also, since my training was not the traditional brainwashing, I was much more open-minded than most in my profession. However, then, I still believed that MD's were infallible, and I laughed at quack ideas of megavitamins. After all, the body and mind were separate entities, weren't they? For the next few months Janie gave me a very hard time. Initially, it was difficult to get her to keep the appointments, and we changed appointment times over and over in the effort to make it difficult for her not to come. (That's even harder than making it easy to come.) Gradually, she began to trust me, and the transference that usually occurs between doctor and patient began to work. But, she was still very frustrating. I tried every therapy I knew and even some I read about just for her, and couldn't make any real headway against the overriding schizophrenia. Because of her hypnotic resistance, she couldn't learn any relaxation techniques, and she would "forget" to play the subliminal tapes I prepared for her. I did get some small response using EEG biofeedback, and even let her borrow the machine to use at home, but she "forgot" again. Of course, she was sabotaging my (and her) efforts on the unconscious level. It wasn't all failure. By hugging her every time she came in, my receptionist and I had gotten her trust. She perceived that she was liked (loved) by us and gradually began to see that she was valuable to us at least. While that therapy is very basic, it does work, but it's very slow. I've never been a patient person - I always want fast results. The old joke, "God please give me patience RIGHT NOW!" applies to me I'm afraid. One afternoon, she showed up, and I had no appointments after her, so I hustled her out to my car, and drove to a nearby huge mall. She was terrified, but I practically dragged her into it before she could build up her fears, although she protested all the way. When we arrived inside, her hand was soaking wet from perspiration. She tried
to pull away a few times, but I held her hand tightly, and kept up a running commentary as we walked up and down in the mall. "See that man coming towards us - notice how he looks at you, then looks at me, then his eyes turn away. He's registered us as neutral, so he doesn't stare. He looked at me just as long as he did you, even though you are prettier to look at. Here's a young man in a blue sweater. He's looking at you a bit longer, and that's because he finds you attractive. He'd probably like to make your acquaintance, but he's aware that that's impossible here and now, so he goes on. Notice that he didn't really stare, but he did give you a good look, and he wasn't particularly interested in your eyes. He looked at your face first, then he looked at your figure, and obviously he liked what he saw." At this point, she feebly tried to object, but I just ignored her protestations, and kept on with my commentary. "Here comes a woman with hair curlers in her hair. She's doing the same as the others, scanning you - then me - and as she sees that she doesn't know us, she judges us neutral, and forgets us. Every human does that constantly - we have to judge people we meet as friends or enemies, or neutrals. So, we look at everybody, but once we have looked and judged, we ignore the neutrals, and some enemies as well." "Look at this pretty girl coming along. She gave us a good look. She's probably speculating on our relationship - are we father and daughter, or are we a sugar daddy and his young girl friend? It's natural for her to speculate of course. We all do it. What do you think about as you see other people? You speculate about them, and they're doing the same about you. You know that you can't KNOW anything important about them just from a look at them, and the same is true in reverse! They can't know anything important about you." "Look at this man coming. He hardly saw me at all, and barely glanced at you. No worry about him. Here's another well-dressed lady coming with her little girl. See that - she just glanced at us, found us neutral, and dismissed us from her mind. The little girl looked at us a bit longer, but she doesn't have as much on her mind. No one is really looking at Janie, no one really cares about how Janie looks, and no one is really judging Janie at all. No one is seeing any badness in Janie. The only person who even looked more than a glance was that young man, and he saw goodness - not badness". I kept up this type of discourse for almost an hour dragging her all around the mall. Gradually, her hand dried, and she began to relax as this particular delusion gradually diminished by the obvious truth, and this phobic response relaxed. We finally sat down on a convenient bench, and simply looked at other people. Many of them were idly observing people as well, and some looked at us. I pointed this out to her, along with the fact that even though they looked at us, they couldn't tell any more about us that we could about them. She then wanted to buy drinks for us, and I agreed, but refused to go to the drink stand about 50 yards away. She didn't want to go without her crutch (me), but I insisted. She went, ordered, got the drinks, and returned. I hugged her right there in public, and told her how proud I was. She was embarrassed by the public hug, but pleased by the praise.
We drank our cokes, and I took her hand again as we walked up to some people just sitting nearby on other benches. I said, "Hi there, my name is Phil, and this is Janie, and I'm showing her that people can talk to any other people easily." Janie was horrified, and unfortunately, we got a couple that thought it was some sort of sales pitch. They were suspicious and untalkative, so I simply dragged Janie (completely mortified at this point) over to another couple, and repeated it. I got lucky - the man said, "Hi yourself - I'm Carl, and this is my wife Linda. I agree, people should be able to talk to each other without fear." I talked to Carl and Linda for several minutes exchanging comments without saying much about ourselves. Then we moved on to another couple, and repeated the operation. By this time, Janie had lost most of her beet red complexion that had appeared when I started, but she still couldn't talk to these strangers. However, she did look at them, and she nodded her head a few times during the conversation. By the fifth couple, she was able to force out a reluctant, "hello." As we finally left after more than two hours, she was fairly well relaxed, and the experiment worked - she was now able to go into a store or mall and shop. She wasn't completely comfortable doing so, but she was no longer completely crippled by that particular phobia. Of course, this was a big step forward using behavior modification, but it didn't really do much overall. That whole beautiful experience stood virtually alone during those several months of frustration on my part. She wouldn't (couldn't) do anything I set her as a task. She was compliant in the office, and she was very apologetic about all the promises she had broken concerning those tasks. She still had very little ego strength, and she still had many of her other phobias. I considered terminating her as a patient, as nothing was happening, and I wasn't helping her anymore. Also, I'm sure that my ego was severely bruised - she was palpable evidence of failure on my part. I had helped her, but only a little. Very unsatisfying to say the least. One day after a frustrating session with her, I opened my mail to find a pamphlet about megavitamins and schizophrenia. I had always thrown such (quack) junk mail away before, but this time I read it. It was all about Drs Abram Hoffer and Humphrey Osmond and their success in treating schizophrenia with a megavitamin formula. It didn't make much sense to me then. It seemed too good to be true. But the claims for schizophrenia cure were rather strong. I did know that the megavitamin regime couldn't do any harm. I was desperate - I'd have used voodoo, and rattled bones if I'd thought it would help at that point. I must admit that I considered this megavitamin therapy in about the same category. In the next session, I read portions from the pamphlet, and explained the therapy to Janie. Naturally, I tried to be positive and optimistic, and she agreed to try it. Surprise - she actually went to the drugstore to get the recommended dosages of vitamins. The megavitamin formula calls for a minimum of 3000 mg per day of both vitamin C and
niacin plus B-6 and vitamin E. (An alternate formula uses niacinamide instead of niacin to avoid the "flush", but this alternate doesn't seem quite as effective.) The idiot druggist told her that much vitamin C was toxic. I didn't have much knowledge about vitamins then, so I called a physician acquaintance and found that 3 grams a day of vitamin C definitely isn't toxic. I called that druggist, told him he was an idiot who didn't know what he was talking about, and Janie got the vitamins! I was sure that this was foolish - either it was quackery and wouldn't work, or Janie wouldn't take them regularly - look at her history after all. To make matters worse, the first day, she got a niacin "flush". That's kind of like a bad case of sunburn - starting on your face and working down your body. It's harmless, but it's also pretty scary if you don't know what's going on. You can imagine the effect on an already paranoid schizophrenic like Janie. She was on the phone in panic immediately. Luckily I had read in the pamphlet that this could happen, and what it meant. I explained that it only lasts about 10 minutes, and after taking this dosage of niacin for a few times, it doesn't bother most people any more. This experience left me even more pessimistic - surely she wouldn't keep taking the vitamins regularly. I was wrong on all counts. She did take them regularly, and even more miraculously they worked! After only three weeks, her hallucinations suddenly stopped - no more voices at all. Suddenly, she was a good hypnotic subject, and she could relax on cue. Behavior therapy (mostly desenitization of her phobias) was now possible and was quickly successful. She could now go anywhere without those fears. What a dramatic change! A month or so after this, she took a medical course, and changed jobs. She actually became a blood technician at a local hospital. This brought her in contact with male authority figures (MD's) all the time. Not only that, but she actually started to date. What a shock and a delight to me! Every week brought new revelations - she was still coming in once a week although she didn't really need me any more. Neither of us knew that for sure at the time however. Her visits dropped to once a month or so, and then to informal visits to my office and my receptionist if I was in session. She would often wait for me to finish in that case, just to talk to me for a few minutes. I have since found out that we were both very lucky. The odds against such a complete cure using only megavitamins are about 3 to 1. If the megavitamin therapy hadn't worked, I would probably have been convinced that it was indeed quackery. I didn't know enough to experiment to find the correct dosage of the megavitamins, but it worked in spite of the odds, and my ignorance. Now, years later, I have a theory about this case. Hoffer and Osmond originally started to treat with niacin because schizophrenia was one of the symptoms of the niacin deficiency disease, Pellagra. This disease is still common in parts of the deep South. The diet, particularly of the poorer people, in many areas where Janie came
from contributes little to good health. White bread, overcooked green vegetables, too much sugar, etc. Janie had probably been suffering from a sub-clinical case of pellegra for many years. Actual pellegra responds very quickly to niacin therapy. It should be noted here that our modern diet is a poor one from a nutritional standpoint in many ways. We are literally "digging our graves with our knives and forks". Almost a year later, Janie asked me (instead of her father) to give her away in marriage. Needless to say - I was proud and happy to do so. By this time, our relationship was that of father and daughter in many ways. This case, my first one in this new field of orthomolecular therapy saved Janie's life in effect. I cannot take much credit because I just blundered around, and got lucky. However this case is distinguished for me because it convinced me that I had been a brainwashed bigoted fool, and it started me on a different track - an unusual one - and a successful one. I am as thankful to Janie as she is to me, because if she hadn't frustrated me so much, I wouldn't have been so ready to try what I considered quackery then. Why is it that some of the most intelligent men of the human race, scientists and doctors of all types, are so stupidly set against accepting anything that is new and a bit different from what they were taught (brainwashed). I still feel shame that I was once one of them. I can certainly understand them - but I still have to condemn them. There are none so blind as those that will not see. Thank you Janie for opening my eyes. CHAPTER TWO - Jose Jose was a small quiet man. A second generation Puerto Rican with a New York accent to his English. He was 27, and accompanied by his wife. She was also Puerto Rican with a strong Hispanic accent. They were dressed quietly, and spoke softly. It was difficult to believe that this nice young man was actually a paranoid schizophrenic with violent tendencies. Both he and his wife assured me that it was so. He had been sent home after Korea with a mental discharge. He had seen dozens of Army and VA psychiatrists and psychologists. They had classified him, but had never really helped him. Oh, they had given him a supply of psychotropic drugs, but they didn't seem to work too well, and he hated them because of the serious side effects. He was on a full diasability pension. He and his wife and their two small girls were just able to make out on that. He couldn't work, and because he could be violent, he couldn't even babysit while his wife worked. A sad and dreary story, and it seemed even more so, because his appearance was so normal in that interview. There was no suggestion of abnormal behavior at all. Not in his speech which was soft and clear. Not in his body language or movements which were well controlled. It was an interesting riddle, particularly when his wife told me some of the worst tales of his behavior. That first appointment was taken up with getting his history, having him request that his files be sent to me from the VA, and making a few preliminary tests. (The VA never did send his file.) We set up an appointment for the following week.
This was a few months after my breakthrough with Janie. I was like a very thirsty plant, soaking up knowledge in this new field as fast as I could. I was now aware that this quackery had a fancy name - orthomolecular therapy. As explained earlier the term orthomolecular was coined by Linus Pauling, and it means "to correct the body at the molecular level". Related to the holistic health movement. By now, I had completely switched my ideas after the experience with Janie, and was reading everything I could find in this field. The local library had at least 5 books on order for me always, and I worked constantly to absorb this new knowledge. My wife complained that I spent more time studying than a first year college student, and she was probably right. I inherited an excellent memory from my father, who had an eidetic memory. I wish that I had inherited even more than I did! This whole new field was not only fascinating, but very different from what I had heard and known previously. I was sure that there was so much controversy that I would be very confused. Not so. In the professional literature, I found very little controversy, although there was some in the popular literature. I was also amazed at the quality and quantity of the professional literature available. This was not a bunch of simple minded fanatics using some old wives or witches' remedies. Instead I found a well documented and very scientifically researched field. I was constantly amazed at the thoroughness of this research and testing. I was even more amazed at the lack of interest among the general medical community in this wealth of knowledge that I had "discovered". I was now aware that I had been very lucky with Janie. At the doses she had taken, the odds were actually against her dramatic improvement. I am sure that without that dramatic improvement, I would have "thrown out the baby with the bath water", and condemned this new field as quackery even more vehemently. I wonder how many others have done just that. Jose and his wife appeared on time for the next appointment, and again it was difficult to reconcile this nice quiet man with a violent schizophrenic. His wife related several stories about his various crazy incidents. Psychologists don't like the word "crazy", but since she and Jose used that word, and were comfortable with it, I used it as well. I've found that using language that the patients' use makes them more comfortable. Why tiptoe around? All the incidents were similar, and illustrated the paranoid feature as well as the sensual hallucinations and the violence. One incident was related as follows: "One day we were sitting at the dining table, just finishing dinner. Suddenly Jose slammed his hand down on the table frightening me and the children. He shouted at me 'Do you hear that old bitch across the street. She's spying on me again. I'll fix her this time'. He got up from the table, tearing off his clothes as he went. He was down to his underwear as he went across the small front lawn, and reached the curb and street. He picked up a stone from the street, and threw it up against her house. It hit the side of the house, and he threw another which went thru a small window pane at the top of a window. I reached him about then, and persuaded him to come back into the house. I
explained to the police when they came, and paid for the window to be repaired, so there was no arrest or warrant". Jose had imagined that he heard the woman who lived across the street jeering at him. He had taken a very paranoid attitude against this elderly single woman for some reason. I can only guess that she was lonely, probably nosy, and derived some pleasure out of looking at her neighbors from her windows. Jose probably had caught her looking at him. Jose often hallucinated about her "spying", usually with some violent words if not actions like those above. He had also beaten his wife at times when he went "crazy", but was very loving at all other times to both her and the children. No violence to the children so far, but they both lived in terror of that possibility sometime occurring. It was apparent that his schizophrenia was episodic in nature, and to my mind it seemed logical that something had to be causing these episodes. The trick now was to try to find the causal agent(s) if possible. "Is there anything you know of that makes you crazy?" I asked. "Oh, yeah, beer will do it every time. I can't drink any beer except Japanese beer," he replied. This was a very important clue as Japanese beer is made from rice, unlike the grains of American or European beer. I had just been reading about allergy caused brain malfunctions, including grain allergies causing schizophrenia, so I thought I might be on the right track. "How about whiskey?" I inquired, following up the clue. "Oh, I can't drink any booze at all except sometimes I can have vodka, but only the Russian kind, not American." Another critical clue as Russian vodka is made from potatoes and American vodka is made from grains. I was now quite excited as it seemed likely that we were getting a good handle on the causal agent immediately. "What about cereals for breakfast, and bread or pastry. Do these give you trouble?" His reply lowered my excitement. "I don't like cereal much, and I do go crazy after breakfast sometimes, I guess. I sometimes have cereal in the morning, but not often. Mostly it's eggs and stuff. I don't eat cakes and pastry much at all. I have a sandwich sometimes for lunch, and sometimes some garlic bread at dinner." "How often do you go crazy, and is there any time of day that it happens more than others?" I was still hunting. "Gee, I don't know - it happens a few times every week, sometimes every day. I usually wake up every morning OK, and then suddenly the feelings come over me. It can happen any time from after breakfast to late evening."
I was still thinking along the lines of grain allergy, so I asked, "Can you come to my office early tomorrow morning, and bring your cereal with whatever you use on it, and eat it there while I test you?" "I guess so." he replied. There was a rather strange tableau in my office at 8 AM the next morning. He was there with cereal, milk, and sugar in hand. I had learned that the pulse rate of an allergic person will increase when they eat an allergenic food, so I measured his pulse. Then he poured his Sugar Corn Pops into a bowl and ate it with milk and sugar. I measured his pulse every ten minutes for the next half hour. It went up a bit, but nothing exceptional, and no behavior change at all. Needless to say, I was very disappointed. I had been sure that we would find the causal agent from those excellent clues. I didn't have enough experience at that time to realize how very close we were, but I was still fairly sure that there was a food allergy at the root of the problem. I persuaded a reluctant Jose to go on to a drastic test procedure that I had read about for such cases. This is a complete five day fast. Nothing goes into the mouth except distilled water for this five days. Distilled water because local water often has chemicals, including chlorine and fluoride that are allergenic to some persons. Following the fast, different foods are tested one at a time, and the subject's reactions checked - both by the pulse test and by any symptoms observed. All foods, pulse measurements, and observed symptoms are noted and written in a log. This helps the allergist to do the necessary detective work. Jose wasn't completely convinced, but he finally agreed. I taught his wife how to test his pulse and they left. He called in every day, reporting that he wasn't having a particularly hard time - hungry a bit, but no withdrawal symptoms, and no behavior problems. He said that he felt very good as a matter of fact. I was surprised, because according to what I had read up to this point, I expected him to have withdrawal effects. I later learned that in allergy research everybody is different and individual in their reactions. On the sixth day, Jose started testing with his wife, and they tested beef, potatoes, several vegetables and fruits. No significant reactions. He called that afternoon, and asked me about eating a Thanksgiving dinner the next day - a traditional one with turkey, and cranberry sauce, dressing, etc. I agreed, but told him to test his pulse during the meal, and at 15 minute intervals after the meal for an hour. No pulse testing was done. In the middle of the meal, Jose was off into a severe schizophrenic episode. Cursing wildly, hitting and breaking things, throwing plates and food all over the dining room, and scaring his wife and children thoroughly. His wife managed to lock him into a closet for several hours until it was over. It was a very severe attack.
His wife called me the next morning, and they came in that afternoon. I had asked them to bring small samples of all the food eaten during the dinner. Jose was quite shamefaced when he arrived, but I put him at ease, and we discussed the dinner. We went over all the food that he had eaten during the dinner. He had had some "brown and serve" type whole wheat rolls, and some turkey stuffing made from bread. The light finally went on. I was pretty sure that wheat was the major problem, and kicked myself that I hadn't tested beyond the corn in his cereal. I mixed up some of the roll and stuffing they had brought with them with some water, making a somewhat gooey substance. I dropped about three drops of this mix under his tongue, telling him not to swallow. This simple test is known as a sub-lingual test, doctorese for "under the tongue". It's often used by many clinical ecologists and orthomolecular allergists because food molecules are immediately absorbed into the bloodstream thru blood vessels in the mouth. Within two minutes his pulse went from 71 to 120, and his body language became very emotional, as he told me that he had the same feelings that he has just before becoming "crazy". Within a few more minutes, he got much worse, and had great difficulty in controlling himself in my office. This from just three drops of a diluted solution of wheat! He asked if he could lay down - his only defense against this type of attack I learned. In the adjoining room, he went to sleep almost immediately. Two hours later when he woke, he was feeling OK again, and we discussed his now obvious wheat allergy. I explained that wheat was - for him - a strong poison, and that it evidently was the causal agent that triggered his schizophrenic episodes. I explained that he would have to go on a totally wheat free diet. I gave him a list of products containing wheat from one of the books I had gotten on this subject. They were both amazed at the huge number of products that contain wheat. Jose still wasn't totally convinced that it could be this simple a solution to his troubles, but he had to admit that just a few drops had caused him a severe problem, so he agreed to try a wheat free diet and see. He would keep in contact with me once a week by phone, and if anything happened, he or his wife would call immediately. Nothing happened for three weeks, and now Jose and his wife were convinced. We stopped the weekly calls, but he called me after about another six months to report one minor episode during that time. He had inadvertently eaten something that wasn't wheat free. Since he was now "normal", and his wife didn't have to worry about the kids, she went to work, leaving him to be a house husband, in effect. With his history, he was not able to easily obtain a job, and was somewhat afraid to even try. They were still dependent on the disability. I recommended that they continue to accept it as with his history, it would be next to impossible for him to get a good job. About a year later, while working with Dr. Von Hilsheimer in the Klotz & Moehler allergy clinic (Orlando FL), I persuaded Jose to come and be treated for wheat allergy
by the new techniques we were then using, and this treatment was successful. Jose could actually eat wheat containing products occasionally without any problem. More on this later. This was my first case of "brain allergy" as Dr. Marshall Mandell named it, and once again, a life was saved, in effect. I'm not too proud of this case either. Had I known just a little bit more, or been just a little bit smarter, I'd have tried testing wheat, and saved him the discomfort of the fast, and the Thanksgiving episode. Of course, I am happy that we did solve his problem with only a few hours of therapy. A very inexpensive solution to be sure. Give a thought at this point to those dozens of Army and VA psychiatrists and psychologists that never even suspected the problem could be solved so easily. Didn't they even ask him any questions? Didn't they realize that if it's episodic, there has to be a causal agent? Jose told me that they did all kinds of physical and emotional testing, but rarely sat down with him and asked him questions as I did. Unfortunately too many doctors are too busy today to do even this. Listening to the patient can be much more instructive than all the physical and emotional tests that have been devised. We really can't blame the medical profession, as they are victims as well - of their training and experience. I, who was once just as blinded by my education, shouldn't blame them, but I do. CHAPTER THREE - David David was a very unprepossessing young man. He was 27, and had never held a job, although he had a BA degree, and was trying to attend a local college working towards an MA. He was unkempt and even dirty at times. He was unattractive in his appearance and his manner. Altogether a very unlovable young man. I later found that he was a virgin with severe sexual problems as well. He was a schizophrenic with limited paranoid tendencies. He also exhibited signs of depression. At odd occasional times, he would go into an anxiety or panic state of trembling and fear that crippled him completely. He couldn't handle any real responsibility, and, like Janie, he couldn't deal adequately with adults on a social level. By this time (shortly after finding Jose's wheat allergy), I had read a great deal more about schizophrenia. I had just finished reading an excellent book dealing with mineral problems as a possible causal agent. "Zinc and Other Micronutrients" by Dr. Carl Pfeiffer of the Brain Bio Laboratory in Princeton NJ. (Now named after Dr. Pfeiffer). From this, I had learned that an excess of copper could cause some types of schizophrenia. I had also learned that various other heavy metal excesses and imbalances had effects on depression as well. Accordingly, I decided to perform a simple hair mineral analysis on David. I also started him on megavitamins. This was the first hair mineral analysis I had gotten. After ten days, the results on David came back. He had 30 times the normal copper level showing up in his hair analysis. We discussed this in depth, and I admitted that I had no experience in this area, but would see what I could find out.
I called Dr. Pfeiffer, and he was kind enough to spend quite a bit of his time on the phone with me discussing this case, and what to do about it. It should be noted here that every practicing doctor in this field that I ever sought information from, not only took the time to supply such information at no cost to me, but often they sent literature and even books to me at their cost. Less than 10% of all the conventional physicians I've contacted ever gave me much more than the time of day, and some even refused that. Dr. Pfeiffer recommended "chelation therapy" using either pencillamine, a degraded form of penicillin, or EDTA, an injected chemical. Penicillamine is taken orally, and was favored as it seems to combine readily with excess copper, making a water soluble combination easily filtered out by the kidney and urine excretory system. I researched penicillamine at the University of Florida, and tried to find a physician to administer it to David without success. It is used rarely for this purpose, and his family doctor wouldn't get into this area in spite of the data from the University. He also refused to even consider EDTA chelation therapy. More about this therapy later. At about this time, some literature came to me from the same laboratory that did my hair analysis (Parmae Labs of Dallas Texas). It seems that they had a product that performed chelation therapy safely. It had been developed by a chiropractor, and consisted of some combined forms of vitamin C. It was originally meant for use by persons with heart problems (occluded arteries, etc.) as a substitute for EDTA. I called the lab, and found that this formulation would indeed chelate out copper, although at somewhat slower rate than pencicillamine or EDTA. However, it is totally safe, and doesn't require a medical doctor to administer. We were in business. I was still pretty new at this hair analysis and correction of mineral imbalance business, but we ordered the preparation from Parmae Labs, and David started to take it regularly. Since this was a new field to me, I also had taken some hair from myself and sent it to the same lab. The results showed that I was very low in manganese, slightly high in copper, and slightly low in zinc - a very common analysis in Florida as I later found out. I really didn't know much yet about minerals and their effects on the human body, but I started to take a daily manganese pill along with a zinc pill. One immediate and completely unexpected benefit. My muscle aches from playing softball every Tuesday evening, disappeared a week or so after starting these pills. I later found that muscle aches after exercise may signal a lack of manganese. Other signals are ringing or buzzing in the ear, or inner ear problems. David and I had sessions about every two weeks after that, and as I got to know him, I found a pitiful little boy under the unlovable exterior. He gradually seemed to improve in his habits and appearance, and at one point, I tried to start a therapy group,
using Janie and him as a base. She couldn't stand him however, so that effort died very fast. Janie was pretty much OK by then anyway. After six months, I did another hair analysis on both David and myself. I expected that his copper would be down, and my manganese would be up. I was very surprised to find that his copper level was even higher than initially, and my manganese level hadn't changed noticeably at all. Another call to Dr. Pfeiffer. Again, he graciously gave of his time and expertise. It seems that when you begin chelation therapy, the body starts to release heavy metals that have been stored in various places back into the bloodstream. These releases make the bloodstream levels higher in these minerals than before, and of course, this affects the hair amounts as well. So, an even higher amount was not only normal but to be expected with successful therapy. Since it was apparent that David was improving noticeably (albeit gradually) in his speech and manners, I was easy to convince that this apparently illogical explanation was correct. In my case, the mineral uptake and balancing was very slow indeed, and I found that it took several years of moderate manganese intake before I reached even a near normal balance. Dr. Pfeiffer suggested that I test David's father and mother for excess copper as well, and I persuaded them to do this. The results showed his father was also 25-30 times normal in copper. He had no schizophrenic symptoms, being a successful engineer. But, he was rather introverted and somewhat depressive in nature. It seems that there is a familial tendency towards this abnormal absorption of copper and sufferers sometimes develop a disease called "Wilson's Disease". In the research from the University of Florida, I had found that penicillamine is the medicine of choice for this relatively rare aberration. The father started on the same course of chelation therapy as David even though he exhibited no outward symptoms. He wanted to be "better balanced", as he put it after I explained the situation. He was a very intelligent man incidentally. I worked with David for over a year. He gradually improved in manner, appearance, and in his ability to deal with the outside world. Near the end of my time with him, I had started to work with Dr. George Von Hilsheimer in setting up a laboratory to test for food allergies by the end-point titration method. We tested David extensively, but without finding any evident causal agents for his anxiety attacks. However, he had not had one during the year or so that we worked together. Two years later, he had still not had any reoccurrence, so I can only suppose that his copper-induced mental situation was a major portion of his problem. Once that was solved, the anxiety problem didn't occur. A few months before we terminated therapy, David started on a professional course in computer programming. He had a very high IQ, and did very well at the course. I later heard from him to the effect that he was doing quite well in that profession.
I have purposely skipped over many long sessions that were devoted to his sexual problems as they were not uncommon for a person such as him. I recommended treatment by a sexual surrogate, as I had trained one for another case. His mother was very opposed to such a therapy, and although both David and his father were in favor, she successfully circumvented that on religious grounds. I still believe that would have been the correct therapy at that time. I don't know how David's love life is since we terminated therapy, but I must believe that it isn't very good with his background. However his sexual problems are beyond of the scope of this book, and his schizophrenia was dealt with successfully. This was my first case of copper (or other heavy metal) imbalance, and I learned a lot from it, mainly from the writings and personal advice from Dr. Carl Pfeiffer. He later moved to Orlando and I met him once in person to thank him before he died. A generous man. I'm amazed that the medical profession still calls hair mineral analysis a quack procedure in general. Yet they use it to determine arsenic, mercury, and other heavy metal poisoning. It is an extremely handy tool for the orthomolecular practicioner. From that point onward, I always did a hair analysis whenever I even suspected psychotic or neurotic problems. If nothing else, it eliminated that problem possibility. As an added benefit, I was always able to advise the patient on mineral supplements to add to their diets thus obtaining a better mineral balance. So, while in many cases, the hair analysis didn't directly assist in the solution, it was always useful. At $40-100, it's also a lot cheaper than the often unnecessary medical tests performed routinely by doctors afraid of malpractice suits. CHAPTER FOUR - Gordon It was just a simple bedwetting case. Gordon was 10, and the history was similar to dozens of others I'd seen previously. The parents were at their wits' end and the child was miserable. He couldn't go to camp, or stay overnight anywhere. All the usual punishments and medical "tricks" had been tried without success. These included not drinking water after 5 PM, and waking him up during the night to go. Hypnosis works very well in most of these cases. First, use age regression to try to find the traumatic event that started it all. Then let the child look at that event from a more grownup (less emotional) point of view to lessen or eliminate the traumatic effect. Add a post-hypnotic suggestion to stop the habit pattern, and that's usually all that's required. Bedwetting (and many other phobias/compulsions) usually start between 3 and 7 years old. Actual traumatic events may differ widely, and seem to make no sense to our adult thinking. Sometimes the start isn't a "fear" type of trauma at all, but the mind of a child doesn't think like an adult, and the unconscious mind has an even different logic of its own. In a few cases, the child is actually punishing one or both parents unconsciously. Consciously the child hates it, as it is a dirty habit, and he\she is often punished in various ways by parents. This is in addition to the abuse and cruelty they often receive
from other kids. Unconsciously however, the child seems to actually gloat over the parents predicament. It certainly can frustrate parents. Only a very sadistic parent can just keep beating a kid for something that he/she obviously can't help. It can even break up a marriage! In many cases, it's actually a sort of defense action, and a fear trauma of some kind is the initial cause. For example, in one case, the child heard someone trying to break into the house. He was so scared he wet himself. The intruder did not get in. His unconscious mind connected this fact with his urination, and it became a defense against intruders. Logical - he pees - the intruder can't get in! In adult terms - certainly not - but in a child's unconscious - very logical. Like the child's silly elephant joke. Why do they paint their toenails red? So they can hide in cherry trees! Hey - it works doesn't it! Did you ever see an elephant in a cherry tree? Same type of logic. The logic of the unconscious is very literal, and often difficult to follow, but it's always there if you look for it. So, I did my usual hypnotic induction for children. He was an excellent subject, but we could find no real causal starting point. No traumatic event was seemingly associated. Unusual with a good subject. Since there seemed to be no event to reevaluate, I had to simply use post hypnotic suggestions. His mother called a few days later, and the bedwetting hadn't stopped at all. I spent some time just teaching her how to use hypnosis on Gordon herself, transforming his early sleep into a hypnotic state, and using it to plant post hypnotic suggestion in his mind. A few days after that, she called again with the same bad news, "it's not working." For the next step, I prepared a subliminal hypnotic tape. For these I use a 3 minute endless loop cassette tape. The overall sound is usually surf breaking, and underneath that sound is the subliminal message. Subliminal is doctorese for "beneath the threshold". The actual voice message is not quite audible consciously beneath the surf sound. If done correctly, such tapes can be excellent in modifying behavior. The conditioning (brainwashing) is quite efficient when used to correct behavior that the patient wants to change consciously. I have used them very successfully in many cases ranging from sex offenders to ego strengthening. They are particularly effective in treating flashers, and other minor sex offenders. Unfortunately, there are many so-called subliminal tapes available which are not done correctly, and which are too general to be effective with a particular patient. This has resulted in this type of therapy being discounted by many practicioners. I gave the tape to Gordon and his mother, and instructed her to start it playing before he went to sleep, and play it all night long. Repeating every 3 minutes gives 160 playings in an 8 hour period - a lot of brainwashing. Three days later, another call - it still hadn't worked. However, I had just read a reference in the orthomolecular literature about milk allergy being a possible factor in
bedwetting cases. I suggested to Gordon's mother that she eliminate all dairy products from his diet and see what happened. The next morning he had a dry bed. And it continued. She tested it by letting him drink some milk or eating some cheese, and he invariably wet the bed that night. Pretty complex. How does a milk allergy make a boy wet the bed? Why doesn't milk affect girls the same way? After all, they should wet the bed even more than boys because they have a slightly smaller bladder. I don't know the answers to these questions, and certainly there are no answers from the medical community either. Few medical allergists are even aware of the connection between milk allergy and bedwetting. For that matter, few are aware of the connection between milk and ulcers. The orthomolecular field found that milk sensitivity is a major cause of ulcers long ago. Many MD's are still putting their patients on a bland milk diet, and are very surprised when their patients get worse instead of better. On informal checks prior to this time, I'd tallied about a 70% success rate on bedwetters, with most not returning when it didn't work the first time. Following this experience, my batting average was considerably better. I did the usual hypnosis, AND instructed the mother to withhold all dairy products for at least a week. In a few later cases, the child had to be treated for milk allergy. Gordon's mother told me that he had been allergic to milk as a baby, and had been put on a soybean milk formula as a result. How many undiagnosed cases like Gordon are there? Since milk allergy in babies with a switch to soy formula is not too uncommon, what possible problems will the "forgotten" milk allergy cause the child or adult later? The allergy will always be there, and later symptoms may vary widely with each individual. (In one case, milk allergy caused ulcers in the father, slow learning in school in the daughter, hyperactivity in the son, and depression in the mother.) The great psychiatrist and hypnotist, Milton Erickson, had a case where two young bedwetters had gotten married - neither knowing about the other. After their first night, the bed was wet, and each thought the other was being nice in not mentioning it. The whole scenario sounds like low comedy. After a few nights together, they each confessed, and they then sought his psychiatric help. He obtained a strict promise from them that they would follow his prescription exactly for one week. After they agreed, he asked them both to kneel on the bed just before sleeping, and urinate directly on the bed, and then sleep in it. Needless to say they weren't too enthusiastic, but they had promised. On their return the next week, Erickson asked if they had followed orders, and they said that they had. He then congratulated them on a difficult task, and rewarded them by allowing them to go to bed that night without urinating first. They were to call the following day. When they did, he asked them if the bed was dry or wet in the morning. When they replied, "Dry," he congratulated them again, and again rewarded them the same way.
The bed was dry the following day, and again the day after that. He then discharged them as cured. Truly unique therapy from one of the great hypnosis pioneers in modern science. I was ready to try that therapy on Gordon if the milk allergy connection hadn't been available just then. I wonder if such a wonderfully simple technique would have worked with an allergy based problem. Who knows? The mind is a weird and wonderful place indeed. I have seen many cases where allergy symptoms were relieved by hypnosis or chiropractic or acupuncture - seemingly no connection at all, but they worked. The why and how is beyond medical knowledge at this time. Bedwetting is considered somewhat silly by too many doctors. They forget that it can be a very emotionally crippling experience to the involved person. We don't laugh when a person gets a cold or flu which is not nearly as terrible to the involved person. Is it because it has sexual overtones, or is it just because we can feel superior? It's not at all funny to the bedwetter. CHAPTER FIVE - Bobby Bobby was only 10, and while he seemed somewhat (naturally) nervous, there was no obvious hyperactivity or behavior problem. His mother and father had brought him in. I soon learned that he was "doped out" on Ritalin as it was a school day. Actually, I never saw his severe behavior, but I got a good account of it. It was the middle of May, and he was failing the fourth grade with a long string of D's and F's. In effect, he had already failed this grade. He was kept on Ritalin five (school) days a week. Since his father was a pharmacist, he knew that such drugs aren't without adverse effects. So, Bobby was taken off it on the weekends, even though he was difficult to deal with then. He had a long history of hyperactivity, and misbehavior. His parents related a typical history of a hyperactive child that cannot help getting in trouble constantly. And the school demanded that he be kept on Ritalin as otherwise, he disrupted the classroom entirely. Off Ritalin, he was constantly in motion, and he also misbehaved almost constantly. He would hit his sister, talk back to his parents, or have screaming or crying fits at times. I tested his IQ on a standard Slaussen IQ test which is widely used in school testing. His score was 98 that day (on Ritalin). I took a hair sample for analysis, and asked a lot of questions about his diet - how he woke up - how he felt at various times of day, etc. Of course, I was looking for causes, and the answers I got led me to suspect either sugar handling problems, or food allergy as possibilities. He ate candy bars, cereals loaded with sugar, and sugar-filled foods or drinks all day long. By this time, I had found something better than the "5 Day Fast". I decided to use a "Caveman Diet" on Bobby. I carefully explained this to his parents, while he objected as he heard it. He could eat as much as he wanted, but only the foods included on the diet. Bobby didn't object so much when I explained that the alternate was a five day fast. That appealed to him quite a bit less!
The purpose of this diet is to eliminate the most common allergenic foods for five days, at which time, the sensitivity to these foods has increased, and is more easily found. Of course, symptoms are monitored during the five days as well. Note that there are no grains except the rice, and no milk products at all. These are the most likely suspects when working with children, although orange juice, food dyes and other chemical food additives, are also likely culprits. The next morning I was awakened by Bobby's mother on the phone at 6 AM. She was more than a little distraught. It seems that Bobby had caught some type of virus (she thought), and had been very sick most of the night after midnight. He had thrown up several times, alternating between chills and fever, and complaining of pain in his head, feet, stomach, and everything in between. He was curled up right then on the living room floor in a foetal position. She was calling me because she wanted to take him to the family doctor, but her husband thought I should know about it before she did so. I thought about this for a few moments. How was I going to convince this very naturally anxious mother that Bobby hadn't caught a "virus or something", but was going thru withdrawal just like a heroin addict. The good news/bad news jokes were going around about then, and I couldn't resist. I said to her, "Well, it sounds like Bobby and you have had a pretty hard night, but I'm actually happy to hear about it, and you should be too. The good news is, we've probably found the basic problem. The bad news is - he's going thru withdrawal, just like a drug addict, and you'll have to put up with this real problem for the next four or five days until he's over it." Naturally, she didn't believe me at first. Her son going thru withdrawal just like a heroin addict was a bit too much to believe. I gave her the name and phone number of Dr. Sol Klotz, an allergist friend. I urged her to call him if she didn't believe me, but she never did. Of course, I was afraid that her family doctor wouldn't have the slightest idea that Bobby was in withdrawal, and might treat him with drugs that could complicate the case. Antibiotics certainly wouldn't help here! She put her husband on the phone then, and he was much easier to convince, as he knew about withdrawal, although he hadn't known that food withdrawal could be anything like this. I outlined several things that would help ease the withdrawal symptoms, including large amounts of B complex and C vitamins, as well as "gold" Alka Seltzer. This form, unlike the regular blue type doesn't contain aspirin. For the next three days I got reports about Bobby. He improved right away with the vitamins and the Alka Seltzer, but he was still a pretty sick kid with the most severe withdrawal symptoms I ever saw in a child. On the fifth morning - a Monday - she called to say that Bobby was now completely well. Not only that, but he was completely different! It wasn't even Bobby, but some strange kid! He had come down to breakfast quietly. He not only didn't harass his sister, but he was even polite to her. He was also polite to both parents. This had never happened before. Her words were, "It just isn't Bobby - don't get me wrong - I'll take this one, but it isn't him."
I asked her where Bobby was, and she said that he felt so good, he had wanted to go to school. I literally screamed at her to go to the school, and impress on everybody that he was to put nothing in his mouth except what had been on the diet. I must have scared her, as she did just that. She brought Bobby into the office immediately after school. I had made up several simple food tests in small airtight bottles to use in my office. I had wheat, corn, coffee, aspirin, food colors, and sugar all made up, and I made up milk and orange juice as needed. I usually started with the food coloring. This consists of the three basic food colors in the standard grocery store "kit" mixed equally to make about 1/2 an ounce (shotglass) of liquid. Then, take 1 cc (or ml) of this up in an eyedropper, and mix it with 4 cc's (ml's) of distilled water. Children that react positively to this dye mixture, often respond to diets such as that known as the Feingold diet. Start testing with this solution, using the sub-lingual method of three drops under the tongue with an eye dropper, and pulse measurement 10 minutes afterwards. This test shows up most chemically allergic kids. The next tests are usually milk and then wheat. These are just mixed with about equal amounts of distilled water for this testing. Doing this with Bobby got nothing, or at least no dramatic pulse rise as allergens usually cause with a child. So, I then tested corn, coffee, orange juice, and aspirin. Again, no real rise out of any of them either. I was getting rather discouraged, and I'm sure that the mother was also beginning to doubt the whole thing. The last test was watered down sugar solution, and this time we got a reaction! What a reaction! He projectile vomited 6 feet across the room onto a wall and my carpet, immediately after I put the three drops in his mouth. (I never saw "The Exorcist", and now I didn't have to). His mother was very embarrassed naturally, but I quickly reassured her that it would clean up. We'd found out his real problem. It was sugar! Not a handling problem as I had suspected, but a full blown allergy/sensitivity. So, Bobby went onto a diabetic diet in effect. He really didn't mind that too much as he now felt good all the time. He went back to school, and here also, he was a different person! He got all A's from that point on for the next three weeks. In a visit to his teacher and principal along with his parents, we were able to convince them that it would be much better to pass him conditionally now that he was "cured". At the beginning of school in September, they tested him informally, and he passed easily. About 3 weeks into the new school year, I tested him again on the same Slaussen IQ test, and this time his score was 148, exactly 50 points in IQ higher now that he was off both sugar and Ritalin. His "brain allergy" was fixed as he put it. At the six weeks marking period, he was doing so well that he was actually considered for jumping a grade. What a dramatic turnaround!
I was now deeply into the orthomolecular field, and committed to learning more. I was still studying constantly, and had just started to work with Dr. George Von Hilsheimer. He is the most brilliant psychologist/clinical ecologist I know of, and I was indeed fortunate to be able to work with him. We set up an endpoint titration testing lab in a local allergy clinic. One of the two owners/directors of this MD clinic was Dr. Sol Klotz, a former president of the Allergy Medical Society, and a brilliant allergist. Unlike most, Dr. Klotz had been interested in food allergies/sensitivities for a long time. He was a good friend of Dr. Von Hilsheimer, and allowed us to set up this very revolutionary testing under his auspices in his clinic. I was now cognizant of the possible role of food allergy and/or sensitivity in all forms of emotional problems. A few months afterwards, I took Bobby to the allergy clinic, and tested him using the endpoint titration system. We found he was very allergic to cane sugar, somewhat less to beet sugar, and surprisingly, not reactive to honey or maple sugar/syrup. He also showed no reaction to any of the sugar substitutes. His direct allergy was actually to a grass. Sugar cane is a type of grass! We treated him for the cane sugar, but he avoids it anyway as a matter of course. He'll be healthier all his life as a result. I have since treated many hyperactive and behavior problem children. None have ever had withdrawal symptoms as severe as Bobby, although I have seen adults with similar withdrawal several times. In all cases, improvement was immediate when the allergy or sensitivity was found, and the child was no longer exposed to it. Only a few cases were even nearly as dramatic to me as this one. Again, I felt that I had helped to save a life, and that is indeed gratifying to any ego! There is a marvelous doctor - Doris Rapp of Buffalo NY who has appeared on the Donahue show several times. She has many "before and after" video tapes of children suffering from food allergy/sensitivity. These are truly astonishing in the range of emotionally disturbed behavior as well as hyperactivity. They show all these classic symptoms of course, but they also include severe misbehavior including obscene language. Who would ever suspect that a food could cause a kid to shout obscenities? On one program, there was an autistic child that was only allergic to milk. When taken off all milk products, he was no longer autistic, but quite intelligent. I used two videotapes of these Donahue shows for every class I taught to demonstrate the wide effects of food sensitivity and/or allergy. These types of allergy/sensitivity problems seem to affect boys about 4 times as often as girls. For some as yet unknown reason (probably related to testosterone, the male hormone), such allergy/sensitivity effects cause hyperactivity or behavior problems in boys. In girls the same allergy/sensitivity seems to cause slow thinking and acting in girls. Since this doesn't create a classroom control problem, can it be that just as many girls are affected by allergies/sensitivities as boys, but are just thought to be slow or dumb or backward? Think about it! There is another very important secondary problem here. It seems that the most intelligent kids are the ones who generally have this problem. The less bright kids with average or low IQ's don't often seem to have this problem. The great majority of the children I tested after finding the allergy/sensitivity had above 120 IQ scores after
treatment, and several were in the 140's. Are we wasting a natural resource here? Or, are we not looking deep enough? Could some of the "dumb" kids just be allergic too? Obviously, since Bobby gained 50 IQ points by just taking one allergen (sugar) out of his diet, at least some of these lower IQ students might be just affected by unknown or unsuspected allergy/sensitivity. Too many children don't make it through school because of such problems. Dropouts don't contribute much to society. There are too many kids on Ritalin and similar mind altering drugs. There is no such thing as a drug without side effects. Believe it or not, Ritalin and other similar drugs are derivatives of speed! So how come speed is an illegal street drug, but the derivatives can be used on kids? It's all too easy to feed a kid (or an adult for that matter) a drug that dopes him up and allows better control, but it doesn't solve the problem. In all too many cases, it merely postpones it. I have treated several emotionally disturbed young men who had been on Ritalin as children and labeled as hyperactive, learning disabled, or some other convenient diagnosis. Does the Ritalin only postpone the problem? Or could it perhaps be part of the problem? We need to get away from drugs except in rare cases, and we need to look for the actual causes of problems, not simply try to cover up the symptoms with drugs. Symptoms are just that, and they are designed by nature (or God if you prefer) to alert you to a problem. If you have headaches, ask why you're having headaches, instead of just reaching for aspirin or other pain reliever. I guarantee that your headache isn't from a lack of any ingredient in aspirin or other pain pill! Perhaps it's from a corn (or other) allergy. More on this later. CHAPTER SIX - Monica, Barbara, & Sue It was one of those weeks. By sheer coincidence, I had three women all with driving phobias, two on Tuesday, and one on Thursday. I hadn't seen a driving phobia for a year or more, and suddenly, I had three at once. My usual technique was to use hypnosis to find the traumatic event that caused the phobia, and then use desensitization with relaxation therapy to remove it. Monica, the first patient, was an easy hypnotic subject. She went back easily to the event. She was driving down the road normally when suddenly, she thought she was going to pass out. Her vision became blurred and tunnel-like, and she panicked. Pulling over to the side, she just sat for several minutes recovering from that scary experience, and then drove home. She was afraid to drive from then on, and the phobia became worse (as often happens) every time she tried to drive herself. She wasn't too afraid when driving with others at the wheel. I had read about anxiety or panic attacks due to hypoglycemic episodes. By this time, I was getting pretty knowledgeable in the orthomolecular field, but I hadn't suspected any connection with simple phobias. But, something Monica said triggered a suspicion in my mind. I had her recall (still under hypnosis) what she had eaten just before that episode. Very interesting! She had pancakes with syrup three hours before, along with orange juice and 3 cups of coffee with 2 spoons of sugar each.
I probed deeper, and found that she had experienced a few other panic attacks in her life, but they were rare, and she had not connected them at all. She also had diabetes in her immediate family. The clues were all there, and I was hot on the trail. I sent her to her medical doctor to get a glucose tolerance test (GTT). The second patient was an even simpler case. She had actually been in a serious accident, and had suffered serious injuries. She was afraid to even get into a car at all! I started with relaxation training and desensitization. This was a very straightforward case and it resolved very successfully with conventional therapy. Barbara, the third patient, told of a similarity to Monica. She was driving over a high bridge when she had a similar traumatic experience, although hers was more of an anxiety attack than a fainting attack. This experience left her with a deadly fear of crossing bridges. She could drive elsewhere OK, but not over a bridge. She would go dozens of miles out of her way to avoid a bridge. In probing under hypnosis, I found more similarities to Monica - she had a very sugary meal just about three hours before the experience, and she also had experienced a few panic attacks previously in her life. Also, there was diabetes in her family. And, like Monica neither she nor her medical doctors had ever connected these. I sent her to a doctor for a GTT as well. The following week, Monica had a note from her doctor to the effect that she was "normal", with no signs of sugar problems. I simply couldn't believe it, particularly because she had told me that she had diabetes in her family! This is almost a sure tipoff to sugar handling problems genetically passed. I called the lab that did the test, and got the actual test results. I was astonished to find that these results showed a type of hypoglycemia called "flat curve" very clearly. Any first year medical student should have seen a problem, but her doctor didn't. It took some convincing on my part to show her that her medical doctor was dead wrong - she really did have a sugar handling problem! She bought a few books I recommended, and became more aware of her particular problem. She kept her sugar intake down, ate fruit and protein snacks between meals, and was able to control her anxiety attacks and fainting spells easily. Desensitization solved the immediate problem. Even more importantly in some ways was that she could handle an episode if it occurred without the tremendous fear. Knowing what's happening helps immeasurably. The hypnosis and desensitization was also very successful, and she was able to drive again. Barbara showed up with the same medical response - "no sugar problem". I had learned my lesson. I called the lab and got the test results. Again, her medical doctor hadn't diagnosed her sugar problem correctly. There was no question - she was hypoglycemic. It didn't take much to convince her, as she had suspected something for a long time, but she hadn't connected this to her driving problem with bridges of course.
Again, the logic in the unconscious mind is there - quite different from conscious logic, but logic nevertheless. An anxiety attack triggers a phobia which triggers an anxiety attack whenever the situation seems similar to the unconscious mind. A classic downward spiral similar to the chicken and egg situation. Which comes first? Three similar phobias, yet each different. All had a causal traumatic event, but two of these were not true trauma events, but were actually hypoglycemic episodes. A hypoglycemic episode is caused by the person eating too much sugar in too short a time. This causes too much insulin to be released into the bloodstream. This, in turn, causes the sugar (glucose) in the blood to be forced into the cells of the body. Because there is too much insulin, the blood now goes very low in glucose, causing a hypoglycemic episode. In doctorese, hypo means low, and glycemic means glucose. It is perhaps more properly called a "hyperinsulin episode". Diabetics must be very careful not to overdose on insulin as severe hypoglycemia can result in coma and/or death. The medical community doesn't want to recognize hypoglycemia as a disease, and they are partially correct. It is actually "normal" in that everybody has it to some extent. The problem is that the human body simply wasn't designed to take in as much sugar as fast as our modern diet provides. So, hypoglycemia is considered normal to conventional medical doctors, except in some rare cases. In the middle ages, the plague might have been "normal" to the doctors then as most of the population suffered from it. On the same medical reasoning, it wasn't a disease! To better understand how the human body handles sugar, let's examine eating an apple. An apple will provide the equivalent of about three teaspoons of sugar besides the fiber, the water, and the vitamins and minerals. When you eat an apple, you chew it up into small bits and then swallow it. Some immediate sugar absorption takes place in the mouth, but most of the bits of apple go down into the stomach, and then to the duodenum, and finally to the small intestine. Very little digestion takes place until the bits reach this area. At this point, the digestive enzymes start to slowly break apart the small bits of apple, separating the sugar (and other nutrients) from the fiber, and as this is separated, it moves into the bloodstream. This process takes about three hours overall, so that we have a relatively small steady stream of sugar going into the body for this three hours. This is easy for the body to handle. As the sugar is transferred into the blood, the brain monitors the incoming amount, and releases enough insulin to handle this sugar input for about three hours. Now, this amount of insulin will circulate through the blood for about three hours, and will cause the sugar coming into the body to pass into the cells naturally. The amount of sugar intake is balanced by the amount of insulin released. Now, instead of eating an apple, let's juice that apple in a cider press. We'll get almost all of the water, sugar, vitamins and minerals. It still has all the nutrients according to most medical books, but there's something missing? The fiber!
For many years, fiber was overlooked as a major nutrient by medical science. This is simply because our bodies don't digest it - it passes right through. Fiber is a form of sugar (cellulose) that we cannot digest because we don't have the digestive enzyme needed to do so. So, it seemed logical to medical science that if we don't digest it, it isn't needed. WRONG! We are designed to eat what nature provides, and that includes fiber. I find it interesting that so-called "health nuts" for many years included fiber in their diets, but medical science only recently discovered it was necessary to health. So, now we're drinking apple juice. What's the difference? We get all the vitamins and minerals don't we? Yes, but there is a very big difference - no fiber to slow down the digestive process. Instead of the nutrients being locked into the fiber and having to be digested slowly, the sugar and other nutrients are passed into the bloodstream in just a few minutes instead of a few hours. How does this affect the blood glucose? We now have a large amount of glucose pouring into the bloodstream. The message to the brain is that we just ate a bushel of apples. So, acting on the incoming information, the brain releases enough insulin to take care of this huge amount of sugar that will be coming in for about the next three hours. BUT, this huge amount of sugar WON'T be coming into the body for the next three hours, but only for a few minutes. The result - we have way too much insulin released, and the body has to activate up to eight separate defenses to avoid severe hypoglycemia, and even death. I hope that this simple example makes it clear that hypoglycemia is "normal" to all humans. It's our diet containing too much sugar and other processed foods that turn into sugar quickly that isn't "normal". It's the speed of absorption that actually causes the problem. We humans just aren't designed to handle processed food well! Hypoglycemic symptoms also vary considerably from one person to the next. One person may have a panic attack while another becomes angry; another gets sleepy; yet another becomes depressed and even suicidal! This many symptoms confuses the medical community. They want one symptom for one disease, and one magical pill. Too bad life isn't that simple. These cases taught me a lot. I wrote a paper about them that was later published in "Behaviorist", (journal of the Association for Advancement of Behavior Therapy). It stirred up a lot of controversy among psychologists. A little later, Sue came to me with a case of Agoraphobia. This is a phobia which is very difficult to deal with. The patient is afraid to even go out of their home's protection, and all too often desensitization therapy doesn't work for too long. Thinking about these cases, and making the connection with sugar and anxiety attacks in my mind, I spent time initially discussing this with Sue. I found that she was definitely hypoglycemic, and her panic attacks were almost certainly a result of her hypoglycemic episodes which occurred fairly often.
She read some of the literature I lent her, and she became convinced that I was right. She changed her diet to exclude sugary and fast absorbed foods. And she started to eat several small meals instead of just two or three large ones. This along with the simple desensitization therapy effected a complete cure for her. She had never connected her diet to her phobia. Is any wonder that agoraphobia is difficult to deal with using standard therapies? The patient improves with desenitization therapy for a while, then suffers another panic attack (usually in public). The thought process says "Oh, my God, it's back", and it is. They're right back where they started from. Without knowing about the diet effects, there is literally no way that they can ever be really cured. Perhaps they aren't really afraid of leaving home as much as they are afraid to leave their refrigerator! There's a wonderful side effect to this type of combined therapy. The patient is fantastically grateful to find out that they aren't really "crazy", but simply have a particular physical problem. (We humans all have an abnormal fear of being abnormal). Of course, they have suspected their craziness for many years, and some have hated themselves as a result. How many have committed suicide believing themselves insane? One of the very real benefits of this therapy is seeing the relief patients feel when they realize they aren't mentally abnormal, but just have a form of a physical problem that is normal. CHAPTER SEVEN - Al, Ray, Herb/Jackie Al was a very mixed up person. He thought he was two different persons. One was a good person, and the other a bad person. A common misconception of schizophrenia is that it is some sort of dual or split personality. While this may happen occasionally, schizophrenia is characterized primarily by sensory hallucinations. These may be any sense - sight, sound, taste, smell, feeling. These hallucinations sometimes give rise to wild ideation on the part of the patient. The split personality may occur because the patient hears (hallucinates) his own voice saying things contradictory to his beliefs. Often, the voice is attributed to a God, or a devil. Al was married to a lovely woman, and he had two great kids. He couldn't stay "good" but had to "roll in shit", as he put it, every so often. He had a "bad" girlfriend in Tampa that he had to go to occasionally. Sex with her was wild and had sado/masochistic features. He didn't like her. As a matter of fact, he thought that he hated her, but he couldn't stay away from her. He had even considered murdering her to cure this compulsion. Luckily, he was smart enough to realize that it wasn't really her fault, but his. He thought he was crazy, because he couldn't seem to help himself. I did an MMPI test on him and the results clearly indicated a form of emotional instability known as pseudo-schizophrenia. Again, I was lucky in that one of my various books on the MMPI included this particular diagnosis - most don't. I had no experience in dealing with this problem and the literature available was no help. I decided to start with the megavitamin therapy, a hair analysis, and a GTT.
Since this wasn't too long after my experience with Monica and Barbara, I mistrusted all the GTT's done by local labs and medical doctors. In my studies, combined with checks on labs and hospitals around Orlando, I had seen how defective their tests were. Few even gave the correct dosage of glucose/dextrose solution according to height and weight tables. None gave any real attention to symptoms displayed during the test, but merely took blood samples at specified times. Without correlation with symptoms, the test is virtually useless! All too often, the hypoglycemic episode was missed because it had occurred between blood samplings. Often between the third and fourth hour. We always took a sample either when symptoms indicated, or at the 3 1/2 hour point. Even when the lab tests clearly indicated sugar handling problems, unless it was clearly a diabetic problem, the doctors ignored it! I was literally forced to do testing myself. I had just received permission from HRS in Florida to perform the test in my clinic. I had trained my receptionist to do the test. She had been diagnosed as hypoglycemic years before coming to work for me, and learned the procedures quickly. This was the second GTT we had performed in the office. I was even testing myself, or rather my receptionist was. There were five people sitting in the reception area, all being tested at once. Al was one. The test starts with a baseline measurement of blood glucose after a 12 hour fast. (No breakfast). Then, the patient is given a measured dose of dextrose. This is quickly absorbed and the glucose level is measured as it goes rapidly up, at one half hour after the drink. The third reading is at the one hour mark, and at this time the glucose is usually going down after it's initial rapid and high rise. Then measurements are made at each hour. In my clinic we took another sample when any symptoms were evident, or at the 3 1/2 hour mark. We urged all our patients to monitor themselves carefully, and note any symptoms to us. This included any pains, or sleepy feelings, yawns, etc. Such yawns or sleepy feelings are often the first indication of sugar problems. Another less reported symptom is an immediate strong craving for something sweet. The soft drink and fast food industries make a lot of money from hypoglycemia. About 15 minutes after the second test, I noticed that Al's body motions were very jittery. I asked, "What's the trouble Al?" "I don't know, but suddenly I'm so mad that I want to hit somebody." With that, he jumped to his feet and slammed out of the office. As he went, my receptionist said feebly, "I'm sorry if I hurt you when I took blood." She then looked at me and said, "Do you think he's coming back?" I replied, "I don't know, but I'd better check on him." I went after him, and found him smoking and pacing furiously near the parking lot. I had never seen anyone smoke like that. He took such huge puffs that the cigarette literally raced down towards his lips with just a few drags. I approached him, and asked, "Can you talk about it?"
"I don't know - just leave me alone for a while, and I'll come back when I can." Not knowing what else to do, I left him there. He returned to the office after about another 10-15 minutes, just in time for the next test. We continued the test without further incident. In our testing, we terminated the test when the patient experienced a hypoglycemic episode, or at the six hour mark. Most labs only do 5 hours, and they don't terminate on an episode. Few people made it beyond four hours in our tests, but one woman actually went to about 20 minutes after the 5th hour, and then she fainted dead away! We also always fed people before allowing them to leave our office. There are many true stories of people leaving a lab, and passing out on the street shortly after a GTT. Not in our clinic. It was interesting to note that my glucose curve and Al's were almost identical. At about the 3 1/2 hour point, we both experienced a hypoglycemic episode. Mine was my first - a decidedly unpleasant experience! I suddenly became very nauseous with a cold sweat soaking my clothes. My vision cut down to a sort of tunnel vision, and I felt that I could easily faint or pass out. His episode included the nausea and sweating but not the fainting. Instead he again experienced sudden anger. Not as much as at first, but quite evident to him. This time he controlled it. At his appointment the following day, he told me that the test had explained something to him that had puzzled him for years. He worked on the oil rigs out in the Gulf near New Orleans, and on the long drive from Orlando to New Orleans, he would stop and get a cup of coffee with a couple of spoons of sugar, and often a couple of doughnuts! About a half hour later, he'd get angry for no good reason, and would take it out on other drivers, shouting and gesticulating at them. He had almost crashed his car into a truck once. This is known as undifferentiated anger. Undifferentiated is doctorese for "no real reason", or "not appropriate to the circumstances", but it should be noted that all persons rationalize a reason for their anger, valid or not... His "badness" literally had both meanings - he was angry and crazy. He had always had a very quick temper, and flared up sometimes at nothing. He was easily convinced that sugar had something to do with his problem. Again, the clues were there. I knew that the body had eight defensive actions against glucose going too low. Not too many people realize that glucose (blood sugar) is absolutely necessary for the brain to function, and if it is cut off for more than a few minutes, it is just as deadly as cutting off oxygen. As we evolved not eating sugary foods, we didn't need more than just the insulin to keep our blood sugar from going too high. However, it was common as man evolved to go hungry for several meals, so we needed mechanisms to keep the brain functioning. Thus, the single mechanism (insulin) against high blood sugar, and eight mechanisms as defenses against low blood sugar. The first is releasing stored sugar from muscles and liver to counteract the insulin overdose. This is accomplished by the release of adrenaline. Stored glucose is primarily stored for use in a "flight or fight" situation. However, all too often, this is
used up fast, and there's still a glucose shortage with too much insulin still in the blood. Along with heightened adrenaline levels. This adrenaline is a major factor in the anxiety attacks suffered by some. After all, the body and the unconscious mind are expecting to have to fight for life or get out of town fast in this situation. (Fight or flight). You might run into a sabre-toothed tiger anywhere. Still another defensive mechanism is the release of sex hormones which can be rapidly turned into glucose. Aha - here's the key! A combination of adrenaline and testosterone together causes undifferentiated anger in some people, generally men. It undoubtedly did in Al's case. Why it doesn't react the same way with all men is unknown, but each individual is somewhat different! I spent some time with Al, going over this factor, and explaining it, convincing him that this was his major problem. I continued him on the megavitamin formula for some time, as it seemed to be helping him. At least he thought it did, and that's what counts. Never discount the placebo effect! However, I believe that changing his diet was the major factor. Over the next few months, I did marital therapy with Al and his wife, and some family therapy with the two children. All had been affected by his temper tantrums. He told me later that he had completely broken off with the "bad" woman in Tampa, no longer having a need to unconsciously punish himself for his bad behavior. I successfully treated several other pseudo-shizophrenics by simple diet management over the next several years. Don't overlook the possibilities here. How many barroom fights are due to sugar handling problems? How many deaths or murders? How many marriages does such undifferentiated anger affect? How many wives and/or children are abused because of such anger? For persons who have this reaction to hypoglycemia, sugar is definitely a dangerous drug. Some years later, I had an initial session with a couple that had severe marital problems. It seems that Jackie worked under Herb doing boat repairs, rebuilding, etc. Every afternoon between 3:30 & 4:00, Herb would come around to her area, find fault with everything she had done, and demand that she do it over. Jackie was so fed up she wanted out of the marriage. She had only agreed to come to counseling as a last resort. She reported that he was mostly a nice guy except for his too-often "rages". I started by asking him about his lunch diet. No surprise to find that he had a Snickers bar, a white bread sandwich, and a soft drink every day. It was a bit difficult to convince them that he probably had a sugar problem, but they agreed to try my suggestion for a week. She prepared a ziplock bag with peanuts and raisins (about 5 peanuts to each raisin). He was to eat a mouthful at 2 PM every day, and she would remind him. He would also cut out the Snickers bar and switch to a diet drink. If this worked, he promised to change his diet overall. A week later, Jackie called me and the marriage was again very good. No anger at her, and her jobs were satisfactory to him. Another pseudo- schizophrenic case, but I
didn't tell them that. A year later, I found that he had a few lapses, but had understood them, and it didn't affect their now good marriage. What conventional marriage counselor would have found this connection. Never happen! Probably they'd have spent a lot of money and time on useless therapy, and gotten divorced in the end anyway. The peanut/raisin combination I made up after seeing many cases of hypoglycemia. It works well if taken between regular meals during the day. The peanuts are largely protein and complex carbohydrates which are very slowly digested, while the raisins are digested quickly to supply glucose fast in small amounts. Of course, be careful that the person isn't allergic to peanuts or raisins. Any nuts will do. There are a few so-called "trail mixes" that don't contain very sugary fruit which will do in an emergency. Ray was another person given a GTT shortly after that. He was a nice man in his early 60's who had spent a couple of thousand dollars recently on medical tests with no results. It seems that he had fainted on the street twice without any cause that his medical doctors had been able to find. He had just gotten out of the hospital where these extensive (expensive) tests were done. He had heard me on a radio talk show, and decided to have the GTT test done himself. Almost four hours into the GTT, he fainted dead away with his blood sugar in the low 40's! Problem solved. After thousands of dollars, he "just happened" to take this simple and inexpensive test that no medical doctor had thought to order, and it was the answer! Malpractice? You decide. After that, whenever I had a patient with a fainting problem or any history of fainting, I suspected hypoglycemia, and was seldom wrong. The last three chapters have all demonstrated different forms of sugar handling problems. All different, yet all with a similar base - sugar! No GTT was ever done on Bobby - it would have stressed him terribly, and unnecessarily. Without such a test, Al (and Ray) might never have been diagnosed correctly, and the phobia cases would all have been chancy to solve at best. There was no need to test Herb either, other than the simple self-test of using peanuts & raisins. Such a test is an easy one and I now often use it instead of the GTT whenever I suspect hypoglycemic problems. That small ziplock bag of peanuts and raisins is simpler and cheaper than the GTT, and much easier on the patient. The GTT is very stressful, and since I know that most persons are normally hypoglycemic, I rarely have any occasion to use it. There was an interesting experiment that bears on all of these problems. In a lab, two identical cages of lab rats, also as identical as possible, were given the same diet. In cage A however, the drinking water was laced with sugar. Cage B was not. That was the only difference. In a very short time, some surprising behavior was noticed in cage A. First, the exercise wheel was used almost 10 times as much as in cage B. (Hyperactivity?)
Next, aggressive and territorial fighting occurred between the males leading to several deaths. (A correlation to Art's anger?) Finally, the birth rate dropped dramatically in cage A, and there were many stillborn births. Those born exhibited severe birth defects, and by the fourth generation, normal births were non-existant. By the fifth generation, the experiment was stopped, as the population was virtually wiped out in cage A. Cage B was still very normal of course. The only difference was that sugar was added into the diet in somewhat analogous amounts to our so-called "civilized diet" (particularly the typical teenager's diet). Still another interesting experiment had one set of rats fed a diet consisting mainly of a sugarcoated cereal. The other set was fed mainly on the shredded box that the cereal came in. You guessed it! The rats eating the box did much better than the rats eating the sugary cereal. The moral - throw away all the sugary cereals, and eat the box instead! CHAPTER EIGHT - Elizabeth & Nikki Strictly speaking this next case wasn't mine, but inasmuch as I was working with Dr. Von Hilsheimer, I had a part in it. It is also so interesting and so illustrative that I had to include it here. As mentioned earlier, in 1981, I had started to work with Dr Von at the allergy clinic of Dr. Klotz. We initially set up a lab to test only for food allergy by the then very new and controversial endpoint titration method. As a direct result of this particular case, we later tested for inhalant allergies by the same method. We were both PhD psychologists, primarily interested in the effects of allergy on mental problems. The MD allergists in the clinic, other than Dr Klotz, didn't believe in what we were doing. MD's are very jealous of their territory, and these obviously resented our invasion onto their turf with new and controversial ideas outside of their training and conditioning. It takes a big man such as Dr Klotz to see possible value in going against conventional thinking. Titration means to dilute down in steps, and that is what we did. Take a "concentrate" from a known source, mix one milliliter (ml) from that concentrate with four ml's of saline solution, and you have a 1/5th solution. Label this #1 solution of whatever food you are using, for example, MILK #1. Now, take one ml of MILK #1, and mix that with another 4 ml's of saline water. Now, you have a 1/25th solution (1/5th of 1/5th). Label it MILK #2. Continue diluting this way up to MILK #9 (close to 1 part in 2 million pretty small), and you have one food set of solutions. Repeat that for six different foods, and that's just one tray of test solutions. We had over 25 trays when we first started, and the number of trays and solutions grew constantly. We even had to test some few very allergic persons with solutions beyond #9. I was reactive to ragweed up to #14 (1 part in 6 billion).
During our early testing days, Dr. Von gave me an initial ragweed shot of about #7 just at lunchtime. We left right away to eat in a fancy French restaurant in Winter Park. He thought it was very funny when I started sneezing and watering from eyes and nose in the car on the way. At the restaurant, I was very embarrassed to have to use quite a few napkins in my misery. He swears that he didn't intend it as a practical joke, but I've never been quite sure! Testing is both simple and complex. You inject .04 ml of a solution between skin layers with a very small hypodermic so that it makes a "blister" (called a wheal). The patient sets an alarm for ten minutes and sits down to read or just rest. When the alarm goes off, the doctor examines the wheal, measuring it before and after. If it has grown in size, become very red, etc., this means that the patient is reactive (allergic) at this point - the body defense systems are trying to keep the offending material out of the bloodstream. Of course, any symptoms experienced by the patient are noted as well. If that particular dosage showed as allergic, then the next higher number (lower dosage) would be tested the same way until the point is found where the body accepts the solution - the wheal doesn't enlarge, but disappears as the material is accepted into the body. This is the "end-point". Symptoms from that particular allergen usually disappear at this point as well. The combination of symptom relief and wheal evidence is much more accurate than just symptoms alone. The endpoint dose is the treatment dosage to relieve symptoms. It might be noted here that the basis of homeopathic medicine is based on extremely small concentrations of the same material that is causing the problem. Since homeopathic medicine has long been proven effective, it should not be too surprising that this system also works well. It is very similar. Only the US medical community is so hidebound that it ignores homeopathic medicine. Most European medical doctors use both allopathic (drug) and homeopathic medicines, with better results than drugs alone. Some people lose the allergy symptom(s) completely within a few months by taking the solution every other day. Others would have to adjust the solution every month or so, and still others had to maintain the dosage for years or even for life. There is a tremendous individual variance in allergic response, not only in what allergens cause what problems, but also in treatment. Because of this, I jokingly, at first, coined what I called the "First Rule of Allergy Research or Treatment." The rule is: THERE ARE NO RULES. I later amended this to add: THERE ARE ONLY GUIDELINES WHICH SOMETIMES WORK. While it started as a joke at first, it has proven true over and over.
Dr. Von and I worked together in the clinic every Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, as we both had our own clinical practices as well. It was on a Tuesday that Dr. Von introduced me to Elizabeth. Being polite, I said, "How are you Elizabeth?" Her answer was given in a low depressed tone of voice, "Better than yesterday." Being a psychologist, I naturally asked, "What happened yesterday?" "Oh, I just sat around thinking of ways to kill myself." It was obvious from her tone that she wasn't kidding. She was so depressed that it was depressing to even talk to her. As a matter of fact, it was depressing to even look at her. She was about 5'2" tall, and looked to be in her late 50's. She was colorless to an extreme. No makeup at all, and her dresses were drab as well. She was unattractive at best, with her demeanor and depressing conversation making it worse. She was our very first serious depression case, and we were happy to have her, as we hoped to prove the case for allergic causes of depression and other emotional problems. For two weeks, we tested her for every food combination we had, and nothing seemed to help. We couldn't seem to lift her depression a bit. We knew that she was an allergic person, and we were positive that her depression was an allergic symptom. The MD's (except Dr. Klotz) were giving us a hard time, and we were getting very discouraged. We found few foods that she was sensitive to at all, and the treatment doses we made up from them didn't seem to help her depression a bit. We were reviewing her file together for the umpteenth time when Dr. Von took another look at her inhalant allergies. Before coming to us, the clinic had tested with the (then) standard "patch test" set of inhalant injections. As a result, she had been taking shots as prescribed by one of the MD allergists. The large number of inhalant allergies she had shown was the reason we had known she was an allergic person in the first place. Dr. Von, in a stroke of genius (not unusual for him), noticed that she was very allergic to three grasses that were presently blooming in Florida. Ragweed, Zoysia, and Fennel. We sneaked over to the MD side, and got three standard concentrates of these grasses. Dr. Von decided to mix them, and I titrated the mixture as usual into the 9 sets of solution. We started with a #4 solution, and the wheal showed that she was very reactive to that level. #5 showed the same result. When we injected #6, the result shocked us both. Elizabeth came up out of her depression within two minutes as if someone had handed her a million dollars. What a personality change! Her whole body and facial expressions changed - it wasn't even the same woman. Even today years later, just writing about it brings back the sense of wonder that we felt that day. We gave her a #4 solution, and she was back down into depression within a few minutes. A #6 brought her up like an elevator. We literally dragged the three MD's into our testing area, and took her up and down for them. Crowing more than a bit I'm afraid, but they deserved it! From then on, we got a bit more respect from them.
We had to give her adrenaline after this testing. Even though she felt much better, she was exhausted. Testing such as we had done was very stressful, much more than we knew at the time. On Thursday, I met Dr. Von at a local restaurant for lunch, and he said, "Wait until you see Elizabeth." I replied, "Why, what's the matter - what's happened?" He wouldn't tell me. When we arrived back at the clinic, there was Elizabeth in a bright red dress with makeup on. She looked an attractive 35-40 with a bright smile. What a transformation! We tested her using our endpoint technique for all the inhalants that had been found previously, and we found more that were troublesome without the proper dosage. Along with other grasses, trees, and shrub allergies, were some very interesting ones. She was allergic to dogs - her husband had four dogs. She was allergic to smoke - her husband smoked a pipe. She was allergic to men's cologne - you guessed it. We kidded her about having to shoot her husband to get a full cure. A week or so later, she left for her home in the north - a different woman. Six months later, Elizabeth returned to adjust her shots, and to bring some actual samples of shrubs and grasses that grew around her home. She reported that using the shots, she had been mainly "normal", with only occasional lapses into the depression, but these were not like the original - much lower in intensity. We tested her, adjusted her shots, and she returned north again, happy and seldom depressed. During this visit, we found that her color sense changed dramatically when stressed by any allergy, and this was her immediate indication of oncoming depression. It seems that psychological tests based on color reaction are useful in determining emotional reaction, and are not quackery as is often stated by conventional psychologists and psychiatrists. Another six months went by. By this time, I was no longer able to work as often in the clinic as before, but I tried to visit at least once a week or so. I walked into the testing area one day, and there was Dr. Von sitting at a table surrounded by about 12 patients in the usual ring or circle. In a jocular mood I said, "Well, I see Dr Von's circus is in town." A voice from behind me immediately said, "So who invited the clown?" I turned and it was Elizabeth. The joke was on me. I kissed her cheek, and hugged her. She was obviously OK. We made a little small talk, and I went over and sat down next to Dr. Von. He introduced me to two new patients, and Elizabeth's bell rang. He decided that the previous shot had been an endpoint. So, he started her on a new series. We continued to discuss cases and procedures until I happened to notice that Elizabeth was "catching flies". This is the rather silly term we used when patients sat there comatose with their mouths open as a result of testing some solution.
When I called it to his attention, Dr. Von muttered an expletive, and said, "Watch this." He went over to her, and lifted her hand above her head. When he took his hand away, her hand stayed in that position. She was in a full catatonic state only a few minutes after making that very bright remark. It was also after receiving only about 2 drops of clay material diluted with water to 1 part in 625. (#4 solution which was often a starting point in this testing.) A very small amount to have such a tremendous effect on a brain! The clay had been taken from a dirt road near her home up north. She had noticed that when she drove along this road she sometimes became depressed. She was certainly correct - it was a dangerous allergen to her! A lot of the best allergy detective work comes from listening to patients, and teaching them to notice any self changes along with changes in conditions at the time. Dr Von actually had to give her the grasses #4 solution, which put her back into depression from the catatonia, then the #6 solution which brought her out of depression to near normal. Then we tested her very carefully on the clay - starting from the top end. The implications of this case are far reaching indeed. How many people are in insane asylums simply because they are allergic? I have to suspect that many, if not a majority, could be cured by allergy research. How many depressions of all types are caused by unsuspected simple allergy or food sensitivity? Here, I'm on firmer ground because of my clinical experience. A huge majority of all cases have had some type of physical problem such as allergy or sensitivity involved. In my practice, at least 70% of all depressions had allergy/sensitivity involved, and the remainder had a heavy metal overload. Some had both problems. More on this later. Dr. Marshall Mandell, speaking on a Donahue TV program, put it very well, "People don't get depressed because of poor potty training!" Why are relatively few MD allergists involved? These are the very people that should be in the forefront of this movement. Even today, over 25 years after Dr. Mandell first proposed brain allergy as a probable cause in many schizophrenic and depressive cases, few allergists even test for foods. Many are still using the old patch test which is very inferior to many newer methods. The results are uncertain as to dosage for treatment, and in only about 50% of the time, do allergy sufferers really get good results. Certainly, in Elizabeth's case, the "standard" treatment was useless. Both Dr. Von and I have found many similar cases since. What does it take to get the medical community to wake up? Dr. Mandell has been ridiculed by many other allergists, in spite of proving his case over and over. Dr. Von and I have been persecuted often by various authorities. We, along with many others in this orthomolecular movement have often been called quacks by the conventionally trained doctors (mistrained?). Years later Nikki came to me with depression so bad that she hadn't been able to work. She woke up in the morning OK, have a bowel movement, and take a shower. She was always somewhat constipated, so this bowel movement caused her to strain.
She thought that might have something to do with the depression. During the shower, she would often start to cry as her depression overtook her. I immediately suspected her breakfast, but gave this up when she reported that she rarely ate breakfast before showering. I then questioned her about her water. "Is it from a well?" I asked. "No, it's city water." "Is is heavily chlorinated?" "I don't think so. I've never noticed it." "Where do you live?" She named a subdivision called Golden Gate. I had read months before that Golden Gate had a gasoline leakage into the water system from some old gas stations. A clue. My questions changed. "Do you have any problems with gasoline or diesel smells?" "Yes, as a matter of fact - I do. I get nauseous if I smell diesel exhaust, and gas smells also make me feel sick." I went out to my car which had a 6 gallon gas tank for an outboard motor in the trunk. I took a paper towel, twisted it into a small cylinder, and wet one end from the tank. When I returned with that in my hand, she experienced a sharp headache when I walked in the door. Problem solved. She was allergic to petrochemicals. This also answered a problem that she had noticed before. When she washed dishes, she couldn't concentrate on anything. The contaminant of benzene in the water affected her brain. I explained that she had better move out of that sub-division, and warned her about never using a gas stove for cooking. (Dr. Von had one patient who was "cured" by simply exchanging her gas stove for an electric one.) I have also seen a case of severe depression caused by this petrochemical allergy where the patient actually had to rid herself of all clothing and bedding made of synthetic (nylon, dacron, etc.) material, and use only cotton, silk or wool (natural fibers). Manmade fibers are made from petrochemicals. Sounds impossible, but it happens and much more often than is currently suspected by medical science. The pulse test is also very useful in testing for inhalant allergy as well as foods. Just sniff the various chemicals around the home, including the pesticides, and measure the pulse 10 minutes afterwards. The adrenaline reaction will raise the pulse if an allergy is present. Hold pillows and other bedclothes close around the face and inhale deeply a few times and measure the pulse. All of these tests may or may not produce
recognizable symptoms, but the pulse is pretty reliable! When self-testing, be sure to write down all the pulse figures - allergic persons don't always think too clearly! CHAPTER NINE -Kathy & Judy Kathy was a very attractive 18 year old accompanied by her mother. We talked a few minutes, and it was obvious that she didn't want to talk openly with her mother there. I asked her if she would prefer her mother to wait in the reception area. She answered, "Yes," with obvious relief. Not too unusual especially with young girls. Naturally, I suspected some sexual activity that she didn't want her mother to hear about, but I was somewhat wrong. She was actually a quite religious Catholic, and still a virgin. Not a sexual problem, in the usual sense at least. After taking her history, and getting her to relax somewhat, I asked her what her problem was. She confided that she had been hearing imaginary voices for several weeks. We discussed these voices, and I decided to give her a quick test (the HofferOsmond Diagnostic). This is a quick test which is excellent for showing schizophrenia and depression. I wasn't too surprised to find that she showed up quite schizoid, although she appeared fairly normal in my office. Lily Tomlin once gave a description of schizophrenia that was meant as a joke, "If you talk to God, you're praying. If God talks to you, you're schizophrenic!" That's too close to the truth to be really funny, although it was a funny remark. A common hallucination is that God or the devil talks to the subject. By this time, my treatment for schizophrenic patients was standardized (see Schizophrenia). I took a hair sample for mineral analysis, and started all on the megavitamin formulation. I used a questionnaire devised by Dr. Marshall Mandell (Appendix A) to quickly determine if a person was very allergic, and then tested for allergy/sensitivity as indicated. When her mineral analysis returned a week or so later, I was pleasantly surprised to find a copper level about 25 times normal. We had found the problem! I called and asked her to come in that afternoon. When she arrived, I explained the situation to her. In going over her medical history, she had told me that she was "on the pill". I asked her why, since she was a virgin, and unlikely to need birth control. It seems that her doctor had put her on the pill when she was 15 in order to regularize her menstrual periods. I remembered reading a paper about one of the side effects of the pill being this abnormal uptake of copper in some women. I told her to stop taking birth control pills, and discussed with her the various chelation options she could use to get the copper lowered. She opted for vitamin C. I also gave her a vitamin regimen with extra B6 that would help keep her menstrual periods regular, and lower any PMS symptoms. She started on the regimen that day. Within two weeks, she no longer heard voices, and reported feeling much better about herself and everything around her. The B6 worked to eliminate her menstrual irregularity and PMS. Of course, her biggest fear was gone. She really wasn't crazy!
She remained on the high C chelation regimen for over a year, and on her last mineral analysis, her copper had gone down to about 4-5 times normal. She then lowered her vitamin C intake to about 4 grams a day, which would take out the remaining copper excess in another year or so. She continued with the vitamin regimen, and her periods were very regular, with no PMS symptoms. I have since found that the birth control pill has several other side effects that may change vitamin/mineral uptake, particularly B6 and B12, causing excessive PMS in some women, and causing severe B12 deficiency in others up to and including anemia. This abnormal uptake of copper is only one side effect, and it may affect more than just a few women. Many others may have only "borderline" emotional problems as a result of higher-than-normal copper. High copper is also a suspect in many depression cases. It should be noted here that every woman goes high in copper and low in zinc about four days prior to their period. For those with an imbalance already, it has to make menstrual problems worse. How many of these problems aren't diagnosed correctly by drug oriented physicians? Too many doctors prescribe pills or nostrums for a completely different purpose than they were designed for. There is no such thing as a drug without side-effects, but it would seem that the doctors are perfectly content to "go with the odds". But what about that one person in a hundred, or even a thousand that is affected? The figures are difficult to confirm, but it's estimated that thousands of persons die every year from taking the prescriptions that their doctor have given them. That was my first case of copper causing schizophrenia due to the taking of "the pill", but not my last. I saw several over the next few years, and automatically suspected copper schizophrenia or depression whenever a young female patient showed up who was, or had been, on the pill. Several years later, while practicing in Stuart Florida, I got a call from a distraught mother. It seems that her 15 year old daughter, Judy, was in a local treatment clinic. (That sounds nicer than "insane asylum" or even "looney bin".) This was one of the newer ones that charged over $500 a day - all or almost all on health insurance of course! She had been in there for over 5 weeks, and the cost was already up over $18,000. It seems that Judy had gone very schizophrenic and had actually talked about killing her mother and stepfather, and another younger child. She had been immediately hospitalized, and sent to this particular institution. Judy was now stable (on drugs), and desperately wanted to get out. However, the psychiatrist in charge said that she was dangerous to herself and to others. Suicidal and homicidal as well as schizophrenic. And particularly dangerous to the baby that the mother was carrying at the time. The psychiatrist told Judy's mother that Judy would be in and out of institutions all her life as a serious schizophrenic. She recommended that Judy be kept in that
institution for at least a year, with the next seven months kept away completely from any member of the family. Her mother was more than a little distraught! I had talked to Judy the summer before for one long hypnotic session. She had been sexually abused by a previous stepfather, and I worked with her for a couple of hours lowering her fears and guilt feelings. She had evidently liked what I had done, as she was now repeatedly asking, "Why can't Dr. Bate take care of me now?" I told her mother, "The first thing is to get her out of there. If she stays in there on drugs, she'll probably become insane." It's well known that some of the psychotropic drugs, as they are called, can affect the human brain in ways not fully understood, and some people actually become worse from such drugs. Like Ritalin, such a drug may make the patient controllable by the staff of such a clinic, but it's dangerous to the patient. It is not too unusual for a patient on some of these drugs to become even more insane as a direct result. "Doping" a patient just isn't the right way except as a last resort, or as a needed temporary measure. None of these drugs "cure", even if they do allow the patient to cope, and more importantly be "controlled". We discussed Judy's situation at length, and I told her, "If you get her out of there, I am fairly sure that I can help her back to normal, and if I can't do it quickly, I know a clinic in Orlando that can". Next, her husband called, and his skepticism could be felt even over the phone. Here I was, a psychologist, practicing in my home with a small unimpressive office compared to that megabuck facility with lots of stainless steel modern facilities and paraphernalia, and with lots of impressive diplomas on the wall. I understood his skepticism, and tried to overcome it with what I knew of such cases. The mother had met me, and had been impressed evidently. She was very desperate and must have convinced him, for they started to get Judy out. What a fight! First, the psychiatrist told them she couldn't get out, but after a consult with me, the parents found out a bit more about their rights, and demanded their daughter's release. The psychiatrist then told them that it would be very dangerous for Judy to be released without another psychiatrist agreeing to treat the case. They called a local psychiatrist, and he first agreed to take the case, but after talking to the resident psychiatrist, he refused the case. The same thing happened with still another psychiatrist - medical obstructionism at it's best! (Or is it worst?) Of course, some of this was because I, a psychologist, was involved, and my reputation among the local medical community was that of a "quack". This was conveyed to Judy's parents of course. They finally got mad, and demanded their daughter. The psychiatrist said that she would only release her AMA - "Against Medical Advice" - but they held firm and still demanded their daughter. The psychiatrist finally released Judy late one Friday afternoon - but refused to give them the prescription that had stabilized her. This is not only immoral, but illegal. A doctor cannot refuse a patient a prescription simply because the patient wants a
different doctor! Such is called "Medical Abandonment", and can result in loss of a license. This is particularly true in mental disease cases. When I found out late Friday, I was furious. I called the institution several times, demanding that someone in charge call back, but I got nowhere. So, Judy had to be driven 2 hours to Orlando to be examined by an MD on Dr. Von's staff to get the same prescription that should have been given with her release. I was even more furious than the parents. When Judy arrived in my office on Monday, she was subdued as an effect of the drugs, but seemed rational. After taking a hair sample and explaining the megavitamin therapy, we discussed her hallucinations at length. She had had two imaginary friends that she talked to as a child, dating from the sexual abuse incidents. Not too unusual as an escape mechanism for a child. However, a few months back, these imaginary friends had come back to her. They weren't very sympathetic as they had been as a child, but were ugly and mean, and demanding. They talked to her, becoming more and more disturbed. They urged her to kill her mother and the rest of the family. (Psychological theory at this point would undoubtedly have her becoming unstable because of her mother's pregnancy.) She had become worried and confided in her mother about the hallucinations, and their demands. Quite naturally, this scared her mother, and she was hospitalized. She told me that she hadn't had any intention of doing anyone harm herself, but was worried because the "bad ones" were getting more and more angry with her, and urging her to be "bad" as well. She and her parents went home. She was to stay on her medication along with the megavitamin formula for a while. The following day, I sent her to an MD associate in Jupiter for a food sensitivity test, and we found several foods that she was sensitive to. We eliminated them from her diet. I had a real fight with the psychiatrist and a psychologist at the institution. I requested all the test data from them, including the raw scores as well as their analysis. They refused at first to give me any data. I reminded them that while it was their file history, it had been paid for by the parents (insurance). When this reasonable argument didn't seem to move them, I got really angry and abusive on the phone. I must admit that I actually enjoyed threatening them with legal recourse including a formal complaint of Medical Abandonment. I got the tests the next day by special messenger. Who says blackmail isn't enjoyable? I probably should have filed a formal complaint anyway, but didn't. The mineral analysis came back. Lo and behold, her copper was sky high. In discussing it, I found that she had started to take the birth control pill over a year before. Again, I discussed the various options of chelation to get the copper down, and she also opted for vitamin C.
I discussed the dangers of discontinuing her psychotropic regimen too quickly with Judy and her mother. It may be very dangerous to stop any drug regimen abruptly as the body has become accustomed to it. It is safer to cut it down gradually, particularly in such a case. She discontinued her psychotropic medication gradually, under her mother's supervision, without any further problems. She stayed on the megavitamin formula for a few weeks, then was able to go onto a lower overall vitamin/mineral regimen with the high vitamin C chelation treatment. The hallucinations never returned. This case raises some interesting questions about those modern and expensive "treatment centers". Judy was the first of three similar cases that I was able to treat successfully after getting them out of that clinic. I heard some horror stories about patients kept there while their insurance paid, then discharging them (whether cured or not) when (or if) it ran out. Talk about a vested interest! $500 a day in income pays for a lot of overhead, not counting the fancy testing and treatment that may or may not work. My total fee, including the food sensitivity test and hair analysis, was under $500. This clinic put in a spurious complaint against me with the Florida Dept. of Professional Regulation (DPR) which was quickly dismissed when the facts were told. The mother and stepfather later told me that the psychiatrist had said that I was a quack. Who was the real quack? Ask Judy or her parents. Studies clearly show that such treatment centers often make young persons emotionally unstable just from the maze of drugs that are given them. A drug is given, but it has side effects. Another drug is given for the side effects, and still a third or fourth or even fifth for those succeeding side effects. This can't be good treatment! The overhead of such places makes it mandatory that they find something wrong, in order to keep patients as long as possible (profitable). This just isn't right. When will the medical community learn this? CHAPTER TEN - Bob, Dave, & Reggie Some people just seem to be lucky all their lives. Happy coincidences seem to happen to them much more often than most. I seem to be one of the lucky persons with a lot of happy coincidences, both in my life and practice. Bob walked into my office the week after I had read "Vitamin C Against Cancer" by H. L. Newbold. Dr. Newbold is an orthomolecular psychiatrist and a very astute observer as well as a good writer. In his practice, he has discovered several items of interest in the health field including the use of vitamin C to literally cure cancer in many cases. Another item in particular, is the now proven fact that food allergy or sensitivity is a major cause of obesity and other forms of overweight. More on this later. Bob had made the appointment in order to get a hypnotic tape made for his use at home. He had just been told by his doctor that his cancer had spread too far, and he was "terminal". Terminal is doctorese for 3-6 months to live. Bob was a fighter who didn't want to give up so quickly. He had read Dr. Carl Simonton's book "Getting
Well Again" about the power of positive thinking and hypnotic focusing of the mind's power in cancer cases. Several persons had actually been able to reverse the course of cancer using such positive mind techniques. We discussed his case at length going over the hypnotic techniques involved. I taught him a basic self hypnosis technique. We also talked about the vitamin C therapy which I had just read about. We decided to try a subliminal tape to go along with the self hypnosis. He borrowed Newbold's book on vitamin C therapy. The following day, he returned, not too happy with the subliminal tape. He wanted one that he could actually hear instead of having the message underneath the surf sound I had used. I made him another tape. He had already read the book, and started on the vitamin C and supplements discussed. He had been very impressed by the research experiment conducted in Scotland by Doctors Linus Pauling and Ian Cameron. This experiment used 100 out of 1100 cancer patients. All the patients were terminal cases. The 100 patients were chosen at random to be as representative of the entire group as possible. They were given only 10 grams of vitamin C per day. This is not nearly as much as would be recommended today. The remaining 1000 cases were used as controls. A year later, all of the 1000 control patients were dead. Half of the 100 were still living, and several of these had remissions of their cancer. Some of these were living 15 years later. It's interesting to note that this very important experiment was never reported in the US medical journals. Had it been a new drug with the same results, you would have seen banner headlines. No, not a conspiracy - or not exactly. Realize that all medical journals depend on drug company advertising for their very existence. What drug company would place advertising in a journal that published articles saying that all those expensive drugs weren't as good as inexpensive (non-patentable) vitamins, or minerals, or amino acids? So, few MD's are even aware of this experiment, and the tremendous potential of vitamin C in cancer treatment. The research since that historic experiment indicates that 10 grams is a woefully short amount. In all such cases, vitamin C should be taken in much higher megavitamin amounts. An interesting thing happens with vitamin C "overdose". If you are relatively disease/infection free, and you start to take 10-15 grams a day, your body can't absorb this much, and the residue will irritate your intestinal tract. The result - simple diarreah. Surprisingly, this fact is of great use in this and other holistic fields. First, you literally can't overdose as the excess simply goes out of the body. You could become dehydrated if the diarreah kept up too long, but that's rather unlikely. Dr. Von did have one case that had been misdiagnosed by a physician. The patient had suddenly started taking
10 grams of vitamin C a day. Since he had no serious health problems, he started to experience diarreah. His doctor did several expensive tests and tried several different drugs to stop the diarreah - none of which worked. The patient went to Dr. Von, and he diagnosed it immediately, lowered the vitamin C to 5 grams a day. The patient recovered immediately. Too little knowledge can indeed be dangerous. Second, and much more important, your body will actually absorb many times as much vitamin C, without diarreah, if you have some disease/infection in your body. In particular, a virus in the bloodstream, such as a common cold or flu, will allow an uptake as high as 100 grams a day without any diarreah. This amount is sometimes needed to knock out the particular disease/infection. What happens if you take lesser amounts than are needed to kill the virus or bacteria invaders? Simple - you don't kill them all! Since both multiply at an amazing rate actually doubling in about 20 minutes, they quickly get back to saturation strength within a short time. In about 3 hours or so, one virus or bacteria cell becomes 1000! The RDA for vitamin C is only 75 milligrams (.075 grams). This is an example of the futility in using these RDA figures for any "health" amounts. The RDA or Recommended Daily Amounts used to be called the MDA or Minimum Daily Amounts. This is much more truthful, but not as good for the cereal advertisers, so their lobby changed the name. Doesn't it sound like that's the amount needed for good health? Particularly when you hear the misleading cereal advertisements? Not so. These listed RDA amounts are still only the MINIMUM amounts required to prevent serious deficiency diseases such as scurvy, beri-beri, and pellegra. The idea that it's the amount for good health is a result of Madison Avenue advertising. Most of us in this field who have studied vitamins and actual health requirements believe that .075 grams of vitamin C is way too little. Most agree that 2 grams (2000 milligrams) of supplementary vitamin C is a minimum starting point. Some experts in this field would increase that to 4-5 grams a day, and some even more than this. If you're a smoker or under a lot of stress, then 4 grams may be a minimum for you. The rest of the vitamins are similarly low in the RDA. Only the mineral amounts are fairly close to what an "average" person might need. This ignores the tremendous variability between each individual human being in his/her requirements, not to mention where they live, their diet, what they drink, etc. Now we can see a bit better why so many MD's say (and honestly believe) that vitamin C isn't effective against colds and flu? They recommend 500 or even 1000 mg - which to their mind is a megadose - after all, it's ten times the RDA. Some shortsighted experimenters have even gone very much higher, and used as much as 78 grams. Wow, a hundred times the RDA, that's a megadose - or so they think! When it has little or no effect, they publish another learned paper in some medical journal (or popular magazine) saying that vitamin C has no effect on colds or flu, and they have "proven it".
Your doctor isn't an idiot, or even a bad guy - he's just the victim of his extensive (and expensive) education, and he believes the AMA dogma. He reads medical journals to keep up naturally. There's no reason for him to disbelieve the articles that appear in his journals about vitamin C not being effective. He must reason that if any such therapy was good, it would be reported in such journals. The individual doctor is probably not even aware that the medical journals he reads are literally controlled by the drug advertising. Don't blame your doctor for his lack of knowledge. Blame the system. In the case of cancer, the correct dosage of vitamin C has to be determined for each individual. It's not too difficult using a powdered vitamin C in the form of ascorbate. This is a "buffered" form which neutralizes the acidity of pure ascorbic acid (vitamin C). One teaspoon equals 4 grams. The patient takes one teaspoon every hour until he just starts to experience diarreah. If no diarreah is experienced within 4-6 hours, then the dosage is doubled to two teaspoons per hour, etc. A few grams below the diarreah dosage is the amount required for that particular individual every eight hours. This is called the "bowel tolerance dosage". It can sometimes be amazingly high indeed! In a few cases of cancer, doses of up to 200 grams have been required. In one case in the literature of a schizophrenic woman, 50 grams a day was required to keep her stable and relatively normal. Dr. Robert Cathcart, an orthomolecular physician, has been successfully treating AIDS patients for several years with doses up to 200 grams. It doesn't cure AIDS, but they don't die easily from other diseases, as do other AIDS victims. By using bowel tolerance, Bob found that his correct dosage was 66 grams a day split into six 11 gram doses at four hour intervals. It is important to keep the blood saturated, and since vitamin C is gradually removed along with whatever it has "scavenged" over several hours, taking it every four hours is usually recommended. Bob returned to my office about every two weeks for the next few months to have me change the wording on the tape. He wanted to keep it fresh and different - not so repetitive as to lose effect. Actually, this was probably unnecessary, but since he believed it, it was important to him. The patients beliefs are always important and contribute to the cure. After some three months, his doctor was amazed to find that Bob's cancer was actually in remission. Bob was overjoyed when he reported this to me, and he also reported that he had to reduce the vitamin C to about 20 grams a day, due to bowel tolerance lowering. This, of course, is another indication that the cancer was reversing its course. Another life saved. Very ego gratifying of anyone in this profession. Although the tape probably helped, I'm convinced that the vitamin C was the real operative agent. This was my first cancer patient, but not the last. While I have only worked with 4 cases, all were successful. The last one was the most significant to me. My nephew David was 28 years old and living in Maine at that time. He called me and told me he had cancer in his chest and lymph glands. I immediately outlined a supporting vitamin
regimen and explained the vitamin C bowel tolerance dosage. He started on it immediately. A few days later, he called, and said that his doctor wanted to start radiation therapy. I advised him to do what the doctor said, but to keep the vitamin regimen, even if they had to smuggle them into the hospital. His wife is a nurse, and she did just that. His reported daily dosage was just under 50 grams. A few weeks later, he called and said, "I don't know why people make all that fuss about radiation therapy - it wasn't all that bad for me." I replied, "Are you still taking the vitamins, including high vitamin C?" "Yes, of course, Barbara won't let me forget." "Well, there's your answer, the vitamin C alleviates most of the horrible side effects of radiation therapy. For other people without vitamin C, it's a very bad experience." "Oh, I didn't know that. Well, anyway, my doctor wants me to start on chemotherapy." "OK, but keep up the vitamin regimen, and that won't be bad for you either." He promised to do so, and the next call I got was a couple of months later when he called to tell me that his doctor was flabbergasted to find that his cancer was completely gone. He had also suffered none of the horrible side effects of chemotherapy. He told the doctor about the vitamin C. Such is the brainwashing in the AMA that even that case didn't convince the doctor. Oh well... None so blind... Don't overlook a major point here. It's possible to do all the standard cancer therapy from radiation to chemotherapy along with the vitamin C (and a good supporting vitamin/mineral supplement program). The vitamin regimen actually lessens considerably the usually horrible side effects of both. Many "victims" of cancer treatment have been vehement in their refusal of further extremely painful treatments. Horror stories abound about both conventional treatments. The vitamin regimen has proven over and over that it works, and in conjunction with standard treatment, it works even better. All we have to do is convince the medical profession of this fact. Unfortunately, there are still too many doctors whose attitude is, "Don't confuse me with facts - my mind's made up!" Why does vitamin C work to cure cancer? We don't have all the answers to this question as yet. One theory is that "saturating" the blood with vitamin C kills off any invading bacteria, viruses, and yeast that may be present. This frees up more of the body's natural immune system defenses, and they are able to "concentrate" more on the cancerous cells. There is also the probability that vitamin C actually improves the activity of the immune system, particularly the white blood cells which seek out and destroy cancer cells. Of course, the rest of the vitamins and minerals in balance are also helpful. If they aren't present, some cells of the immune system might not be produced at just the right time.
There were several other purely physical cases where vitamin C solved physical diseases actually caused by bloodborn viruses. One that illustrates vitamin C therapy well was Reggie's. Reggie was a born-again fundamentalist/evangelist type of preacher. He arrived in my office accompanied by a couple of his followers, and informed me that he had heard me on a local talk show talking about vitamin C and viruses. He had just been diagnosed with viral hepatitis. This is a very debilitating disease. His doctor wanted him in the hospital immediately, but he refused. He was seeing me as a last resort before the hospital. I told him that I couldn't recommend anything except hospitalization for fear of "practicing medicine without a license." This is a very difficult area, and since I knew of a couple of cases where others (including Dr. Von) had actually been arrested on very little evidence, I knew that I was on shaky ground. However, I can't just ignore people in distress. We discussed his problem, and I told him about vitamin C, and it's use against viral diseases in particular. Since his disease was definitely a bloodstream viral type, I knew that vitamin C could knock it out in a very short time. I gave him instructions as to getting up to bowel tolerance level quickly, and listed the other vitamins and minerals needed for supplementary use. That was on Friday, and he came into my office on Monday, making an appointment (and paying for an hour) just to thank me. He had cured himself by Sunday, and had been able to give his usual fire and brimstone sermon! He complained that he had stomach pains, and some mouth canker sores. He thought that these might have been from the vitamin C. He hadn't been able to get the ascorbate form I'd recommended, so he got a regular powdered vitamin C on the recommendation of a health food store. (They were probably out of the ascorbate form, and didn't want to lose a sale.) That much acid isn't kind to either the mouth or the stomach. He didn't really mind the minor pain and discomfort however, as he had cured himself of his major problem. There have been many other friends, friends of friends, and relatives who have taken megadoses of vitamin C on my recommendation. Every case I've heard about was successful if they followed the directions carefully. (Unfortunately, not everybody does this!) The viral diseases susceptible to vitamin C therapy include colds or flus, mononucleosis, viral hepatitis, pneumonia, etc. Note that all of these are viruses that are found in the bloodstream. There are many viral types such as AIDS and various types of herpes that locate themselves in some organ of the body. These types are not affected by vitamin C, simply because they are hidden from it by not being in the bloodstream. Also note that bloodborn bacterial infections are also affected by vitamin C. It is both a bactericide and a viricide. As anyone who has had any experience with either mono or hepatitis can testify, these are very debilitating diseases with long lasting results, and slow recovery. In many cases, a patient will take 3-4 months, or even more, to fully recover. Contrast this to a couple of days using vitamin C! Vitamin C is truly a wonder drug overlooked by the medical community in general.
Almost all animals except the primate (ape) family, which includes humans, produce vitamin C as required within their own bodies. The production of vitamin C in all these other animals is dramatically increased when the animal is stressed with disease or other factors. This is also why most animals can safely eat meat and other food that is "spoiled" for human consumption. The vitamin C that they produce in their body protects them from the bacterial overload in such foods. What does this tell you about the human need for vitamin C when under stress of disease or other factors? We can't produce it in our bodies on demand. As a further matter of interest, a 150 pound ape in a zoo requires a minimum of 4 grams of vitamin C per day just for health maintenance. Since this ape has exactly the same need for vitamin C as humans, isn't it amazing that the FDA and the AMA think we humans only need .075 grams a day? And apes supposedly aren't under as much stress as we humans. Who's correct? You be the judge. CHAPTER ELEVEN - Samantha, John, & Mark Samantha was obese, and depressed almost continually. One look at her "allergic shiners" told me that she was an allergic person. (Allergic shiners are the dark or puffy circles under the eyes of allergic persons and are a fast tip-off to such persons). She weighed well over 250 pounds, and her marriage was in trouble because of her depression. It's axiomatic that all we humans tend to take out our emotional problems on those closest to us, usually a husband or wife. Of course, with those symptoms and the look, I immediately assumed that there were allergies or sensitivities involved. I did a hair mineral analysis almost as an afterthought. I was very surprised to find that her mercury was very high when it returned from the lab. When we discussed this, I found that she had lots of fillings in her teeth, all amalgam types. These are a compound of mercury and silver. I had read about this as a possible cause of mercury toxicity, but this was my first actual case. She started to hunt for a dentist that would remove the amalgam fillings, and replace them with plastic fillings. She called every dentist in the area, and found none that would do the job. Most told her that it was a useless expense, as it was impossible for mercury to get into the body from the teeth fillings. They are very wrong!! I cannot understand this head-in-the-sand attitude. All fillings are exposed to living tissue, and thus, anything that is in the filling can migrate outwards, albeit very slowly in most cases! This is a proven fact, not some quack theory. It's true that most amalgam fillings do not cause mercury poisoning, but it is also true that it is more than just a bare possibility. In approximately 500 hair mineral analysis used during my practice and teaching, there were only 8 persons with very high mercury. All of these persons suffered from severe depression. In every case except one (see below) these were from amalgam fillings insofar as could be determined. None had any other mercury experience that could explain the high mercury, and all had many fillings. When 4 of these people had their fillings replaced with plastic, the depression lightened up almost immediately, and with vitamin C chelation, the depression was cured in effect. Unfortunately, the rest of these believed their dentists and physicians, and are probably still depressed. You can't cure everybody.
There were many more cases of mercury elevated only slightly above normal, and in many of these, there was some depression involved. There was only one case of such elevated mercury that didn't also have several amalgam fillings. While such case histories aren't sufficient proof for medical authority, the correlation is very clear to me (and others in this field). Amalgam fillings can cause mercury poisoning and mercury poisoning can cause severe depression as well as many other problems. In Puerto Rico, a major US. pharmaceutical manufacturer has a plant that manufactures mercury thermometers. For years, the workers in that plant have suffered horribly with cancers, birth defects, suicides and even murders way above the norm. Of course, lots of cases of severe depression. This went on for years while the company fought legal battles using delaying tactics, in order to continue manufacturing the same way because it was cheaper. After all, what's human life compared to making a profit? They're just poor Puerto Ricans after all! Back to Samantha. She finally managed to find a dentist about 20 miles away that replaced all her fillings with plastic ones. She started to improve immediately as far as her depression was concerned. I started her on the chelation and vitamin regimen. I had sent her to a local clinic for the cytotoxic sensitivity test, and the results showed about 60 reactions out of 200 foods tested. I gave her a rotary diet, and she stuck to it fairly well. The combination cleared up her emotional problems fairly quickly. And the marriage problems cleared up very nicely with only a couple of marriage therapy sessions. She and her husband now understood what had happened. With understanding, forgiveness is easy. I was sure that her problems had been solved. However, as she explained a few weeks later, the obesity problem remained. The rotary diet had seemed to help, and she had lost a few pounds, but something didn't seem just right to her. From her description, it didn't sound right to me either - she should have lost much more than she did on the rotary diet. I decided to look further. I explained the simple thyroid test devised by Dr. Broda Barnes. This test is actually much better as an indicator to poor thyroid activity than is the usual blood test used by physicians. There are three thyroid tests usually done in standard blood tests (T3, T4, & T7). This is partly because none of the three tests are accurate alone, and the combination is not that accurate either. The test of Dr. Barnes is very simple. Take a standard oral thermometer, and shake it down. Put it on the bedside table just before going to sleep. When you awake, put the thermometer under your arm with the bulb in the center of your armpit. Then, just drowse in bed for ten minutes or so. Don't get up or move around more than absolutely necessary. After ten minutes of drowsing, read the thermometer. Mark down the reading on a piece of paper - memory isn't to be trusted first thing in the AM. The reading on an oral thermometer should be between 97.2 and 97.8. If it's lower than 97.2, your thyroid activity is low. Since thyroid activity governs your body metabolism and temperature, just a few tenths of a degree can make a huge difference in fat storage or burnoff. If it is higher than 97.8, you are probably one of those skinny
people that most of us with weight problems hate. My wife has a very active thyroid. She eats like a longshoreman - never gains weight in spite of being diabetic. One of my pet names for her is "Jaws". More on her diabetes later. Samantha did this test, and her thyroid reading was very low. There are several alternatives available. One is to go to your family doctor, and if the blood tests indicate hypoactivity to him, he may prescribe Synthroid. As the name implies, it's a synthetic thyroid excretion. Or, he may not! As mentioned above the blood tests are not that accurate, and the "accepted norms" may show as right for an individual, even if wrong. Some experimentation is then necessary to determine a safe and healthy level for each individual to get their thyroid activity in the correct range. Once this is established (using the thermometer test), weight usually melts off fairly quickly. Another technique that I've used with good success is to get some thyroid glandular pills from a health food store. These are thyroids taken from cows and pigs, defatted, dried, and made up into pill form. It is just food in effect, but it seems to contain some ingredients that haven't been isolated by science yet. Experiment with these pills using the thermometer to find a good healthy dosage for each individual. One chiropractor told me that he had been using these for years with patients who had actually had cancerous thyroids removed. No thyroid problems. The thermometer test should be done at least three times with a few days between each test for better accuracy. A small local infection, the menstrual period, or the ovulation period in women may raise the temperature enough to make any one test inaccurate. Samantha called me about three weeks later, and said that she was losing weight daily, and was very happy. I asked her what she was doing, and she laughed and said that she didn't really want to tell me, as I would probably disapprove. I pressed her, and she admitted that her medical doctor wouldn't give her Synthroid, but her vet had prescribed animal Synthroid for her dog, and she had been taking that. I told her that while I couldn't officially approve, I didn't really disapprove either. After all, the Synthroid is the same, just packaged differently, and less expensive probably for dogs. It was her decision, and her life. I mentioned above that one of the extremely high mercury cases was not from fillings in the teeth. John is a friend who was a Vietnam vet. He suffered from severe depression much of the time. His depression varied from poor to almost suicidal. John had no money, so I swapped him a hair analysis for some work around my house. I wasn't surprised to find his mercury was sky-high. He had been exposed to Agent Orange and other defoliants in Vietnam. These defoliants used mercury as a base to kill the foliage. If you were anywhere nearby, you had to breathe some of it in. The US government is still "waffling" with many veterans cases of such exposure, again using legal delaying tactics while veterans suffer and die. Big bucks again!
I outlined the vitamin C chelation regimen for him, but he couldn't get reimbursed for such by any insurance or government program. And he preferred to continue meeting with various veterans groups and believe whatever the VA and the US government told him. The medical doctors don't help in these cases either. So, John went along for a few more years without doing anything much about it, and being depressed. That was the state of affairs when my wife and I retired to sail the Caribbean a few years ago. As far as I was concerned, it was another "failure". While we were sailing around something happened to John somewhere along the line. He started to look into vitamins, and he started to take vitamin C. Not in the chelation dosages I had recommended, but a few grams daily. Even this much will eventually lower that poisonous mercury stored in his body. He gradually improved over the next couple of years, and when we met with him recently, he was obviously much improved. Freud was right when he insisted on getting paid for any treatment or advice. He insisted that, "free advice is worthless to the patient, and they will treat it as such." Oh well... Mark was a student in my class - as a matter of fact, Mark took the same course three times! Mark was very bright, a member of Mensa, and a casual friend. During the time I had known him casually, it was apparent that he had some emotional problems. He was single, about 38 years old, and lived with his parents. He was a very quick thinker (typical of persons with a high IQ - Mensans), but sometimes his thinking was inappropriate. He was disliked by many persons who called him a "flake", and his words and actions were a bit "flaky" at times. During the third class, he availed himself of the opportunity of a hair analysis. When it came back, and I looked at it, I was amazed at the extremely high level of arsenic. I had never seen such a high level, and I jokingly wrote on his paper, "Who's trying to poison you?" After the class, he got me aside, and set up an appointment to see me in my office. He explained that he had worked for his father in a plant nursery some ten years previously. There was a storeroom where arsenic and other toxic chemicals were kept. They were supposed to wear protective clothing and gloves when handling it. He hadn't always done so when in a hurry, and he had been the one who worked in that room the most - at his father's direction. He expressed some bitterness against his father and mother at that time as well, but it seemed that he couldn't afford to move away from them. I went over the chelation techniques again, although he had heard it three times in class as well, and gave him a list of vitamins and minerals to take. A few weeks later, his improvement was obvious when I saw him socially. He seemed much less depressed, and seemed to be thinking and acting better than before. He reported that he felt much better as well physically. Two months later, I heard from another friend that Mark was "badmouthing" me for giving him bad advice. I called him, and asked him what was the matter. He claimed that I hadn't told him about taking extra minerals when taking chelation dosages of
vitamin C. I was flabbergasted. He had taken my course three times. Each time, he had gotten a set of papers which contained the chelation regimen, and each time that regimen was explained thoroughly. In addition, I had given him an extra paper with the regimen written out clearly. How could he blame me? When I charged him with this, he mumbled that he lost the paper I gave him, and he didn't look in the course papers, and he "forgot" what I said about the chelation regimen in class. No wonder he took the class three times. His memory was nearly absent, although he had a brilliant mind otherwise. He continued with lower vitamin C amounts for some time, and never came back to my office (or class), although I urged him to do so to resolve his emotional problems further. From other mutual acquaintances I learned that he was still pretty "flaky", but improving. When my wife and I returned from our cruising, we heard that Mark had killed his parents, and committed suicide while we had been away. How much of his emotional problem was due to the arsenic is not known to me. He is the only case I ever saw with excessive arsenic (to that level). I suspect that it was a major cause, but there were many other factors as well in Mark's case. I was certain that he had allergy problems (looking at his allergic shiners), but he had no insurance, and couldn't afford to be tested. There's something wrong - too many cases just like this slip through the cracks of our health/insurance system. Too many sick people without insurance who can't get insurance because they're sick! CHAPTER TWELVE - Donny Donny wasn't fat. He was way beyond fat. He couldn't be sure exactly how much he weighed because he had to use truck scales. He thought it was about 650 pounds. He couldn't walk more than a few yards at a time, and he turned sideways getting thru a standard door. He'd come to me because he was seriously depressed. He was only 26 when I first saw him. His mother brought him, and she was obese as well, but nothing like Donny. In the first session with them, I learned that the whole family had weight problems. Not like Donny, but all were medically obese. Newbold's book, mentioned in a previous chapter, had noted that when he had treated emotionally disturbed patients for allergies, not only had the emotional disturbance disappeared, but overweight patients had all lost weight as well. Almost as interesting is that underweight persons so treated seemed to gain weight towards normal. I suspected that food allergy/sensitivity might be the case here. Both mother and son exhibited the allergic shiners typical of allergic people. I took the medical history, finding that Donny had been to several MD physicians, and none had helped him at all. No diet had seemed to work, although I suspected that Donny hadn't kept strictly to any of them. Both he and his mother were relatively uneducated, and I had a
difficult time persuading them that a food allergy test might give us an answer. I offered to lend them some of my books to read, but they refused. They finally agreed to the testing, and Donny was tested the following day, using what was called a Cytotoxic Sensitivity Test. This is a test that was about 80% accurate in finding food sensitivities and/or allergies. While the same symptoms can be caused by either allergy or sensitivity, they are somewhat different in nature. The cytotoxic test depended on the effect of various foods (200 or so) mixed with white blood cells from the patient after one hour of incubation together. This test is little used today as more accurate ones are available, but I got good results using it. Donny's test showed about 60 (out of 200) foods that he was sensitive to. In particular, he showed very positive reactions to corn and corn products as well as sugar. When he and his mother returned, I discussed the test and what it meant with them carefully and at length. I outlined a rotary diet that he could eat which eliminated all the foods he had tested sensitive to, and gave them a printed copy as well. (A rotary diet is one where no food is eaten two days in succession, but are spaced about 4-5 days apart at worst.) I emphasized that Donny could eat as much as he wanted of any foods listed on the diet at any time during that day. I also suggested strongly that it might be beneficial for the whole family to try it. A week later, they returned. What a change! Donny was smiling, and he reported that his depression was completely gone. According to the truck scales, he had lost 50 pounds the second day on the diet, and over 100 pounds altogether during the week. His mother had tried the diet as well, and had lost considerable weight as well. It was obvious. Allergy/sensitivity was the problem, and the obesity was a genetic characteristic responsive to several allergens. Needless to say, he and his mother were very happy. My ego was gratified again with another life saved - we had obviously found his problem. They left, and I never saw them again. Unfortunately, that's not the end of a happy story. A year later, a neighbor of Donny's came to my office, and I heard the rest. Donny had kept on the diet for only another week, and had lost about another 30-40 pounds. Then, he just couldn't stand it any longer without his favorite snack - cheese puffs or nachos with a Coke. All are loaded with corn and sugar! So, the net result is that he stopped losing weight. Sometime later I heard that he was back up in weight, and was depressed as well. I was sick. Here was this young boy whose life had literally been saved and he was throwing it away again. I hate to lose, and this one was one I lost. Sure, I know that Donny was addicted to corn products just as surely as a heroin addict is addicted to heroin. I also realize that he is uneducated and not too bright. I can go even further and recognize his right to commit suicide if he so chooses, but I hate it even so. This was one of my worst failures, but not my only one by far. There have been others who wouldn't listen to my advice, because it contrasted with what they had read or heard about, usually from an MD. Most people still think that their family doctor is
Godlike in his knowledge. Still others who were addicted to some lifestyle or some substance in some way, and were unable to help themselves. I well know that old saying, "There are none so blind as those who will not see." How many people are still smoking even with the huge amount of proof that it shortens life? How many people, including MD's realize that addiction can be to anything, not just to the dangerous street drugs. How many realize that addictions are individual, and some are so strong as to be real compulsions. Will power just isn't enough. To remove the taste of that one, I'd like to relate a much happier case of weight loss that wasn't in the orthomolecular field at all. I was giving a talk at a local seminar. A strange woman came up to me, grabbed me, and hugged me vigorously. I was surprised, but I enjoy a good hug after being influenced by Dr. Leo Buscaglia. She said, "Oh, Doctor Bate, it's so good to see you again." Seeing my obviously perplexed look, she told me her name. My memory for names is poor at best, and I was still perplexed, so she said, "You don't remember me do you?" I made some excuse about seeing so many people, and she laughed as she said, "I really can't blame you. I look a lot different." At this, I looked closely at her, but still had no clue at all, and my memory is very good for faces, if not for names. Seeking a clue, I asked, "Where did we meet?" She replied, "In your office. I came to you almost two years ago." I was still in the dark until she explained, "I came to you to lose weight with hypnosis. You gave me a subliminal tape after our session, and I played it every night for a long time, then once a week or so. I still play it once in a while. I've lost 170 pounds using it." I still had no memory of her - the change was too great. She looked very attractive now, and she told me her weight was about 140, a good weight for her height and build. She had weighed in at 310 when she had visited me originally. "Dresses by Barnum and Bailey", she kidded. No wonder I hadn't recognized her. She had shed over half of herself! Needless to say, I walked around the rest of that seminar about six feet off the ground and my hat didn't fit too well either. Had the case come to me a year later, I would undoubtedly have sent her for allergy/sensitivity testing instead of doing the subliminal tape for her. Lucky her. I thought later that I would have liked to make a subliminal tape for Donny. Perhaps it might have helped him overcome his corn addiction. These cases raise some interesting questions and wondering thoughts. Can some of the various diets work because they coincidentally remove from the diet the allergenic foods? Most diets eliminate grains, particularly wheat, and wheat is certainly very high on an obesity causing allergen list.
Is this at least part of the reason for the up and down effect of diets. On it, you lose weight, but off it, you gain weight back? Let's not overlook the effects of our civilized diet of course - loaded with fats and sugars. Obviously, this must be part of the equation. But, there is too much evidence that calories simply aren't the only answer for weight loss. Calories obviously "don't count" in many cases. Why did the self-hypnosis and visualization techniques I used on the subliminal tape work? Obviously, with this obesity, there was a physical problem, and it almost had to be allergy connected, yet her mind was able to convince her body to lose weight without a diet. I should mention here that using hypnosis alone has cured allergy symptoms of all types, so perhaps that isn't so surprising. We may not know how it works, but we do know that it does. Approximately 60% of all persons treated for weight loss by hypnosis do lose weight without a diet involved. Why some, and not others? We simply don't know all the answers yet. Let's look as something that really works, but sounds like quackery. In the July 1978 issue, the Journal of Clinical Hypnosis had a paper by Dr. Ted Barber that was very interesting to say the least. Dr. Barber reported on several esoteric hypnotic experiments, including several that actually increased breast size in flat chested women. Wow, talk about quackery! I had heard something about this several years back, but until it appeared in the Journal, it was quackery to me. The Journal is from the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis, and to be a member requires a doctorate (PhD, MD, DDS, DO, etc.). It is definitely not a publication for quacks! I wasn't totally convinced by the article, although it was pretty definite. I haven't seen this article in years, so my memory might not be exact, but the gist of it was that 1830 women in several different experiments were hypnotized once a week for some 12 weeks. During this, they were given visualizations of themselves with larger more beautiful breasts. The average gain was 2.1 inches, and over 80% of the women reported gains. The original experiment was repeated several times because of skepticism over the first report. All experimenters got virtually the same results. Just look at what this means. This is considerably more difficult a task than simply losing excess fat. This is putting on body weight only in one particular place. Forget about increasing mammary cells which may or may not happen. Think about it! These women using only the power of positive thinking made their bodies go against their built-in genetic patterns. If this can be done, and it was, where are the limits to positive self improvement? I've been working with hypnosis for over 40 years, and I have to confess I haven't the faintest idea. I am no longer surprised at anything that individual humans are able to do. I wish we could channel and better use this mind energy for all of us.
I made up a standard hypnotic tape (not subliminal) based on this paper, and sold it to many women after that. I offered the women a $10 refund if they would give me a report on how it worked. I got very few reports, and only positive ones. As a result, I can't definitely say that my technique worked as well as the experimenters, although it was along the same lines. I also won $50 by betting another (conventional) psychologist that a reputable journal had reported such experiments. So, tell me, is it quackery if it works? I hope that I have made the point here that food sensitivity is very likely the culprit in overweight problems. How can an individual find out if that is the case, and which food (or foods) is to blame? Surprisingly, it's not all that difficult. All that's required is a fairly accurate scale that isn't exposed to much temperature variation, and a pencil and pad. When you first get out of bed in the morning, before doing anything else, weigh yourself carefully. Mark down the weight on the pad. Now, vary your diet so that you eat no foods two days in a row. Ideally, go to the Caveman Diet. Be very careful about this, and read all labels carefully to make sure that you do not have the same foods in different form in processed products. If you suddenly experience a weight loss one morning, you didn't eat the food(s) you are sensitive to the day before. Such a weight loss will usually be more than half a pound, and sometimes several pounds. It is water loss, but it's an accurate indicator for food sensitivity causing weight problems. If you suddenly experience a weight gain one morning, you ate reactive food(s) the day before. This is why varying the diet is so important. You will find suspect food(s) fairly quickly, and now you have to use the process of elimination to locate the exact one that's responsible for your overweight. It's like detective work - just follow the simple clues! Many people have been amazed that the Caveman Diet will usually promote weight loss very quickly, yet the calorie count with it may be very high. If you lose weight on this diet, you may be sure that food sensitivity is a culprit for you. CHAPTER THIRTEEN - Harold & Maude Harold & Maude showed up right on time for their appointment. (I couldn't resist those pseudonyms for them.) He was 77 and she was 72. He was tall and soft spoken, considering his words with care. She was shorter than average, quite attractive. and she bubbled with enthusiasm. They'd been married for some six months now. It was a second marriage for both as their previous spouses had died some years earlier. Harold was impotent, and a doctor recently had told him, "What do you expect at your age?" When I heard this stupid comment, I was angry. What right does any doctor have to make such a disabling comment? I hope that particular doctor has the same problem he deserves it for such a thoughtless comment. Doctors just don't realize that what
they say, and how they say it, often affects a patient much more than the actual drugs or other treatment used. Unfortunately, pronouncements such as that from a doctor are too often treated as "commandments". Again too often, the doctor doesn't know enough about the subject. Sex therapy isn't taught in medical school either. Masters & Johnson were called quacks when they first started their research into sex therapy. I always tried to treat sexual (and other marriage problems) with both partners always present. No matter who may seem to have the problem, it is common to both of them. So, Harold and Maude and I started to discuss their problem. He explained that his previous wife had gotten cancer of the uterus some 12 years earlier. Since sex was painful for her, and he loved her, he just quit. Not a big problem when you're 65. He hadn't had erections for several years (or so he thought). When he met Maude, they had tried to have sex a few times, but he had been completely impotent, and they gave up. He was only there because she had insisted on trying sex therapy, after hearing me discuss it on a radio talk show. He was worried that the lack of sex might affect the marriage. I pointed out to him that she had married him knowing that he was impotent, so that had little to do with their love for each other. Of course, sex would improve the relationship, but it wasn't absolutely necessary. This cheered him up considerably. I told them that this was probably a case of psychological impotence, and that I thought that it could be overcome. Maude dug him in the ribs with an elbow saying, "See, I told you so." As I explained the sexual mechanisms to them, I was interrupted by Maude several times saying the same thing. It was obvious that she was the driving force here. She was a delight and I loved her. When I told them about the postage stamp test, I thought she would choke, she laughed so hard. This is a simple (and cheap) test to see if an impotent man is physically able to be cured. 95% of the time, impotence is psychological, but occasionally, there's an actual physical problem preventing erection. Urologists put the patient in the hospital, and he sleeps with a strain gauge around his penis. This gauge registers any erections during the night. Every man has night erections he is unaware of, even so-called impotent men. If he is physically capable of an erection, then the problem is psychological and susceptible to sex therapy cure generally. This hospital test is quite expensive with the cost of a hospital bed, the strain gauge, the doctors' fee, etc. Good sex therapists know about the postage stamp test which is just as good, and a lot less expensive.. Buy a vertical column of 5 or 6 thin 1 cent postage stamps from the flat sheets available in the post office. Wrap it tightly around the penis, sticking the end to itself, just before sleeping. If the patient has an erection, the perforations will be ripped during the night. A lot cheaper than the hospital route. I also explained that it was possible that his body was deficient in zinc, as this often contributes to impotence in men. It seems that a man loses almost a day's supply of zinc with each ejaculation. Zinc is to a man as iron is to a woman. I recommended a
mineral hair analysis and he agreed. I also recommended a zinc and vitamin regimen immediately. They left, and the next morning, they reported that the perforations were ripped. Harold was amazed, as he had been completely unaware of any erections for years. Then I had them watch some special sex therapy films, and we had a couple of sessions, explaining the sexual exercises that were originally developed by Masters & Johnson. I like to use the sex therapy films because they explain sex therapy in simple terms, and show it actually happening. It could be called pornography by some, but it was invaluable to me in cutting down on time required by patients problems. Actual pornography is generally useless in sex therapy. His hair analysis came back, and I wasn't surprised to find that his zinc level was quite low, manganese also low, and copper above normal. A very common analysis for Florida residents since there is no zinc or manganese in Florida soil, but there is lots of copper plumbing! I outlined a vitamin regimen which included lots of extra zinc and manganese. Three weeks later, after a few more therapy sessions, Harold called me, and he was elated. They had actually made it the night before. Naturally, I was happy for them as well. They also informed me that as a result of the vitamin regimen, they both felt much better in many small ways, and had much more energy. A very common result from a good vitamin/mineral regimen! A few months after that, I came out to my reception area with a departing patient, and found Maude there. She had come in to get some more vitamins. I asked her, "How are you doing?" She sidled over to me, nudged me in the ribs with her elbow, and said, "Would you believe three times last week?" I broke up completely at that. When I stopped laughing, I kissed her cheek, and wished her continued happiness. I don't know that zinc was a real factor in this case, but I am sure that it is in some cases. Zinc is a major nutrient - used in wound repairing as well as the reproductive system. Oysters are high in zinc - does that tell you anything? Old wives tales often have some truth behind them. Since a male loses almost a day's supply of zinc with every ejaculation, and living in Florida makes it impossible to get a full day's requirement, it doesn't take a genius to see the possible problem. Males who do not take supplementary zinc in Florida should have a higher incidence of impotence than other areas where zinc is found in the soil. Indeed - that is the case! The lack of sexual desire can also be linked to the lack of zinc. I told some 25 women in a talk once about this, and they almost bought out the local health food store of zinc.
Doesn't it make sense? The unconscious mind knows what the zinc level is, and if it's getting too low for good health or whatever, the mind just shuts down on what can cause a loss - sex in this case. This is only one factor in male impotence, but it's overlooked by most sex therapists. After learning about zinc and the possibility of impotency due to a zinc deficiency, I always tried to convince impotent patients to check it with a hair mineral analysis, and recommended zinc supplements along with a good vitamin regimen. (If nothing else, the zinc supplements helps by working as a placebo.) There's an interesting sidelight to this! Just as a teenage boy starts his change to maturity, his needs for zinc increase dramatically as his sexual organs increase their activity. At about the same time, most boys learn how to masturbate, and many do it daily or more. This combination can lead to a severe shortage of zinc in many teenage boys. Acne is one result of this zinc shortage, and it's possible that if the zinc/copper balance is upset enough that a boy may be affected emotionally. Remember that high copper and low zinc can cause schizophrenia. The old wives tale that excess masturbation causes craziness has a basis in truth. I always recommend zinc supplements for teenage boys with acne, and it usually clears it up fairly soon. It also works to clear up acne in young women and girls as well. One of the immediate signs of zinc deficiency is shown by white spots on the fingernails. Several years ago, my wife and I were returning from a trip to New York with her son. We discussed zinc deficiency, and he said that he had some white spots on his nails. I looked at his nails, and noted that they started about half way down from the end. I asked him, "what happened to you about 4-6 months ago?" He replied that he couldn't think of anything, but then he remembered that he had met his girlfriend (now his wife) about then. As soon as he said this, he blushed crimson. As I have learned by experience and study in this orthomolecular field, I have been constantly amazed at the effects of nutrition and allergy on we humans. I have been even more amazed at the disinterest of the medical community in this area. We, who are called quacks, prove our therapies are much more effective over and over, yet they ignore us, and hassle us at every opportunity. How do we change this? Well, it's changing gradually, as the people begin to learn more about nutrition than their doctors. An interesting survey was taken in the Boston area several years ago. It showed that the average doctor knew no more about nutrition than did the average person. It further showed that secretaries with a weight problem actually were much more knowledgeable than doctors. The moral is clear don't ask your doctor about vitamins and minerals - ask a fat secretary. The public is now beginning to insist on their doctors learning. More and more doctors are opening their eyes (and minds). Dr. Marshall Mandell said, "If any doctor will look into this field seriously for six months, he will never practice medicine the same way again." He has an open invitation to any doctor to come to his clinic to
observe the results. Taking pot luck, as it were. Unfortunately, few have taken him up on it. Too bad. CHAPTER FOURTEEN - Virginia Virginia was brought in to my office by her husband. She was only 73, and obviously quite senile. Her husband had been told that she had Alzheimers disease by their doctor. (Since Alzheimers can only be a sure diagnosis after autopsy, he was guessing - and guessing wrong.) Of course, they had little money, and taking care of her taxed him severely, but he couldn't just "throw her away" to a heartless nursing home. He was another that had heard me on the radio, and while he didn't really expect me to help him, he was desperate. I discussed Virginia and her health history with him at length. I outlined a vitamin/mineral regimen for her to start on. He agreed to get her to drink at least 8 glasses of water a day. I took a hair sample, and got her latest blood analysis from her doctor. A week or so later, there was no change according to her husband, and he had found whole vitamin pills in her stool. She couldn't digest them. I started her on large doses three times a day of freeform amino acids, along with the vitamins, and added some digestive pills of hydrochloric acid. When her mineral analysis came back, it showed low levels of all minerals indicative of starvation. It showed even lower levels of zinc and manganese, so extra amounts of these were added. Now, we got results! She bounced back to health so fast, it was astounding even to me. Needless to say, her husband was more than a little delighted as well as surprised. From a relative vegetable (that's a pun) she became human again. Virginia was the most such dramatic case of senility I was able to help, but far from the last. Even when the diagnosis of Alzheimers is correct, it is slowed greatly by a good vitamin regimen, and even reversed in some cases. What's the mechanism here? The theory goes something like this. As a person gets older, particularly women, they tend to need less and less to eat. All too often, they subsist mostly on toast and tea. White bread has very little nutrition, and tea has none, so they gradually use up the reserves in their body. Protein has to be broken down into individual amino acids before it can be absorbed into the body. In order to do this, enzymes are required. Enzymes are mainly composed of amino acids along with a vitamin or mineral. With a shortage of amino acids, vitamins, and/or minerals, these digestive enzymes gradually disappear. Now, protein as such can't be digested, and it just passes through. Most often this protein starvation is very gradual in such cases, so the cause(s) are not noticed easily. In cases of real starvation, the result is dramataic and obvious, particularly in young persons. Their bellies become bloated, and their arms and legs are sticklike as their body takes protein from the muscles directly. However, these little old ladies living on toast and tea are really suffering from starvation - in the midst of plenty.
There's a vicious circle in this. In order to digest protein into amino acids, you need amino acids. Feeding steak or milk or eggs or even protein powder to starvation victims isn't a good answer. It is all too likely to just pass through undigested. So-called free form amino acids are actually pre-digested, and pass readily directly into the body without processing. Now, the body can make the enzymes that does the digestion of protein in complex forms of food. Dr Abram Hoffer first told me about dehydration in older persons. He claims that it's a leading cause of death in nursing homes. It's also a factor in misdiagnosing Alzheimers. It seems that when a person becomes dehydrated, the frontal lobes of the brain show air spaces. This shows up clearly on a CAT scan. Air space in frontal lobes is one of the possible symptoms of Alzheimers. Dr. Hoffer recounted one case where a diagnosed case of Alzheimers was completely reversed by simply giving the patient lots of water! Ever visited a nursing home? Do so, it may shock you. The inmates are just sitting around waiting to die, and many are senile (starved). Many others are drugged so that they're less trouble for the staff. Euthanasia might be kinder. In teaching classes in nutrition and holistic health, many interesting things have happened. In one class I had been given 30 pill samples of the multivitamin VM-75 (Solgar Company), and had passed them out to the class members. The local health food store had arranged it as a promotion. One of my students was a practical nurse, and she was baby-sitting a very senile woman. She had been hired by the son as a day nurse. The woman couldn't go to the bathroom by herself, couldn't see well enough to read or watch TV - a real vegetable. Since my student already had a supply of VM-75 herself, she decided to give one a day to her patient. Two weeks later, the son fired her. His mother could suddenly read, watch TV, go to the bathroom by herself, and most importantly, she could think again. The nurse was sure that the son was angry as he had expected to inherit very soon. I also had several successful cases where I never saw the patients at all. Some of these were so-called senile patients, and seeing them doesn't help the diagnosis at all. The relatives have to do the work. But, it is very rewarding to see a "vegetable turn back into a "human". However, there were two other "unseen" patients that were interesting. It was early in my learning about this new field, and I had a stock of the megavitamin formula for schizophrenia along with other vitamins and minerals in my office. A middle aged black woman came in off the street. She wanted to talk to me about her mother, but she didn't have any money. I didn't have an appointment for that hour, so I sat down with her. From her description, her mother was schizophrenic. I discussed seeing her in person, and testing her. That would cost more than she could afford, even discounting my lowered fees. I finally told her that there was one bare possibility
that just might work. I sold her a 250 capsule bottle of the megavitamin formula at my cost to try on her mother. A little over three weeks later, she reappeared, wanting to buy another bottle. My receptionist was horrified. She didn't really want to sell it to her without my seeing her mother as a patient. However, I was in a long session, so she reasoned it was just vitamins, so what the heck. The woman told her that it was a miracle - her mother was her old self again! She showed up every three or four weeks for several months. A month or so after the second visit, another black woman came in asking my receptionist for: "that miracle drug that helps crazy people". My receptionist was still hesitant, but agreed. This one's son also became "normal" according to reports. Not good practice of course, but the alternative of no treatment is even worse! I gave both the address of Willner Chemical on Lexington Ave in NYC to them and they ordered the megavitamin formula directly.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN - Sunny and an ex-wife I met Sunny (not a pseudonym) in the summer of 1985, and married her six weeks later. She was in her early 40's, and had been an insulin dependent diabetic for over 8 years. When we met, I gave her a basic vitamin regimen that would help her physical problems. After a few dates, she told me that she had neuropathy in her right foot and right hand. Neuropathy is doctorese for nerve loss. She had a completely numb area about 2 inches in diameter on top of her right foot, and partial numbness halfway up to her knee. Her right thumb and forefinger were numb to the first joint, and partially numb to the wrist. She was seriously close to possible gangrene and amputation! Neuropathy is caused by lack of oxygen to the extremities, and is a leading cause of diabetic early death. Without oxygen, a simple cut in the area can lead to gangrene, and amputation is necessary. Totie Fields, the comedian died that way, as have many others not so famous. I had treated a couple of cases of claudication successfully using vitamin E in large doses. Claudication is not uncommon in older people, and is a result of insufficient oxygen getting to the extremities, particularly the feet. It's easy to diagnose with just a thermometer. The skin temperature of the foot and lower leg will be around 70 degrees (F) or so, but as the thermometer is moved upwards, the temperature suddenly jumps up to above 80. There is often a demarcation of only an inch or so on the leg. It's almost as if a tourniquet has been put on the leg at that point. So, I reasoned that since the problem in both diabetes and claudication was oxygen deficiency to the extremities, perhaps the solution was also the same. She started taking 1200 IU of vitamin E daily along with the basic vitamin regimen. Within three months, she had the same type of "tingling" nerve response as she had experienced during the gradual loss of feeling, and the numbness retreated. Within six
months, the numbness was almost completely gone, and after about nine months, there was no evidence of neuropathy at all. Incidentally, most MD's still tell diabetic patients that neuropathy cannot be reversed. Not true! Nor was that all. Her hair and nails improved immediately, and it was actually possible to see the marked point in her hair when she had started on the new regime. Her hair was dull, then at a point that gradually grew outwards, it became shiny and bright. She hadn't had real nail growth for several years, but now they grew normally. Several other small health problems also cleared up. An eye exam showed no retinopathy, another side effect of diabetes that often causes diabetic blindness. Last, but certainly not least, her daily insulin requirement went from 48 units to 28 units, and her blood glucose is easier to control. The rest of the vitamin regimen helped along with the vitamin E. Because she had a history of severe PMS, she started taking 500 mg of B6 a day (besides the 75 mg in VM-75). This stopped her PMS completely for a couple of months. Then, one day she said "I don't know what's going on, but I feel just like I used to with PMS". I then told her that I had cut her B6 in half to find the correct dosage amount, and she exploded, "Don't you ever do that again". Years later, after menopause, we cut it back again. (I never cut it again while she was menstruating). No more PMS! What happened here to solve the serious neuropathic problem? Simple - the excess glucose in the blood of diabetics tends to "clump" red blood cells (RBC's) together. RBC's carry oxygen to all cells in the body. RBC's are much larger in diameter than some of the very small capillaries. To get thru such capillaries, a red blood cell has to elongate and squeeze thru. Clumping tends to make this elongation difficult. In addition, the blood pressure isn't as strong at the extremities. This combination leaves cells, including nerve cells deficient in oxygen, and they start to die gradually, leading to neuropathy. Vitamin E has a couple of important properties. It tends to keep the red blood cells from clumping, and also prevents the oxygen being carried by the RBC's from oxidizing fatty acids present in the blood. This has the double benefit of RBC's being able to hold more oxygen effectively, as well as allowing the RBC's to get it to those starved cells better. The oxidation of fatty acids releases cancer-causing free radicals to be released - this is why vitamin E is an important anti-oxidant which has been proven to help prevent cancer. The same thing happens in claudication, except that it is just aging instead of excess glucose causing much the same problem. Although our diet rich in fats and sugars may be a major factor as we age of course. Sugar (glucose) turns to fat automatically within the cells of the body if it's not utilized as energy! Sunny and I have been married over 10 years as I write this, and there is still no trace of neuropathy. Of course, she takes her dozen or so vitamin/mineral pills every day without fail. She is the healthiest woman of her age anywhere. She is (too) often taken for my daughter as a matter of fact.
I have since given out the vitamin regimen to many other diabetics free of charge. If they followed the regimen, they got similar results. In no case has neuropathy been a problem. Since neuropathy and retinopathy are the deadliest of the diabetic side effects, this discovery should be of dramatic interest to all diabetics. I wrote this up in a simple paper (like the above), and sent it to the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation. I also sent a copy to Mary Tyler Moore personally, as the nominal figurehead Chairperson. She may never have received it of course. I got no answer at all, although I offered this free advice simply as a public service. This Foundation which supposedly is set up to help diabetics obviously isn't really all that interested in helping them. My wife got their newsletter for a year or so after that, and no mention ever appeared. It seems that foundations such as this, and others, are more interested in keeping their money flow coming in than they are in curing the disease, or even helping those with the disease. Although I have never worked with either Muscular Dystrophy or Cerebral Palsy personally, Dr. Marshall Mandell has had considerable success with both serious diseases by treating patients for allergies/sensitivities. He has even offered free treatment to such people thru the auspices of their foundations. In every case, the foundations involved actually tried to keep this offer from their members. And when some of the members found out about it, the doctors and administrators advised the patients against it! There can be no possible justification for such behavior. Free medical treatment with no danger, and a possible cure! Inexplicable. Sunny and I worked with Dr. Von and the medical doctors in his clinic in trying to find a cure for her diabetes. We found that her insulin requirement went very low during her menstrual period. Since the ovaries manufacture many hormones, and endocrinology is still more of an art than a science, we experimented with the sex hormones - estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone. We had no real success. (We thought we had a real breakthrough once, but it turned out that we had a bad batch of glucose test strips - what a disappointment.) During this period, we also tested her for various allergies/sensitivities. We found several. She went through as severe a withdrawal as any I've ever seen from corn products. She said that even her hair hurt. After this experience, she read labels and avoided any type of corn. In particular, dextrose, dextrin, corn starch, corn sugar, etc would cause an immediate headache for her. Popcorn or corn on the cob didn't seem to do the same thing. The only soft drink she can drink is Diet Pepsi. Diet Coke has corn in some form as she can tell by a headache after drinking it. Perhaps the caramel coloring? I had several other patients over the years that suffered from chronic headaches, and in most cases, when they got completely free of all corn products, the headaches ceased. I reported this to the Journal of Orthomolecular Psychiatry, and received several letters from other doctors in the field with the same experience. Corn is a strong allergen, and to most of us it is a "new food". It has only been our European diet for a few hundred years. Too soon for evolution. Corn is the most difficult of all foods to avoid. It is literally in all processed foods in some form or other. People tell me that they don't like corn, and never eat it, so that
can't be the problem. I ask if they lick stamps or envelopes, or brush their teeth. Yes all are sweetened with corn sugar. Even Morton salt has dextrose added to make it pour better, and so has baking powder. The local (Florida) supermarkets only have one bread on the shelves that is corn free besides Sunmaid Raisin Bread. In our travels, we have had difficulty in finding corn free bread for Sunny. We found that she was also allergic to pork, and her physician had originally put her on a combination pork/beef insulin. Not too swift, but he was the same doctor that said, "Well, you'll just have to learn to live with neuropathy." We experimented with different types of insulin, and found an interesting fact. When she (and others) switched types, they could take about half as much of the new insulin and control the glucose just as well. (Such switching of insulin MUST be monitored very carefully because of this effect possibly causing severe hypoglycemic coma and possible death). However, this effect only lasted for a short time, and the insulin need climbed back to "normal" within about 4-5 days. To me, this indicates some type of allergic/addiction mechanism. Obviously, the body manufactures some insulin during that initial period to "go along" with the injected insulin, but as the body adjusts to the new one, it "relaxes", and goes back to the older level. Why? I don't know, and neither have the dozen or so endocrinologists I've questioned by phone and letter. Sunny and I went on a cruise and met a nice lady with her son. She was 5'5" tall, and her son was 6'8" tall. Sunny's oldest son is also 6'8" tall. Another coincidence - neither husband had been extra tall, so it wasn't genetic. Surprise, surprise - she was also diabetic! Too many coincidences. I had read somewhere that several mothers of famous basketball players were diabetics, and this fact seemed to just surface along with the thoughts about the coincidences. Could the excessively tall sons have anything to do with diabetes? Was the growth hormone (GH) be involved in the production of insulin somehow? Both women had been diagnosed after their son's birth (another coincidence). When we got home from the cruise, Sunny took some pituitary gland extract in pill form. Her insulin requirement immediately doubled. A sort of backward breakthrough. Hitting the endocrinology books again, I found that a little known hormone called simply Anti-Growth Hormone (AGH) is manufactured in the ovaries. Wow! This tied in with the menstrual lowering of insulin need very nicely. Hormones and their actions are a virtually unknown area in many ways, but we do know that they are chemical methods used to balance various body functions. The growth hormone provides normal growth - without enough, the result is a dwarf or midget. Without enough AGH to balance GH, the result is a basketball player! Since dwarfism is a serious problem, scientists have manufactured a synthetic GH. No such luck with AGH however, so I have been unable to test my theory. A biologist at Louisiana State College announced a breakthrough in diabetes therapy a few years ago, and called for volunteers. I wrote him about my theory, and Sunny offered to test, but we never heard further from him. (Perhaps he has discovered that AGH is a possible diabetes
causal agent, and doesn't want to share credit - who knows? I just hope that he is successful in his research.) After that experience, I asked almost all the extra tall persons I met, if their mother had diabetes. I found some who just came from very tall parents, but the great majority answered a surprised, "yes." There is a lot more research needed - this possibility/probability is only one of many that needs to be explored much further. Some years earlier, shortly before I started in this field, my ex-wife was diagnosed with hypertension - doctorese for high blood pressure. (She claimed it was from living with me and she was probably correct.) She was put on a second level medication as her BP was 200/110. With the medication, it was in the area of 150/90, still not so great. She had been on medication for about six months when I started to find out about nutrition. In studying niacin, I found that it could lower blood pressure. As a matter of fact, it had been tested, along with three other prescription drugs used for BP lowering, by the National Institute of Health. The NIH tests showed some very interesting results. Two of the three other prescription drugs didn't lower BP nearly as well as the niacin. The third drug actually raised BP in several patients. She started to take niacin twice daily on my recommendation. She had an initial strong "flush", but she knew (from Janie's experience) that it wasn't dangerous. The flush went away after a few days. Within about a week, we cut her medication in half, and her blood pressure remained the same. We cut it in half again a week later, and it still remained at about 150/90. We cut out the medication entirely, and it still remained at those levels. A few months later, I was working with a DO physician in using vitamin B12 shots for a few patients. I had learned that many women become very short in this essential vitamin. The "pill" seems to cause a B12 deficiency. B12 is a big factor in menopause symptomology as well. I have found from experience that the only good way to diagnose a B12 deficiency is to give the patient a B12 shot, and monitor how they feel for the next few days. If they experience a "lift", then they need more B12. (I theorize that the lift experienced, is actually getting back to a normal or correct state for them.) It should be noted here that a blood test for serum B12 (and Folic Acid) costs $50100, while a B-12 shot costs $5-10. Many women will show up in the normal range of that blood test while still suffering from a deficiency. More on this later. The shot test is much simpler, cheaper, and much more accurate. Doctors hate it, because it depends on the patient. I gave myself and my wife a shot. For me - nothing I could detect. For her, a definite lift in both personality and feelings. When she measured her blood pressure several hours later, she was surprised to find it was 120/80 - perfect! The next three days the same readings, but on the fifth day, it was back up to 150/90.
I gave her another B12 shot right after measuring her BP, and an hour later, it was back down to 120/80. Amazing. What does B12 have to do with blood pressure? I don't know - but in her case and several other cases of women with high blood pressure it worked. Out of 12 women with high BP, 9 were helped with B12 supplementation. I never found a man that it worked on, but my sample was too low for definite results. Could it be possible that the blood pressure is raised because the body is trying to compensate for lower blood amounts of this essential nutrient? Would iron deficiency (another anemia) also cause raised blood pressure? I haven't been able to test this possible hypothesis, so have no answers. We experimented with my ex-wife to determine just how much she needed as a supplement. Starting with a full shot of 1 ml, at one week intervals, we quickly determined that a shot was required every four days. Then by cutting down the dosage gradually, we found that about .22 ml was the bottom limit of her requirement. Below that, she experienced a definite "lift" when given a shot. She settled on .25 ml every four days. She cut out the niacin (gradually), retaining the rest of the vitamin regimen, and her blood pressure stayed at 120/80. She was always a worrier. She worried if she didn't have anything to worry about! Now, she didn't worry much at all. One night, she turned to me and asked, "Did you pay the phone bill?" I immediately replied, "Did you take your shot." She hadn't. Her tone of voice had tipped me off that she was worrying about it. (I had paid the phone bill.) CHAPTER SIXTEEN - Orthomolecular Therapy for Schizophrenia In the case histories, I've shown by example how to treat schizophrenia. To clear up any confusion because of the narrative style of these cases, I'll outline my "standard" treatment plan for any schizophrenic seen later in my practice. On initial visit: Start megavitamins - 3 each three times a day, preferably the niacin type rather than niacinamide. (Available from Willner Chemical of NYC). Obtain hair sample, and send it off to the lab (Parmae Labs has been changed to Trace Elements of Dallas TX - check for 800 number). Start looking for allergies. See chapter on allergy. Ask a lot of questions about how, where, and when the patient lives, eats, etc. The cost of all this is amazingly small, particularly when compared to conventional treatment. The cost of the megavitamin formula is about $40 a month, depending on dosage needed. Cost to the doctor of the hair (mineral) analysis is now up to $36 from Trace Elements. So, depending on how much time the doctor spends in analysis it costs between $40 and $100. Actually, very
little time is required, as Trace Elements has an excellent computer printout that does the analysis well. Allergy search can be very expensive or very inexpensive. It depends on just how much work each patient can, or will, do on his/her own. It's time consuming and requires work, but it can be done for virtually nothing except a lot of time. See the allergy chapter for details. That's the standard routine I evolved. Why does this work? Simple. The true causes of every schizophrenia I saw (over 20) were three in number: The individual requires much more niacin or niacinamide in his/her diet than normal to avoid subclinical pellagra. (There's much more to this than that, but this is a book for laymen.) The individual has a severe copper/zinc imbalance. We do not yet understand why this may be so, but it seems to be a genetic fault in some, and an induced imbalance in others. There's a "brain allergy" involved. Most probably from wheat or corn, but any substance, including an inhalant allergen can cause this problem. There's also a type of pseudoschizophrenia that is caused by a sugar handling problem - hypoglycemia - or more properly - hyperinsulinism in some persons, mostly males. This causes personality changes, but not the characteristic hallucinations. While on this subject, it is pertinent to discuss the conventional treatment by psychiatrists. The drug of choice is usually a thorazine derivative. A large number of patients taking such drugs for some time will develop a disease called Tardive Dyskinesia. This is a direct side effect of such drugs. The doctors know about it, but they consider this to be a "lesser evil". What few know, or accept, is that the megavitamin formula prevents Tardive Dyskinesia as was proven by a clinic on Long Island in the early 1980's. With over 10,000 persons taking thorazine type drugs along with the megavitamin formula, not one developed the disease. That number is now much higher. Definite proof that Tardive Dyskinesia can be stopped! Yet the medical profession ignores it! Imagine - a doctor caused disease that can be stopped by a completely harmless vitamin supplement, yet it's ignored because the medical profession doesn't believe in vitamins! In 1984, Dr. Von Hilsheimer and I talked seriously about writing a letter to every psychiatrist in and around the Orlando area. The letter would enclose a copy of the paper from the Long Island group. It would state in effect: "Dear Doctor - enclosed is proof that Tardive Dyskinesia can be prevented. You are hereby put on warning that if you ignore this and continue treating with thorazine derivatives without also using the megavitamin formula, you will be at risk for malpractice. We will advise any patients of yours that we see in the future to sue you for a million dollars if they develop Tardive Dyskinesia from this point on."
We never did do it, but if we had, it would certainly have created an uproar, and might have saved a few patients from this disease. Sometimes you have to hit the mule with a two by four to get his attention! CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - Vitamins & Minerals Since I've mentioned a vitamin regimen several times in previous chapters, I'm sure that most readers would like to know just what this consists of. It varies with each individual, of course. I have developed a base that is the same for all, and add other supplements to that as indicated by answers to questions and various tests. This base consists of the following: VM-75 - 1/day (Solgar product - found in most health food stores only.) Vitamin C 2000 mg/day (divided into at least 2 doses AM & PM best). Dolomite - 6 tablets/day for women, 4 for men 200 IU Vitamin E (dl - cheapest OK) To this base, I add additional B6 if there are PMS and/or other menstrual problems (up to 500 mg/day). I add more vitamin E if there is diabetes or cancer or heart problems in the family. I add extra vitamin A if there is glaucoma or cataracts or other severe vision problems. (Night blindness is a symptom of insufficient vitamin A in the diet.) Lysine is added for Herpes sufferers. Of course, if the person is a smoker, I double or triple the vitamin C and the vitamin E! There are several other additions depending on individual requirements. Remember that every person is different, and every person absorbs differing amounts of vitamins and minerals. This means that you might require 10 (or even 1000) times as much B1 as I do, and I might require 50 times as much B2. Take this simple example for almost 50 known nutritional requirements and you begin to have some idea of 'individuality". Please note that this is considered a MINIMUM supplement program for a HEALTHY person! Too many people think that just because they feel good and aren't noticeably sick, that they are "healthy". Therefore, they don't need supplementary vitamins/minerals. I hope you'll know better after reading this book. If you try the above regimen for a two or three weeks, you'll undoubtedly experience health improvements, although they may be small if you're young and healthy. Of course, you'll try to convince others. Unless they're loved, forget it! Most don't want to hear it. It's too much trouble, or they 'know" better. They'd rather believe a medical doctor who has no training in nutrition. It's just too frustrating. Instead, give them a copy of this book, and hope they'll read it. Or nag them until they do. It's impossible to make a single supplemental multi-vitamin pill that contains everything needed daily. Such a pill would be too large to swallow. So, vitamin companies cut down on vitamin C, calcium, and magnesium, which are the bulkiest of all. (Vitamin E is expensive too). Thus, those need to be supplemented along with the
VM-75. The 2 grams of C is only a starting point as a minimum for non-smokers. Smoking and stressful lives raise this considerably. Dolomite happens to be an excellent combination of calcium and magnesium that occurs in nature. It's what makes water "hard" as it passes thru limestone - calcium carbonate and magnesium carbonate in a natural form. There are various stories going around about dolomite containing lead, or dolomite not being absorbed, or other such nonsense. I've been using it for many years as have several members of my family, and all show good hair and nail growth, with no evidence of artery plaque or kidney stones. Good nail and hair growth is the proof of a good balance between calcium and magnesium. Few people realize that taking calcium supplements without taking magnesium at the same time often leads to more problems than solutions. Another case of a little knowledge being dangerous. Added to by advertising agencies who jump on any bandwagon with half truths and downright lies. Calcium is a buzzword popular with advertisers today. It's even been added to orange juice for goodness sake! Excess calcium without magnesium to balance it, winds up as kidney stones, bone spurs, arthritic conditions, and arterial plaque. Balancing with magnesium avoids these problems. Dolomite has both minerals in about the correct ratio of 2 parts of calcium to 1 part of magnesium. Lots of "experts" in health food stores don't recommend it. Could it be a vested interest again? Dolomite is by far the cheapest form of calcium and magnesium available. My advice - use it and ignore those experts. However, if you have a diet high in milk and milk products such as cheese, consider taking 250 to 400 mg of magnesium to balance the high calcium in those products without magnesium. Notice that the only recommended brand item in that basic list is Solgar type VM-75. No, I have no vested interest in the company. I recommend it because it is the best multi-vitamin and mineral combination I have found, particularly for use in Florida. It has a good daily supply of vitamins. It used to be even better as it originally had no copper. The formula now has a little copper, but it has a good supply of zinc and manganese along with other essential minerals. There are other similar combinations from other companies which contain more copper. These are probably as good, and might even be better, for other areas which have zinc in the soil. But there aren't too many such zinc rich areas in the US anymore. Beware of all nationally advertised multi-vitamins that advertise 100% of the RDA. We need much more for health. Look for a multi with at least 50 mg of B complex, and with a 15 to 1 (or higher) zinc to copper ratio. Of course, ignore the ridiculous claims of cereal advertisers. Perhaps the most valuable nutrient in cereal is fiber. It's been proven to help prevent cancer. Whole grains are best of course! I have gotten most of our friends and relatives onto the base regimen at least, and the results are more than good. My mother who lived to 88 years of age, credited the regimen with her good health. My stepfather also took the same regime, and he died
at 98. Until the last few years of his life, he was a walking advertisement for bad living. He smoked 2 packs a day, drank a bottle of wine or half a bottle of booze almost every day, and he was feeling pretty good right up to the last year or so of his life.
There are lots of myths floating around. Some of them are from articles in popular literature by various know-nothings, including medical doctors. Let's explode a few of these for you. YOU CAN GET ALL THE NUTRITION YOU NEED FROM THE SUPERMARKET. There are several reasons why this is impossible today, even if it was possible in our grandparents time: l. Too many processed foods. They're very convenient. But, ALL processing takes out vitamins and minerals. Even simple processing such as squeezing orange juice takes out essential fiber from the end product. Oranges are much better for us than orange juice, even if not as convenient. Same for apples of course. 2. Too many chemicals that have side effects added to our foods. These all add up, and affect our nutritional requirements just as does pollution. Half of all antibiotics are used in feed for food animals in the US, and that doesn't include the steroids used to make our meat fattier, and thus tastier. (If steroids are so bad for athletes as to be banned, why is it OK in our meat supply?) To rid our bodies of these chemicals, we need to produce more enzymes, and this requires a greater intake of both vitamins and minerals. 3. Constantly increasing pollution of air, water, and soil. This pollution increases the vitamins and minerals needed to process, store and/or remove this from our bodies. 4. Too many pesticides used in growing food. Same adding up of requirements for more vitamins and minerals as chemicals and pollution. 5. Too much of our food is grown in areas which are very deficient in minerals. Example - Florida is very deficient in zinc and manganese. Textbooks will tell you that a glass of milk will supply several milligrams of zinc. Not from Florida cows! If it isn't in the soil, it isn't in the food chain! Florida beef doesn't have as much zinc or manganese as Texas beef for the same reason. 6. Fruits & vegetables picked unripe and ripened artificially contain much less nutrition. They last longer on the shelf though. 7. Last but not least - too much sugar and fat in our modern diet. It takes additional vitamins and minerals used as enzymes just to process this sugar and fat intake. It doesn't take too many brain cells rubbing together to see that our nutritional situation is vastly different from our grandparents. Yet, the medical profession blandly announces that our modern diet is good enough. Who for?
A MEAL THAT HAS THE FOUR BASIC FOOD GROUPS IS NUTRITIOUS. This myth is promulgated by the medical profession and is still taught in dietitian schools. You've probably heard of it. It's at least 30 years out of date. Many stupid dietitians who are responsible for those delicious meals in hospitals, schools, and jails still preach it like some type of religion. Since persons who stay in a hospital for more than a few weeks often suffer from malnutrition, should we really listen to these people? Have you ever gotten a good meal (let alone a nutritious one) in a hospital, or a school? I've never had a jail meal, but I've been told that they're no better. There are some knowledgeable dietitians, but they're still a self-taught minority. They didn't learn much real nutrition in school. Would you believe that a meal at MacDonalds - a hamburger, a bag of fries, and a milkshake has all the "four basic food groups". Is that a nutritious meal? Come on, get real! MacDonald's hopes you think so. Our modern diet does turn out to benefit somebody. Doctors - as it leads to more and more disease which puts money in their pockets! Think about it. Doctors are only trained to cure disease, NOT to prevent it. If we really prevent disease, they're out of jobs. Is that a vested interest? You bet! MEGAVITAMINS ARE DANGEROUS. This is a favorite of mine, because it is often quoted from an article by some MD. Usually, he is ranting about the use of vitamin B6 in particular. True - a megadose of B6 daily can definitely cause some odd symptoms. However, if the complete B complex is also given at the same time in amounts similar to the VM-75 or at least 50 mg amounts, the effects of B6 are negligible. Here we have a clear case of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing. The doctor probably heard about B6 for PMS as it's been reported widely in popular articles. He then recommends it to a few patients for their PMS. He doesn't have the knowledge or background to realize that without the rest of the B complex, the patient often may develops a deficiency of these other vitamins. It's not a toxic dose of B6, but the lack of the rest of the complex that causes the problem. It's interesting that no orthomolecular practicioner has ever had this problem even when giving much higher doses of B6. Too high doses over too long a time can cause some weird feelings of numbness in the extremities, but it goes away when the dosage is lowered. And it's certainly not a serious side effect or toxic! A similar thing can happen with niacin. The results of the NIH testing were reported in a few places available to MD's. Look at this scenario. A doctor has heard about niacin, but is ignorant of the use of it. He prescribes it to a hypertension patient. The patient takes it, and gets a severe flush. That's enough to scare anybody! This is reported to the doctor, and this experience teaches him that niacin is dangerous. (After all - it couldn't be his fault could it?)
The truth is that only vitamins A and D are toxic in high levels, and it's pretty difficult to get too much of either of these. The FDA puts a limit of 25,000 IU of vitamin A and 400 IU of vitamin D in any multi type pill or capsule. Any adult can take twice this amount of vitamin A and 10 times this amount of vitamin D daily without a problem. To put this vitamin A toxicity in better perspective, a meal of half a pound of calves liver, some sweet potatoes, cooked carrots, and a dessert of apricots has over 500,000 IU of vitamin A. Let's be realistic here. On a radio talk show, I had advised an older woman with vision problems to take 100,000 IU's of vitamin A for a month. After that month, cut down to 25,000 daily. Four calls later, an irate voice said, "You're very irresponsible with your advice. Aren't you even aware that vitamin A is toxic in large amounts?" I asked, "Are you a medical doctor." His reply was positive, so I asked him how long he had been out of medical school. His reply was, "seven years." "How many deaths have been recorded from vitaminosis A in that 7 years?" "I don't know", he replied, after a pause. "Well, doctor, for your information, there have been no deaths from vitaminosis A in some 25 years, and the last reported one was supposedly from eating a polar bear's liver, so even that one may not be true. By the way, do you prescribe aspirin often in your practice?" "Of course." "Doctor, for your further edification, over 1500 people die every year from taking aspirin, and another several thousand die from taking exactly the prescription that their doctor gave them. And you think I'm irresponsible? Perhaps you're the quack, doctor." With that salvo, I hung up. I never got another call on that radio show from a doctor who identified himself, although a few months later, the station was pressured by several advertisers (who had been pressured by doctors), and I was forced to leave the show. I was on every Thursday night as a guest from 7 PM to midnight, and while I was on, the four phone lines were always jammed. The host was very sorry to see me go, as his ratings had gone up considerably with me. People are interested in health. VITAMIN C CAN CAUSE KIDNEY STONES. This is a wonderful myth that surfaces every so often. This myth is so completely ridiculous it's almost funny. The fact is that most kidney stones are caused by excess calcium (often caused by a deficiency of magnesium). The excess has to go somewhere, and it sometimes winds up in the kidney forming actual stonelike
formations of calcium. (More often, the excess combines with fatty acids to form the deadly plaque found on artery walls.) It is a well proven fact that vitamin C acts as a chelating agent, taking calcium (and other minerals) out of the body. By combining with the mineral, the now water soluble molecule is passed thru the kidney to the bladder, and out the urine pathway. Kidney stones aren't too soluble, but vitamin C does gradually dissolve them. So, this myth is 180 degrees out of phase. Vitamin C actually prevents and/or cures kidney stones. THE RDA FOR VITAMINS/MINERALS WILL KEEP YOU HEALTHY. By now, I hope you know better. No scientist who has seriously studied nutrition believes that the RDA is even close to good health requirements. So, forget those cereal ads about "100% of 9 essential vitamins and minerals". What happened to the 35+ other essential nutrients? Such ads are more than misleading - they're fraudulent. The same goes for those vitamin/mineral supplements "from A to zinc". Better than nothing, but not much better. Not nearly enough anywhere. Do you know how the RDA (originally MDA) was established by the Food & Drug Administration of our government? It was put out on bids, and contracted out to private labs around the country. These labs actually set up these standards for the FDA. Who were these labs? Would you be surprised to find that they were the labs of General Foods, General Mills, Kellogg, and other cereal makers. How's that for a vested interest? Most people think that vitamins and minerals are similar, but the fact is that they are very different. It is virtually impossible to overdose on vitamins, but it's relatively simple to overdose on minerals. This is a very important fact to remember! To be sure that you have enough vitamins, you just take more of the water soluble vitamins (B complex and C) than you might need as an individual. The excess simply passes out harmlessly within several hours. Vitamin E is similar even though it is an oil soluble vitamin. Even vitamins A & D are excreted, albeit over much longer time periods. Minerals are quite different. Like the vitamins A & D, they are stored in the body in various areas. Vitamins are primarily used in enzymes. These are used for the millions of chemical and energy transformations going on in our body. Minerals are also used in enzymes, but they are also used as direct building blocks. This is an important difference. Vitamins have to be input every day to maintain a constant supply to all cells. Minerals are also input daily, but they're used to keep storage levels up over long periods of time. Without sufficient input at any time, stored minerals are used instead. Excess minerals taken in are also stored, and over a long period of time will upset the body balance with other minerals. Balance between various minerals is very important - much more so than with vitamins. Calcium must be balanced by magnesium. Sodium must be balanced by
potassium. Copper must be balanced by both Zinc and Iron. Balances of these, and others, are more important in many ways than the actual levels. HAIR MINERAL ANALYSIS IS INACCURATE AND USELESS. From the above discussion, you can see that it's useful to determine the mineral levels and balances in the body. A hair mineral analysis does this very well. It shows up the various balances as well as any toxic or deficiency levels clearly. However, it takes an expert to read and analyze these reports. I shudder to think of my early mistakes made out of my ignorance. Because mineral levels change very slowly in the body, such an analysis shouldn't be necessary more than every few years or so for most healthy persons. How about blood tests? Yes, they can tell the status of various minerals in the bloodstream at any particular moment, but they just can't determine mineral levels in cells where they are stored, and this is the most important information needed. A cell biopsy may give this information, but it's very expensive. Hair is almost an ideal biopsy substitute. Simple to obtain, simple to ship anywhere without change in characteristics, and not too expensive to test today. And, it's composed of body cells excreted over a period of time as the hair grows. Take a blood sample of a young healthy 17 year old girl, and an X-ray of her bones. Do the same tests on the same woman 30 years later. The calcium level will be virtually the same in both samples. But, the X-rays will usually show much less calcium in the bones. Blood mineral levels are homeostatic - that's doctorese for "remaining the same". As blood levels lower in use, more is pulled out of storage to compensate. Only cases of very severe deficiency show up in blood levels. B12 is actually a mineral (cobalt) complex. Now you can figure out why blood tests for B12 are inaccurate as mentioned in an earlier chapter. Toxic minerals are also difficult or impossible to detect from blood samples, because of this efficient mineral storage system. Blood is constantly filtered by the liver and excess or toxic minerals are removed and stored locally at first. They are then gradually released from liver storage, and moved by the bloodstream to other storage areas such as bone and other organ cells, or they are gradually excreted thru the hair or the bile systems (even excreted thru the skin in minute amounts). From storage, toxic minerals are also released very slowly back into the bloodstream in very minute amounts, taking many years in some cases. This very minute release is necessary to prevent such toxic minerals from affecting the brain too much. Of course, an instant overload of some such as arsenic or mercury can kill! This is why Mark's arsenic poisoning of ten years earlier still showed up clearly in his hair. Hair is a cellular record over time of mineral status. It's also an excretion route (albeit a very slow one). That's a major reason why toxicity is so easily seen in the hair, and why expertise is required for good analysis.
Hair mineral analysis is not better or worse than blood analysis. It's another tool useful in diagnosis. Too bad doctors aren't trained to use it. Remember that the EKG machine was termed useless quackery not so many years ago, but it's a standard in every medical office now..... CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - Allergies/Sensitivities By now, you've seen that allergies and sensitivities can cause virtually any symptom of any disease. I have been allergic to ragweed all my life, and I was aware that hives was also an allergic reaction. That was the limit of my knowledge about allergy. The idea that an allergy or a sensitivity could actually cause psychotic problems such as schizophrenia and depression was very difficult for me to accept at first. As I researched, studied, practiced, and personally learned from Dr. Von and Dr. Klotz, I was constantly amazed. Now, years later, nothing in this field amazes me. If my toe hurts, and I don't remember stubbing it, I immediately suspect allergy, and start remembering what I've eaten lately. I've never found a person that was free of allergy or sensitivity, even when they report no known symptoms. Allergy research and practice is both very rewarding and very frustrating at different times. Every patient responds differently to similar allergens. My joke rule, "There are no rules - but there are guidelines that sometimes work" is very true. The same allergy in the same family can cause vastly different symptoms in each individual. No wonder MD allergists tend to limit their practice to inhalant allergies that cause sinus and cold symptoms. Food's are too tough. By now, you've probably wondered about the difference between allergy and sensitivity. A simple explanation (skipping a lot of scientific fact) is that an allergic reaction mobilizes the entire body defense system. Sensitivity reactions only mobilize the white cell defense system in the blood. From what we know, allergic reactions seem to be mostly genetic. That is you were born with your allergies, or at least, a tendency towards certain allergies. Sensitivities seem to be acquired as we go through life. TESTING FOR ALLERGIES The RAST (radio-allogosorbic sensitivity test) is much better than the old scratch test for determining allergies, but it will not find sensitivities, although it will find true food allergies. The Cytotoxic Sensitivity Test found both allergies and sensitivities with about the same accuracy as the RAST (80%). However, it was limited to foods and chemicals primarily. I used it with good accuracy for some time. A newer test is the Elisha Act test, which is supposed to be much better. It is similar, but more extensive. I have no experience with it. Believe it or not, there is a machine that tests for allergies and sensitivities by measuring the skin resistance (GSR) of a particular acupuncture radian on one of the fingers. It's called an Enterro and there's a more recent machine that is similar. It actually works by using the unconscious of the person being tested, and the skin
resistance is actually changed to reflect problems even if the person doesn't know what's going on consciously. Surprisingly this, which sounds like real quackery works at least as well as any other allergy test method I used in my practice. A homeopathic physician used it to test for me, and we got excellent results in both diagnosis and treatment. I've mentioned the end-point titration method. This is quite accurate, but very expensive in physician time. It has a big advantage in that it not only diagnoses but also finds the treatment at the same time. Very good for the difficult cases at least. The pulse test used for foods along with the Caveman Diet is certainly the cheapest and best for most people. The Caveman Diet is as follows: lamb & turkey as the only meats whole grain brown rice as the only grain any vegetables except corn & tomatoes (neither are actually vegetables) any fruit except citrus or Kiwi (all fruit washed carefully or peeled) sea salt & pepper (not table salt containing dextrose) unprocessed nuts, except peanuts, (from health store or in the shell) distilled or Reverse Osmosis (RO) water No processed food at all. Nothing that comes in a box or can or bottle. Nothing else goes into the mouth. No vitamins and no brushing of teeth except with plain soda. After five days, the subject will become more sensitive to allergenic foods, and relatively free of symptoms (unless actually allergic or sensitive to one of the above foods!) The pulse test is best done by mixing the suspected food with some water in a blender, making a liquid. Take the pulse by counting it for a full minute, and write it down. Next, drop two or three drops of liquid under the tongue of the person. Advise them not to swallow, and measure the pulse again after 10 minutes. If it rises more than a few points, the food tested is a problem. Delete that food from the diet. If the pulse goes up very high, do not test further until it comes back down to a normal level.
Note that persons with constantly high pulse rates (above 65 or so) are often very allergic persons. The high pulse rate is because they are releasing adrenalin into the bloodstream as result of the allergens. Such persons often have low blood pressure as the body compensates for the high pulse rate. ALLERGY TREATMENTS The usual shots given by most allergists after either the RAST or patch testing are about 75% effective at best. If such shots are titrated and "end-pointed" they are much more accurate. For most foods and even inhalant allergies and sensitivities shots aren't really necessary. The same dosages can be given by sub-lingual technique. By using titration as explained earlier, an "end-point" can be found with sub-lingual and pulse testing. This is the treatment dose given every day. Avoidance, particularly of foods, is the best way to eliminate symptoms from obesity to depression to ulcers, or whatever. If it is a sensitivity and not an allergy, it will die
down in six months or so, you can eat the offending foods again in a limited way - not more than once a week or so. Interestingly enough, you may have lots of allergies, and not have any recognizable symptoms for all, or most, of your life. Sometimes, a traumatic event seems to trigger an allergy reaction and associate it with a symptom. Allergies never seem to go away, although symptoms may disappear or change during life. Dr. Von and I have seen many cases where something traumatic happens to a person, and their allergic symptom starts from that point. In one case, a spider bite incapacitated a woman with rheumatoid arthritis for years. Childbirth is a common time for allergy initiation, ranging from depression to obesity. Dr. Von told me about one patient that was so allergic she practically had to live in a bottle. She was in a bad auto accident, and spent several weeks in the hospital, some of it in intensive care. She left the hospital with no recognizable allergic symptoms. Don't make the mistake of thinking that her allergies were cured. Not so - she just lost her troubling symptoms. Very unusual as the opposite usually is what happens. (Remember my First Rule of Allergy). Sensitivities are more often food caused. We don't understand all the mechanisms, but they seem to be caused by eating the same foods too often. One theory has it connected to the processed foods loaded with chemicals we eat all too often. Too much work for too little nutrition, and the brain rebels, picking out the main ingredient in those foods, and developing symptoms as a way of warning in effect. So, what's the difference in symptoms triggered by each. None - at least as far as we know now. The whole broad range of symptoms covered in this book can all be induced in various individuals by either an allergy or a food sensitivity. Allergists separate them, but for the clinician looking at symptoms, it really doesn't matter which is causing the problem. As my allergy rule was modified, there are some guidelines that sometimes work. Experience has taught many of us in this field that certain foods are somewhat more likely to cause certain symptoms than others. For example, corn seems to cause more headache problems than anything else. Migraines so severe that the person had to lie in a darkened room for days are not unusual. In any case where headaches are reported as chronic, that is, more than a few times a year, I suspect corn immediately. I give that person a list of products containing corn. They eliminate them from their diet, and most of the time the headaches completely disappear. (I wrote this up in the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine, and had several other practicioners write to me confirming the same experience in their practice.) Another area with a guideline is rheumatoid arthritis. Some books have actually been written by sufferers explaining how they cured it by staying off wheat completely. I didn't follow the guideline here. I suffer from rheumatoid arthritis if I eat peanuts too often. I'm very lucky - it's much easier to avoid peanut products than wheat products. While cold and sinus symptoms are most often caused by inhalant allergies, they may be also caused by foods. Watermelon will make me sneeze just like ragweed sometimes. Yawning after a meal is often a valuable clue to unsuspected food
problems. Another is an itching or painful sensation at the top of the palate after eating a particular food. Hyperactivity is most often caused by milk products, closely followed by wheat or corn, chemicals, and orange juice in that order. It can be caused by any foods or any inhalant for that matter, but these are the guideline starting points. Sugar is often a contributing factor, although rarely a direct allergen. Wheat and other grains are also suspect in psychotic problems of depression and schizophrenia. But, the guidelines are much wider here. I had one schizophrenic patient that turned out to be allergic to ink, including the ink printing on her generic schizophrenic drug capsule! The actual original (Stellazine) helped her to control her problem, but the generic made it worse! Hypoglycemic episodes can actually be caused by allergic reactions. This complicates the detective work in such cases considerably. Yawning after a meal is often a clue to hypoglycemia, as well as a clue to possible food sensitivity. That's what all allergy work is - detective work. It takes a lot of questioning and testing of the subject to find and winnow out the suspects. You have to listen and observe carefully not to miss the clues along the way. It also helps if you are somewhat psychic! Using the Caveman Diet and the pulse test, along with sublingual testing as described earlier will usually find allergies/sensitivities, and cure many problems that were unsuspected as allergy problems. It takes work, but it's cheaper than the medical solutions that often are ineffective. Everything we know today about allergy and sensitivity is probably less than 25% of what we need to know. The same might be said about medicine in general at almost any period of time. Good luck with your allergies and sensitivities! AFTERWORD & ALTERNATE HEALTH TIPS You are now considerably more knowledgeable about nutrition than most doctors. But don't argue with him - just give him this book, and dare him to read it. Just by becoming a doctor, he's proven his intelligence. This book just might provoke him into doing some checking on his own. If so, he may do just like I did - convert to this quackery that works, to the benefit of all his patients. Everything in this book is true, making allowances for personal memory. All names were changed except for my wife and my nephew. Some unimportant details of individual cases were also left out, to make it more readable, but the results were as described here. There's so much more that I would like to pass on, but it's impossible to pass on all that I learned in over 12 years of practice and study. I have to finish somewhere. I do
have just a few "juicy plums" that may be of interest or of help to you or yours.
I found out years ago that eating cherries actually lowers the uric acid level in gout patients. This seems to be a "cure" for gout. A cherry a day keeps gout away, to paraphrase the old saw. No side effects either. Another in the same old wife category is taking alfalfa pills for various allergy symptoms, particularly hay fever and sinus symptoms. Why does it work? I don't know, but it does for most. I've used it successfully for years. Beats the hell out of anti-histamines that make you sleepy or have other side effects. Amino acids are very useful. Lysine actually prevents Herpes from reaching the infectious (visible) stage. Take 500 mg per day to prevent Herpes from appearing. Some persons need more, but this works for most, and is the starting point. Tests in 1979 proved that this simple and inexpensive treatment prevented reoccurrence in over 90% of the persons tested. Since Ann Landers was the "medical mouthpiece" in proclaiming Herpes #2 as a venereal disease, I sent her a Xerox copy of the research paper twice. She didn't even have the courtesy to reply! Taurine is another amino acid, and combined with zinc can actually control epileptic fits in most sufferers. 500 mg per day along with 30 mg of zinc has been a good starting point for most. It's a shame and a disgrace to the FDA that the amino acid Tryptophan was removed from the market just because of one bad batch. The AMA and the drug industry lobbied hard and long to achieve this. You didn't see a complete recall of a drug, such as Tylenol, when a bad batch kills some innocent people. The advantage of a strong lobby! They want to control all amino acids, and there are bills pending to do just this. Amino acids are just food - protein that has been broken down to constituent parts, but they are feared by the drug industry. They are actually much better than many patented drugs on the market. Tryptophan was the perfect substitute for all the various sleeping disorder and "nerve" drugs such as Valium and Librium etc. It worked even better than most without any side effects. I used it to unhook Valium/Librium and other addicts successfully. It doesn't drug you to sleep, but it provides calming brain chemicals. That allows sleep if you need it, and a calmness if you don't. No addiction or other side effects. It was also a good emergency "drug" for severe depression. Used with Tyrosine (another amino acid), it decreased most depression symptoms immediately. Of course, like other drugs, it should only be used for a temporary solution until the real cause is found. No side effects such as are found with the popular "mood elevators" that are overprescribed today. Again dosage of 500 mg of each is a good starting place. Vaginitis is a huge problem for many women. One cause is the overuse of antibiotics. All antibiotics are derived from mold, fungus, and yeast. Fungi are enemies of
bacteria, so they war when they meet. The antibiotics usually win because of overwhelming strength in numbers as used. However, the word anti-biotic means "against life", and antibiotics can't distinguish between friendly and unfriendly bacteria. It seems that we actually need some of the friendly bacteria found in the intestinal system to help digest food, make vitamin K, and to aid in the transport of B12 into the body and more. Antibiotics kill off the needed intestinal bacteria as well as the bad disease causing bacteria within the body. The "normal" bacterial sites in the intestines then become inhabited by yeast. In particular, a yeast called Candida. No test can determine if the patient is suffering from this yeast. Why? Because it's everywhere. Take samples of saliva, skin, feces, mouth or vaginal mucus, and there it is. Remember that antibiotics are enemies of bacteria, not of yeasts. So, as the friendly bactera is killed off, more and more Candida takes over. It travels to the vagina, or to other parts of the body, and can take over there as well. Would you be surprised to find that athlete's foot, swimmers ear, and even dandruff can be caused by Candida (besides vaginitis and thrush in children)? So, what can we do about this? Simple. Take 10 capsules of Acidophilus with any milk product meal or snack every other day for 5 times. (50 capsules). This will usually restore the friendly bacteria balance with Candida, and clear up vaginitis. Some of our grandmothers actually douched with buttermilk which is rich in acidophilus bacteria for this. Don't fall for the health food claims. You don't need mega forms - any standard capsule will work fine. But, do the above. You'll notice several things. Fungus problems in general will clear up. Your gas and feces will not be nearly as smelly, and your feces will be light in color, even yellow or clay colored. That's correct - a baby has very yellow feces from the milk Acidophilus bacteria. You are actually fighting the yeast overgrowth with friendly bacteria. That sounded strange to me when I first found out about it, but it sure works. These are just a few helpful health items that I've learned along the way. There are hundreds more of course, but they are for another book. I hope some of these are useful to you. Have a long life and prosper! BIBLIOGRAPHY This bibliography only lists those few books that were my favorites, and which were written in language that a layman can easily understand. Each of these books listed covers some of the material in this book. All are "professional" books, i. e., they are written by experts in this new orthomolecular therapy. All are by persons with doctorate degrees, and all have been written by people who are very respected in this field. If you are interested in exploring this field further, each of these books contains a much more extensive bibliography for you to follow (as I did).
Hoffer, Abram "Orthomolecular Nutrition" Keats Publishing "How To Live With Schizophrenia" Carol Publishing "Orthomolecular Medicine for Physicians" Keats "Common Questions on Schizophrenia & Their Answers" Keats "Nutrients to Age Without Senility" Keats Mandell, Marshall "Dr. Mandell's 5 Day Allergy Relief System" Berkley "It's Not Your Fault You're Fat Diet" Harper & Row "Dr. Mandell's Lifetime Arthritis Relief System" Crowell Pfeiffer, Carl C "Mental & Elemental Nutrients" Keats "Zinc & Other MicroNutrients" Keats Newbold, H. L. "Vitamin C Against Cancer" Scarborough Simonton, Carl O "Getting Well Again" Tarcher Lederer, Wm. J "Marital Choices" (out of print) Norton "Creating A Good Relationship" (same as Marital Choices except paperback still in print). Coca, Arthur "The Pulse Test" (1982) Barnes, Broda "Hope for Hypoglycemia" (1989) Barnes, Broda & "Hypothyroidism - The Unsuspected Illness" (1976) Galton, Lawrence GLOSSARY Adrenaline - The hormone produced by the adrenal glands which readies the body for "flight or fight". The pulse rapidly rises to make blood circulate faster, and the blood pressure also rises. The stored glucose (blood sugar) is released into the bloodstream to provide energy for either fighting or fleeing. Age Regression - A hypnotic technique where the hypnotized person goes back in memory to earlier scenes in his/her life. Sort of heightened memory. Often used to recall frightening episodes that are affecting the person later in life. Such are often "repressed", and not consciously remembered at all, but have tremendous effect on the person. Agoraphobia - Perhaps the most crippling phobia of all. Those persons with this problem cannot leave their house, and some rare cases, a particular room. Literally fear of everything "outside". Alzheimer's - A disease similar to senility. Symptoms are loss of short term and long term memory in particular. It is diagnosed often by the presence of air in the frontal lobes of the brain seen by a CAT scan. It can only be diagnosed completely by autopsy, as simple senility also has the same symptoms.
AMA - "Against Medical Advice". This is a ploy used by doctors to avoid any responsibility for patients not doing exactly what the doctors advise. It supposedly relieves the doctor of responsibility. Also called "CYA". Amino Acids - These are the constitutents of protein (meat, eggs, etc). All protein breaks down in the digestive system to individual amino acids. The amino acids are the building blocks to make cells and enzymes in the body of all animals. Free form amino acids are broken down from protein into the individual amino acids, requiring no digestion to be absorbed. Anti-oxidant - Chemical substances that tend to prevent oxidation of fatty acids. Exposed to oxygen in the bloodstream, fatty acids lose hydrogen ions called "free radicals", and these are indicted in cancer as well as other problems. Anti-0xidants include Vitamins A, C, and E, as well as a group of vitamin C related substances called Bioflavinoids. Anxiety - This is a fear response. It can range from slight with just a release of adrenaline to a full-blown anxiety or panic attack depending on the individual and the circumstances. Phobias, in particular can often trigger panic attacks in which the victim cannot control their actions. Autistic - An abnormal mind state, usually in children, that ranges from no ability to talk at all, to full talking ability, but no ability to concentrate on any subject for more than a moment, if that. Bactericide - Any substance that kills bacteria. Biopsy - A sample of cells from tissue. Often taken from liver or breast areas. Used in cancer determination. Biofeedback - A type of therapy where the patient hears or sees the actual pulse, muscle movement, brain or nerve signals, and consciously attempts to control such. EEG is brain. EMG is muscle. GSR is skin resistance.Candida - The common fungus causing vaginitis, thrush, etc Catatonic - A schizophrenic state where the patient is completely "out of it". They do not respond to any stimulation, and if placed in a position that is even uncomfortable, they will stay in that position. Caveman Diet - See Allergy Chelation - The word "chelate" pronounced key'late means to "claw onto". A chelating agent in the orthomolecular language means a substance that combines with minerals, making them water soluble, and thus taking them out of the body via the kidney and urine pathway. EDTA is a common chelator used by a few (good) MD's that use it to reduce calcium in the bloodstream. This reduces the plaque causing artery blockage. The plaque is composed of calcium and fatty acids. Without the calcium, the fatty acids are not able to stay in place. Vitamin C also acts in the same way. However, one word of caution when using any chelating agent. It takes ALL
minerals out of the body, so you have to take a lot of mineral supplementation of the "good" minerals needed by your body to replace the ones taken out along with the "bad" ones. Clinical Ecologist - New name for allergists working in the holistic or orthomolecular area. They do testing for sensitivity as well as allergy. Cytotoxic Sensitivity Test - Also called Leukocyte Sensitivity Test. It consists of taking the patients blood, centrifuging it to separate the white blood cells (leukocytes) from the heme and other blood substances, then dropping a small drop of WBC's onto a prepared slide which has a food already on it. This is incubated for an hour, then a technician looks at the slide under a microscope. WBC's are the infection fighters, and they actually explode, releasing toxic material into the bloodstream to kill the "invader". Often the invader is only a food which the body has wrongly decided is "bad". This is sensitivity, and allergy. Defoliants - Chemical substances that kill plants (foliage). Widely used during the Vietnam war to kill off foliage that hid the Viet Cong as they moved in the forests. Usually contained substantial amounts of mercury, in particular "Agent Orange". A major factor in depression to those who were exposed to it. Dehydration - results from insufficient water intake, or can result from excessive water output, such as can occur during diarreah. A leading cause of death in nursing homes is often dehydration. Depression - May be either bipolar where the patient alternates between manic/happy behavior and severe depression, or unipolar, where patient goes just down into depression from "normal". Can be caused by many different physical reasons. These include stress from allergies or sensitivities, heavy metal poisoning such as copper or mercury, severe lack of vitamins, and even brain tumors. Desensitization - This is a behavior modification technique for curing phobias. First teach the patient a relaxation technique, then gradually have the patient alternately imagine the fear situation and relax, using the relaxation technique. By working gradually up to the most phobic area, and relaxing in imagination, the panic response is gradually brought under control. When this has been accomplished in the office, then the patient does in reality. For example, if afraid of heights and looking down, he/she is taken up an elevator, and floor by floor looks down until a high floor is reached without panic. End-Point Titration - See Allergy. Enzymes - These are the chemicals manufactured within the body that do the actual chemical transformations needed to build up the body, and also to break down whole food into constituents such as glucose, amino acids, fatty acids, vitamins, minerals, etc.
Estrogen - one of the sex hormones. Manufactured by all animals, but is considered a "female" hormone, as it is the determining factor (along with the lack of testosterone)
in determining that a baby will be female. Also females produce many times as much estrogen as do males. Excess estrogen in a male will cause breast growth, and body hair loss. Food Sensitivity - This is somewhat different from direct food allergy, but it can cause every symptom as any allergy. The difference is that an allergy causes the body's defense system to be alerted with blood substances called Immuno-Globulins released. These are detected by the RAST test (See Allergy), whereas food sensitivity only causes white blood cells to become active (see Cytotoxic). Free Radicals - These are hydrogen ions released by the oxidation process working on fatty acids in the blood. They are a factor in cancer causes, and other diseases. Antioxidants help to stop their formation. Glucose Tolerance Test - A test used to determine diabetes by physicians, and a test used by holistic physicans to detect hypoglycemia. The usual method of testing by physicians and labs is to measure the blood sugar after a 12 hour fast. This gets the "normal level". Then, a sickly sweet drink of dextrose (corn sugar) is given. (It should be only a portion of a 10 ounce bottle depending on the patient's height and weight, but many just give the whole bottle. Not good for a child.) Next, measurements are made of blood sugar at the half hour mark, and the hour mark, then every hour afterwards. The readings are compiled into a curve on a graph. If no symptoms are looked for during this time, the test is worthless. Dr. Von Hilsheimer devised a different test using pancakes and syrup, and got the same results with less discomfort to the patient. Gout - A very painful disease where uric acid crystals settle in a joint, often a toe or heel. Using cherries seems to cure it. Hair Mineral Analysis - A tablespoon of hair is cut from the subject using thinning scissors. It is sent to a special lab for testing. The lab dissolves the air in acid, taking out the organic (cellular) components, and leaving the minerals. The content of these is then measured by very expensive spectrographic machines. Usual cost is between $75 and $125. If you register this book you can receive one for $70, which includes the $15 registration. Cost for registered owners is $60. See Instructions section in accompanying HEALTH questionaire program for details. Hallucinations - Imaginary sense impressions. These can be any sense, ranging from seeing something that is not there, hearing something that is not there (voices from God or the devil), itching or pain, etc. The sensory feeling is very real to the patient. Herpes - A collection of viral diseases including Simplex I, a sort of cold sore, usually around the lips and mouth; Simplex II, same sore but it appears on the genitals; Zoster, a very painful collection of small blisters that can be very small or very large. It can be so painful that persons have actually committed suicide from the pain. Herpes hides in the fatty sheath of nerves, so it is difficult to kill. Lysine, an amino acid makes the body conditions not favorable for Herpes to reproduce, and thus prevents their appearance. Argenine, another amino acid, in excess makes conditions favorable. Argenine is found in cheese, nuts, and chocolate in particular. Children often get "cold sores" after Halloween, or at Xmas.
Homeopathy - Treatment of disease by minute amounts of the disease itself. Alternately by substances that caused the same or similar symptoms. Some of the substances are so small that they are molecular, and for this reason the medical community in the US derides it. However, in Europe, many MD practicioners practice homeopathy along with drugs (allopathy), and their "cure" rate is considerably higher generally than ours. So, who's right? Hypoglycemia - Hypo means low (hyper means high), and glycemia means blood sugar (glucose). It is loosely used to describe a set of sugar handling problems which cause differing symptoms in different persons. It is often caused by a large intake of quickly digested sugary and processed foods. This causes the body to release large quantities of insulin into the blood to counter this huge amount. The amount of insulin is too large for the actual intake, so the blood sugar goes very low. Also called reactive hypoglycemia, or hyperinsulinism. Chapter 6 explains mechanism well. Treatment is explained in Chapter 7. Inhalants - Whatever gets into the body through the lungs from breathing as opposed to eating or absorbing thru the skin. Most MD allergists only concentrate on inhalants, and direct food allergy, either denying food sensitivity or ignoring it. Impotent - Male sexual problem. Penis does not erect. May be several reasons from physical ones such as prostate cancer to psychological ones such as ridicule from a sex partner. Most often, psychological in nature. Manganese - a mineral important for preventing hearing problems as well as muscle problems. Scarce in many growing areas such as Florida, and should be supplemented by most persons. Marital Therapy - A type of behavior modification therapy outlined very clearly by William Lederer. MDR/MDA - Minimum Daily Requirement to avoid serious vitamin or mineral deficiency diseases. Changed to RDA by lobbying on part of cereal manufacturers and other vested interests. Medical Abandonment - This is immoral and illegal. A doctor cannot just tell a patient to "go away" without making provisions for his/her further care. For a mental patient, refusal to give them a prescription that normalizes them is a definite "no-no". Megavitamin Formula - This is a combination of 333 mg of vitamin C, 333mg of niacin, 66 mg of B6, and 66 IU of vitamin E in each capsule. The patient is given three of these three times a day Mensa - A society of high IQ persons. IQ's above 135 on Stanford Binet scale can be members. Niacin - A vitamin like substance derived from Tryptophan, one of the eight "essential" amino acids. It was formerly called B3, but it isn't really a vitamin. Niacinamide is a form of niacin that doesn't cause the "flush" that niacin often does.
This flush is the result of niacin interacting with histamine. This dilates all the blood vessels in the body, including the large and small capillaries. This opening of vessels, lowers blood pressure for some time after the flush has subsided (about 10 minutes). A diet deficiency disease, Pellagra, is caused by the lack of niacin, and in one reason why so-called "enriched flour" has niacin added. Obese - If a person is 20% over a so-called "normal" body weight for their height, they are presumed to be obese. Palate - the soft roof of the mouth. Paranoid - A type of schizophrenia wherein the patient imagines that there are people wishing them harm, or normal conditions are dangerous to them. Phobia - irrational fear. Often caused by traumatic episode in childhood. Exposure to similar conditions may cause panic or ansiety attack. Placebo - Something that the patient "thinks" will help, and it does so because of this belief. Sugar pills often work wonders. The cures can be very real with placebos. Hypnosis often works in a similar manner. PMS - Pre Menstrual Symdrome affects most women some three or four days prior to the actual menstrual flow. Headaches, body pains, crankiness, etc are all symptoms. Our modern diet does not supply enough B6 it seems, and supplementation with this can remove PMS for most women entirely. Do not take B6 without the whole B complex. See Vitamins for cautions and details. Post Hypnotic Suggestion - A suggestion (command) given to a subject under hypnosis that will affect the subject after the hypnotic session. Progesterone - Another sex hormone that works with both estrogen and testerone. Given with estrogen for menopausal women, it seems to lessen the chances of breast cancer as opposed to estrogen alone. Pseudoschizophrenia - A sugar handling problem where the excess adrenaline combined with testosterone causes undifferentiated (without real cause) anger. Persons who change personality when drinking are often victims of this problem. Psychotropic Drugs - These are drugs given to psychotic patients which seem to alleviate their schizophrenic and depressive symptoms. Often derived from Thorazine, the basic drug, they cause Tardive Dyskinesia in most patients after awhile. Given the basic Megavitamin Formulation along with these drugs prevents Tardive Dyskinesia. Pulse Test - This is one of the best tests for both sensitivities and also allergies. Dr. Coca found many years ago that the pulse rate of persons exposed to one of their allergens (or sensitive substance) will increase dramatically. It can be used for detecting foods by placing a small amount of the suspected food mixed with distilled water under the tongue for ten minutes. A dramatic rise in pulse means that the person is allergic or sensitive to that substance. Similarly, taking a good "sniff" of any
household products, bedclothes, even clothes will produce the same rapid pulse rise after about 10 minutes. Occasionally, such testing will also show symptoms as well. Relaxation Therapy - Derived from hypnosis, it uses hypnotic techniques to get the subject into a relaxed physical and concentrated mental state. At that point, the combined state is associated with a simple "trigger", for example - counting to three. This brings back the relaxed body and the concentrated mental state. Ritalin - A derivative of the illegal drug called "speed". It often makes people hyperactive, but it also acts in a paradoxical way with children, slowing down hyperactive boys in particular. It does affect the IQ of such children, and may have other side effects on individuals. Poor substitute for finding the root cause of the hyperactivity, and solving that problem. Rotary Diet - This is a diet where no foods are eaten two days in a row. Most effective in food sensitivity treatment as sensitivities do wither away after time for most people. Foods that are eaten every day or the favorite foods are the most likely to be bad foods for the individual. Schizophrenia - a mental disorder characterized by sensory hallucinations. Sub-lingual - doctorese for "under the tongue". (Lingual means tongue.) Sub-Liminal - doctorese for "under the threshold". Testosterone - the "male" hormone. Along with a shortage of estrogen, this sex hormone determines the sex of the baby during pregnancy. Excess of this hormone in some women causes excess hair and male behavior in some cases. This hormone given in excess often causes extreme anger in most persons, including women. Trauma - Almost anything that harms the patient. Ranging from simple scary episodes in childhood to an accident that mains or even kills. Virus - A virus is a one-celled organism smaller than a bacteria. Viruses are responsible for colds and flus, some forms of hepatitis, herpes, and AIDS. Where the virus is in the bloodstream, vitamin C can combine with them to effectively take them out of the body, but it takes huge amounts of vitamin C. Many viruses "hide" in organs or other places outside of the bloodstream, and therefore, the viricides can't affect them. Vitamin C - Ascorbic Acid. Also in buffered form as Ascorbate (usually as calcium or sodium ascorbate. Bactericide & viricide. Cancer cure potential is proven. Bowel tolerance at level of diarreah used for treatment. Less is not effective as viricide. Weight control - See Chapter 12 - Donny Withdrawal - This is the effects of coming off an addiction. Alcoholics and heroin\crack addicts often suffer "tortures of the damned" when taken off their drugs. Severe pain throughout the body (even the hair hurts). Visual and other sensory
hallucinations (DT's) and severe emotional stress are common. Withdrawal can also occur from deleting foods in some cases. Zinc - a very important mineral, particularly for men. Acne is sometimes caused by a lack of zinc and vitamin A. APPEMDIX A - Dr Mandell's questionaire for determining allergies. This is a multi-part questionaire devised by Dr. Marshall Mandell, certainly one of the giants in the field of allergy/sensitivity. It is reprinted here with his permission, and was taken from his book. In the interests of space, I have modified it slightly, but haven't changed the overall content. PART I - General History To the best of your recollection, when you were a child: Yes No ___ ___ Did you wet the bed ___ ___ Did you have eczema or any other chronic skin trouble? ___ ___ Did you have colic? ___ ___ Were you a feeding problem? (Ask your mother if possible.) ___ ___ Did you have frequent ear aches? ___ ___ Did you have croup? ___ ___ Did you have frequent bronchitis or chest colds? ___ ___ Did you have persistent (day or night) coughs? ___ ___ Did you have hay fever? ___ ___ Did you have frequent attacks of "stomache," diarreah, or vomiting. ___ ___ Did you have circles under your eyes? ___ ___ Did you have learning disabilities? ___ ___ Did you have a stuffy nose much of the time? ___ ___ Were you hyperactive? ___ ___ Did (or do) you have asthma? ___ ___ Did you have epilepsy? ___ ___ Did you have a pale face? ___ ___ Did you have headaches more than others? ___ ___ Did you have mood swings? ___ ___ Did you have bad behavior that you couldn't seem to control? If you answered "yes" to any of the above questions, there is a good chance that you were showing signs and symptoms of childhood allergy. Do you notice that any trouble begins or is aggravated: Yes No ___ ___ During periods of damp weather? ___ ___ When you smell mildew? ___ ___ When you are near hay or straw? ___ ___ When you go into an old damp, musty house? ___ ___ When you go into a cellar, a shed, or a closet? ___ ___ When you eat cheese, mushrooms, cantaloupe, vinegar, or saurkraut? ___ ___ When you drink buttermilk, or fermented drinks (beer, ale, wine)? ___ ___ When near dry leaves or compost? ___ ___ Do you feel better when snow is on the ground? If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you may be allergic to molds, fungus, and yeast. Do you notice that any trouble begins or is aggravated: Yes No ___ ___ When the house is being swept or cleaned? ___ ___ When rugs are being beaten? ___ ___ When the bed is being made, or the mattress turned? ___ ___
When the heat is first turned on in the first cold spell of fall? ___ ___ In dusty places such as theaters, churches, department stores, etc. If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you may be allergic to house dust or mites (A major component of house dust.) Do you notice that any trouble begins or is aggravated: Yes No ___ ___ When lying on a feather pillow or bed? ___ ___ When fluffing pillows? ___ ___ When using a down comforter? ___ ___ When you are near birds chickens, ducks, geese, pet birds, etc? ___ ___ When you are around anyone who works with birds? ___ ___ When you go into a pet store? If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you may be allergic to feathers. Do you notice that any trouble begins or is aggravated: Yes No ___ ___ When you are around dogs, cats, horses, cows, or other animals? ___ ___ When you handle furs, rugs, blankets, toy animals, leather etc? If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you may be allergic to animal hairs, danders and odors. Do you notice that any trouble begins or is aggravated: Yes No ___ ___ When you are exposed to housold insect powder or sprays? ___ ___ When you are exposed to moth crystals or powder or spray? ___ ___ When you are exposed to garden insect powder or sprays? ___ ___ When an exterminator has been at your home or office? If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you may be allergic to pyrethrum, derris root, or highly toxic insect sprays. Do you notice that any trouble begins or is aggravated: Yes No ___ ___ When using scented face, talcum, body, bath or tooth powder? ___ ___ In beauty salons, or barber shops? ___ ___ When you are around persons who use perfume or cologne? If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you may be allergic to petroleum derived chemicals, orris root, or corn which are all present in some cosmetics. Do you notice that any trouble begins or is aggravated: Yes No ___ ___ When you handle or are around animal or poultry feed? ___ ___ When you use certain hair wave sets, shampoos, or tonics? If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you may be allergic to cottonseed and/or flaxseed
Do you notice that any trouble begins or is aggravated: Yes No ___ ___ When you smoke? ___ ___ When you are around others smoking, especially in small areas? ___ ___ When in nightclubs or others smoky places? ___ ___ When in rooms with residual odor from ashtrays? If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you may be allergic to tobacco, or susceptible to chemicals used in growing tobacco, or the chemicals in the paper of cigarettes. PART II - Gastrointestinal System Yes No ___ ___ Do you frequently belch or pass gas after meals? ___ ___ Do you often have indigestion and/or stomach bloating after meals? ___ ___ Is there any food that you feel disagrees with you often? ___ ___ Are you subject to frequent diarreah? ___ ___ Are you often subject to constipation? ___ ___ Do you often have cramping abdominal pains? ___ ___ Have you been told that you have spastic or mucous colitis? ___ ___ Have you been told that you have gall bladder or bile duct disease? ___ ___ Do you suspect any food of causing problems for you? ___ ___ Have you ever gone eating "binges" or "food jags"? ___ ___ Are there any foods that you hate or dislike intensely? ___ ___ Are there foods that you crave/love and overeat because of this? ___ ___ Are there seasonal foods that you love (strawberries, peaches, etc)? ___ ___ Are you on any type of special diet presently? ___ ___ Are you uncomfortable or even ill if you don't eat on time? ___ ___ Do you have a sense of well-being after eating? ___ ___ Are you more alert and energetic after eating? ___ ___ Do you feel better if you skip a meal or fast? ___ ___ Does fasting relieve any symptoms or problems for you? ___ ___ Are you uncomfortable or even sick if you fast? ___ ___ Do you feel good after a three day or five day fast? ___ ___ Do alcoholic beverages make you ill? ___ ___ Do alcoholic beverages take away symptoms? ___ ___ Do you get hangover symptoms from a single drink? If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you may be allergic to food, or to some chemicals in processed foods. PART III - Focal Infection History Yes No ___ ___ Are you conscious of a foul odor in your nose? ___ ___ Does your nose drip into your throat a sweet tasting or yellowish material? ___ ___ Have you ever been treated for "sinus trouble"? ___ ___ Do you have bad teeth? ___ ___ Do you have bad breath at times? ___ ___ Do your gums bleed? ___ ___ Do you have bad tonsils? ___ ___ Do your ears drain? ___ ___ Have you been told you have gall bladder trouble? ___ ___ Do you have increased frequency of urination? ___ ___ Do urination cause a burning sensation? ___ ___ Is your urine ever cloudy instead of clear? ___ ___ Are you bothered with a genital discharge? ___ ___ As far as you know, do you an infection anywhere in your body? ___ ___ Do you have low back pain often? ___ ___ Do you sometimes have problems starting urination? Men only: ___ ___ Have you ever been told of a prostate gland infection? ___ ___ Do you have pain at times in your testicles? ___ ___ Do you have pains at times at the tip of your penis? Women only: ___ ___ Have you had a laceration or erosion of your womb, or that you need to be cauterized?
If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you may have a chronic infection along with an allergy. PART IV - Food Derived Alcoholic Beverages Yes No ___ ___ Do you drink an alcoholic beverage at least once a day? ___ ___ Do you find that you crave alcohol? ___ ___ Do you almost always drink the same type of alcoholic beverage? ___ ___ Does any drink make you ill or cause any kind of symptom? ___ ___ Did any alcoholic drink make you sick when you first tried it? ___ ___ Do complaints or symptoms appear a short time after you drink? ___ ___ Do any symptoms appear many hours later? ___ ___ Do symptoms appear the following morning? ___ ___ Does a drink seem to relieve any physical or mental symptoms? ___ ___ Does even a small amount of alcohol have an effect on yhou? ___ ___ Are you an alcoholic? If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you may be allergic to one or more of the foods in the alcoholic beverage. If small amounts of alcohol affect you, it is possible that you have a physical or mental problem caused by the foods or the yeast in all such drinks. PART V - Petro- And Other Chemicals Love Hate Made Feel Neutral sick good ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Outdoor coal smoke ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Smoke from coal-burning stoves, furnaces, etc ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ The smell of natural gas ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ The smell of escaping utility gas ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ The smell of burning utility gas ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Gasoline smell ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Garage fumes and smells ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Gasoline engine exhaust ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Smell of naptha or other cleaning fluids ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Smell of recently dry cleaned clothing or rugs ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Smell of naptha containing soap ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Odor of nail polish or remover ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Smell of brass or metal polish ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Smell of fresh newspaper ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Smell of kerosene ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Smell of kerosene lamp or stove burning ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Diesel engine exhaust ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Smell of oils or greases ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Exhaust from an oilburning auto or truck ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Fumes from burning greasy rags ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Smell of smudge pots ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Mineral oil as used in hand lotions/medications ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Mineral oil used as laxative ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Cold cream or face or foundation cream ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Petroleum jelly or ointments containing same ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Smell of floor, furniture, or bowling alley wax ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Smell of glass wax or similar glass cleaners ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Fumes from burning candles ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Smells from dry garbage incinerators ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Fumes from tarred roofs ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Asphalt pavements in hot weather ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Tar-containing soaps, shampoos, and ointments ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Smell of inks, carbon paper, stencils, ribbons ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Dyes in clothing and shoes ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Dyes in cosmetics (lipstick, mascara, rouge, etc) ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Smell of public or home disinfectants ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Smell of carbolic acid (phenol) or Lysol ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Phenol-containing lotions or ointments ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Injections with phenol (many allergic shots) ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Fumes from
burning creosote treated wood ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Air conditioning ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Ammonia fumes ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Smell of moth balls ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Smell of insect repellant candles ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Smell of termite extermination treatment ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Smell of DDT or other insecticide sprays ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Smell of the fruit/vegetable area of supermarket ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Smell of chlorinated water ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Smell of Chlorox or similar chlorite products ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Fumes from sulphur-processing plants ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Fumes of sulfur dioxide ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Smell of Christmas tree or other evergreens ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Smell of knotty pine interiors ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Smell of working with pine or cedar woods ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Smell of cedar-scented furniture polish ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Smell of pinescented deodorants, soaps, shampoos ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Smell of turpentine or paints with turpentine ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ Fumes from burning pine cones or wood If you checked any column except the "neutral" one, you are probably allergic/susceptible to chemicals of various types. PART VI - Your Children's Symptoms Yes No ___ ___ Is or was he/she unable to tolerate his/her formula? ___ ___ Does he/she break out in hives or rashes? ___ ___ Does or did he/she have eczema? ___ ___ Does or did he/she have croup or colic? ___ ___ Does he/she have a stuffy nose, hay fever, recurrent colds, earaches? ___ ___ Does he/she have facial skin pallor? ___ ___ Does he/she have dark or puffy circles under the eyes? ___ ___ Does he/she get stomach virus, flu, or the "bug" frequently? ___ ___ Does he/she wet the bed or self during the day? ___ ___ Does he/she appear depressed or withdrawn? ___ ___ Is he/she hyperactive or always restless? ___ ___ Does he/she have a short attention span? ___ ___ Do foods (corn, peas, etc) appear undigested in his/her stool? ___ ___ Does he/she often get diarreah? ___ ___ Does he/she often get constipated? ___ ___ Is he/she fatigued or tense? ___ ___ Is he/she learning disabled? ___ ___ Is he/she emotionally unstable? ___ ___ Does he/she crave certain foods? ___ ___ Does eating or not eating affect his behavior? ___ ___ Does he/she get carsick? ___ ___ Do smells or fumes make him/her sick? ___ ___ Does he/she love the smell of gasoline or paint? If you answered yes to questions above, your child probably is allergic or susceptible to allergies or food sensitivities. APPENDIX B - Common food allergens and substances they are found in. CORN - Corn is probably the most ubiquitous food of all. It has many forms from corn on the cob and popcorn to corn syrup, dextrose, and even dextrin. Here is a partial listing of substances that likely have corn products in them: Beer, ales, and whiskeys (Bourbon in particular), and some wines Aspirin and other tablets including Nutrisweet, and Sweet & Low packets Bacon, Hams, Bologna, hot dogs, sausage, etc Oils and fried foods containing corn oil, chips, tortillas, etd Butter and milk substitutes, margarine, soy bean milk substitute Bread (almost all bread today contains dextrose (corn sugar), or starch Bleached White flour, baking powder, table salt Soft drinks (only Diet Pepsi seems to be corn free) Candy, cake, cookies, Ice cream (except some Breyers), and sherbets Peanut butter except "natural" Glucose
products Fruits canned or frozen Salad dressing, distilled vinegar, Catsup & barbeque and other meat sauces Cheeses, Milk in paper cartons There's many more - read the labels on everything you buy. Destrose is corn sugar Dextrin is corn starch. Watch for "modified food starch" or just "starch". Don't lick stamps, or brush your teeth with regular paste. Use plain soda, or get a brand from a health food store that is corn-free. Women watch out for cosmetics. Most powders, etc contain cornstarch. WHEAT - is the next worst allergen. It is almost as bad as corn. Here's just a few of the items that it found in. Everything made from flour of course. Bread, cake, cookies, etc. Rye, buckwheat, corn, pumpernickel and gluten flours all contain wheat. Beer, ale, gin, whisky (anything made from grain or natural spirits). Malted milk, Ovaltine, Postum. Cereals of all kinds, including Corn Flakes, Rice Crispies & Cheerios. Cooked sausages - hot dogs, bologna, liverwurst, ham, hamburger, meatloaf. All pasta products Bouillon cubes and gravies Chocolate, mayonaise, puddings and thickening in ice cream (not Breyers). Again read labels carefully. Avoid "starch", "modified food starch", and similar ingredients. Note that even Rye flour from a health food store will contain some wheat. Rice flour may be free of wheat. Read label! APPENDIX C These questions are used by many physicians to find out about your general health and some information about your genetic tendencies toward certain diseases. Have you ever been diagnosed with cancer? Have any of your parents had cancer? Have any of your grandparents had cancer? Have you ever been diagnosed with heart problems? Have any of your parents had heart problems? Have any of your grandparents had heart problems? The above questions indicate a need for additional anti-oxidant supplements (C, E, etc) Are you an insulin dependent diabetic? Are you an age-related diabetic? Have any of your parents or grandparents been insulin dependent diabetics? Obviously this relates to sugar problems. If any yes, cut down on sugar and processed foods. Are you now, or were you as a child, seriously allergic? Have any of your parents or grandparents been diagnosed as seriously allergic? Are you a smoker now? Have you ever been diagnosed as having ulcers? Have you ever been diagnosed as having colitis? Have you ever been diagnosed as having hypoglycemia? Have you ever been diagnosed as having arthritis? Have you ever been diagnosed as having asthma? Have you ever been diagnosed as having hay fever? Have you ever been diagnosed as having bursitis or neuralgia? Have you ever been diagnosed as having low blood pressure (hypotension)? Have you ever been diagnosed as having migraine or other chronic headaches? Have you ever been diagnosed as having psoriasis? Do you often have gas? Are you constipated much of the time? Do you have diarreah often? Do you feel
rundown or tired often? Are you obese (over 20% over the weight table for your height)? These are all related to possible allergies or sensitivities. Have you ever been diagnosed as having anemia? Indicates a possible increase in iron or B12 supplements Have you ever been diagnosed as having thyroid problems? Have you ever been diagnosed as having high blood pressure (hypertension)? If a woman, try taking B12 in "special" absorbant form. Niacin is often more effective than drugs if you can take the "flush". Have you ever been diagnosed as having Herpes I, II, or Zoster (Cold sores on lips, genitals, etc)? To stop Herpes from breaking out, take minimum of 500 mg/day of L-Lysine (amino acid) A few persons need even ;more (1000mg/day) Do you have poor night vision? Indicates lack of vitamin A Do you bruise easily? Have you had more than one urinary infection? Are you susceptible to colds/flu? Indicates lack of vitamin C and/or bioflavinoids Do you often have muscle cramps? Indicates lack of calcium, or poor balance with other minerals, particularly magnesium Do you have bad breath or body odor much of the time? Do you have fingernail or toenail fungus (separation of nail)? Are you subject to ear fungus or ear infections often? Is your stool usually dark in color and smelly? The above all indicate imbalance between bacteria and fungus in the gut. Try the Acidopholous regime in book. Does your stool usually float? If it floats you're not getting enough fiber in your diet. Do you have prostate problems? Do you have severe Menstrual Symptoms (cramps, headaches, irregularity)? Do you have erection (impotence) problems? Do you often have white spots on your fingernails or toenails? Any of the above often can indicate a serious lack of zinc Do you have muscle aches after moderate exercise? Do you have ringing or other ear noises? Both above often indicates lack of manganese Do you suffer from PMS (PreMenstrual Syndrome)? Try 250 to 500 mg of B6 daily, but be sure to get at least 75-100 mg of all other B vitamins with it. Without the whole complex, B6 can cause other symptoms. (Not so much excess B6 as the lack of others.) Do you faint or near-faint occasionally? Do you have anxiety or panic attacks? Are you easily angered at times? Are you often depressed? Do you ever have crying spells? Are you ravenously hungry at times? Is concentration difficult at times? Are you often sleepy after meals? All of these relate to sugar handling problems commonly referred to as hypoglycemia. See the Chapters on this in the book.
Has your family had any diagnosed mental disease? Are you or they presently taking any medication for emotional problems. If so, check with the PDR for side-effects with vitamins and or minerals.