Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
WRT the "evils" of cholesterol... guess what's made up of cholesterol and compromises a large percentage of necessary system functions in our bodies... HORMONES! Yup, increased hormone levels (say, stress-related cortisol) can actually artificially raise the test results. Now stress and elevated cortisol levels are definitely a factor in heart disease; but since the cholesterol tests cannot differentiate between hormones and "free" cholesterol, nor between hormones, you could be entirely healthy and completely not at risk of heart disease and still have an elevated cholesterol reading... because that is the level that YOUR body functions at. "Normal" is a really bad target to use when trying to moderate systems as complex as human bodies.
In 1830, there was enough alcohol consumed in the US for there to be 5-7 gallons for every man woman and child. The population of children was much higher in 1830 than it is today due to longer life spans. And, there were whole populations (religious sects mostly) of US residents that did not drink alcohol at all.
This leaves estimates for the average consumption by adults in the 14-18 gallons per year range. About 8 times what it is today. Is alcoholism a health problem today? Imagine for just a moment what it would be like if US population drank 8 times the alcohol we do now.
In 1830, alcohol was their "medicine chest in a bottle."
Oh I wish that was true. Doesn't everyone pray for a peaceful death, preferably in one's sleep?
But, the reality is that before scientific medicine, people died horrible lingering death. My great aunt told me about her childhood and the horrors of nursing her sick family members with diseases that didn't even have real names.
Do you know how long it takes to die of a staph infection of the foot? Imagine an ancestral farmer laying on his horse hide bed with maggots eating his dead and decaying foot all through the winter and waiting to die. Or a diabetic losing toes and eventually his feet from untreated diabetes. Oh, those good old days.
Somehow I find that hard to believe when many of the chronic diseases didn't even exist 100 years ago. If what you say was true and it was the norm to "die a horrible lingering death", than the LTC epidemic and nursing home shortage would NOT have not been a brand new thing and headline breaking news in the 1990s. LTC insurance would have been as old and as common as medical insurance NOT brand new in the 1990s like is was.
I'm more inclined to believe that people "died healthy in their sleep" in the past because they died younger, and therefore didn't suffer some from as many chronically disabling "wasting" ailments that are a result of normal aging. Now that we have treatments of all kinds that extend our lifespans it doesn't automatically mean that our bodies won't succumb to age-related failures. As biological machines, our systems are designed to fail after we pass our productive years... cosmic planned obsolescence.
However, I do agree that a lot of the processed food crap and various chemical/industrial toxins that are saturating our environments are reeking havoc on our health. Allergies, asthma, diabetes and a host of other ailments were virtually unheard of in eras past... even if we count any record that even vaguely resembles one of these diseases prior to it's official categorization and diagnosis (like "consumption").
Everyone knows you are what you eat right? Eating pure healthful organic foods; getting good sleep; breathing clean air and getting more exercise and leading lot simpler life..and doing it for your ENTIRE life... it wouldn't be too hard to imagine that you'd be a lot healthier than we are today, right? It would stand to reason you'd live just as long or longer than we do today and you'd die HEALTHY AS A HORSE!
Even today there are the Hunzas who live far more primitive lives than we did 100 to 300 years ago and they live to be 140 years old just eating the Paleo diet!
Somehow I find that hard to believe when many of the chronic diseases didn't even exist 100 years ago. If what you say was true and it was the norm to "die a horrible lingering death", than the LTC epidemic and nursing home shortage would NOT have not been a brand new thing and headline breaking news in the 1990s. LTC insurance would have been as old and as common as medical insurance NOT brand new in the 1990s like is was.
With all respect and kindness, I would really suggest that you learn a little history before being an expert on wellness. Diseases killed more people 100 eyars ago and at a younger age than they do today. Almost nothing had a name 100 years ago and almost nothing but external tumors were diagnosed. Sterile surgery was invented only 130 years ago. Before that they did not even understand infection. Antibiotics did not exist. As for long term care, people stayed at home, or went to "sanitariums." The alternative concepts you promote here are just wrong and harmful to those who lack the capacity to look this stuff up. People are healthier today, live longer, and are more"fit" that any time in the past. Your statements to the contrary notwithstanding.
I have heard that but it confuses the heck out of me b/c mom was on Lipitor for years and that was when she started showing symptoms. But, her cholesterol tends to run pretty high and the general consensus, even among natural healers is that high cholesterol is a risk factor for alzheimer's. I'm trying to get mine down naturally b/c I will not go on statin drugs. When I say down, I mean to around 200.
I'm thinking that statin drugs only lower your numbers though--they do not lower your risk for anything, including heart disease, and if you watch the commercials carefully, they'll tell you that in the fine print.
I'm not sure if adult diabetes would have been an issue, except with the wealthy but I know what you mean. I've thought about things like breast cancer or childbirth problems. Ugh. I'll keep modern medicine too, but it should have a lot less power in the marketplace than it does.
I traveled around the world for a year, about 5 years ago, and I'll never forget the culture shock of coming home and walking into the grocery store for the first time while they had that pink ribbon campaign going, to raise awareness for breast cancer. It's like everywhere you look around here someone is reminding you that you could get very sick. How sick is that?
For lowering your cholesterol to a reasonable level there are a few things that you can do:
1)Exercise like crazy. After going to college in New Orleans and not exercising like I might have, but eating all the rich foods and partying, I graduated and came home with high LDL cholesterol. Still being completely ignorant about natural medicine then, I just started working out and hour and a half 3-4 days per week. My diet was just as unhealthful. I ate a lot of dairy, and sugar and my LDL cholesterol dropped just from the exercise alone. I was still only in my 20's though.
2) Red yeast rice from a good company( this only works for 80% of the people that try it).
3) Krill oil from a good company
4) Lecithin
Also cut back or cut out the offending foods.
Cancer is the second largest contributor to the GNP. As long as they can get people to open their wallet to give to"the cause", they will keep doing it (and keep covering up/denying that there are hundreds of ways you can get rid of cancer permanently WITHOUT conventional medicine). Don't let yourself get sucked in. I never give to the American Cancer Society. It is a big scam as far as I'm concerned.
Oh I wish that was true. Doesn't everyone pray for a peaceful death, preferably in one's sleep?
But, the reality is that before scientific medicine, people died horrible lingering death. My great aunt told me about her childhood and the horrors of nursing her sick family members with diseases that didn't even have real names.
Do you know how long it takes to die of a staph infection of the foot? Imagine an ancestral farmer laying on his horse hide bed with maggots eating his dead and decaying foot all through the winter and waiting to die. Or a diabetic losing toes and eventually his feet from untreated diabetes. Oh, those good old days.
Sorry, Emilybh, but Wilson513 is right. DH and I took an EMS class several years ago called "Farmedic", to learn how to do things like remove impaled body parts from farm machinery, etc. People didn't die peacefully in their sleep, as a rule. Everything from being run over/crushed by plows or cattle or horses, through having their hands and arms torn off by machinery in both cities and farm country, to the slow spread of infection and tetanus from injuries that today we pour peroxide on, bandage, and forget about, occurred. Not to mention the numerous deaths from burns from fires, smoke and CO inhalation from heating with wood and coal or burning kerosene lamps for light, being coal miners in mine collapses, or even just being stuck out on the range or homeless/heatless in the cities during snow and cold weather. Life in the 1700s and 1800's was not always long and prosperous, unless you were a large landowner with servants or slaves, and didn't have to do the 'dirty work' of basic survival. Even then, if your stubborn riding or coach horse took a fright, he could break your neck; if the resultng paralysis didn't kill you, the pneumonia from lying still would.
As for the LTC insurance - my dear, most families took care of their own back then; there were few nursing homes, and sanitariums for diseases like epilepsy, "consumption" (tuberculosis) and cancer were considered hellholes where no one wanted to go to die. Insisting that the lack of insurance proves your points indicates only that you have not studied history as well as you might've.
Not to disparage sound homeopathic treatments and remedies, but a lard-and-mustard plaster did not cure pneumonia, laudanum (cocaine) was not a cure-all as it was touted, and castor oil might have moved your bowels but wouldn't cast off a tumor. While you are right that healthful living and utilizing homeopathic treatments are a good policy for the most part, please don't exaggerate claims without being cognizant of historical facts.
While you are right that healthful living and utilizing homeopathic treatments are a good policy for the most part, please don't exaggerate claims without being cognizant of historical facts.
With any treatment, remedy or preventative (homeo or pharma) it is important that you fully understand the botany, chemistry and biology behind it... and science is nothing if not the cumulative acquisition of knowledge through history. Many claims made by companies selling a product are blatantly suspicious to anyone with high school/college level Science 101 knowledge because there is nothing chemically or biologically reactive in the remedy to produce those results (or to produce them without potentially serious side effects).
Cancer is the second largest contributor to the GNP.
Do you have any authority for this unlikely statement? If so, please post.
Quote:
Originally Posted by emilybh
As long as they can get people to open their wallet to give to"the cause", they will keep doing it (and keep covering up/denying that there are hundreds of ways you can get rid of cancer permanently WITHOUT conventional medicine). Don't let yourself get sucked in.
Again, with all of my respect and kindness intended, this statement is, frankly, absurd. Your premise is that medical people perpetuate cancer, hide the "true" cures as a means of financially benefiting from the process. Can you see how irresponsible this statement is? There may be people reading your words who have diminished capacity or are so desperate that they adopt what you have posted here and act upon it by rejecting medical treatments, God help them. Please recant these statements for the good of innocent folks who may believe what you have posted.
Quote:
Originally Posted by emilybh
I never give to the American Cancer Society. It is a big scam as far as I'm concerned.
This is certainly your right.
Last edited by Wilson513; 09-30-2011 at 07:55 PM..
Reason: Be even nicer than I usually am.
Sorry, Emilybh, but Wilson513 is right. DH and I took an EMS class several years ago called "Farmedic", to learn how to do things like remove impaled body parts from farm machinery, etc. People didn't die peacefully in their sleep, as a rule. Everything from being run over/crushed by plows or cattle or horses, through having their hands and arms torn off by machinery in both cities and farm country, to the slow spread of infection and tetanus from injuries that today we pour peroxide on, bandage, and forget about, occurred. Not to mention the numerous deaths from burns from fires, smoke and CO inhalation from heating with wood and coal or burning kerosene lamps for light, being coal miners in mine collapses, or even just being stuck out on the range or homeless/heatless in the cities during snow and cold weather. Life in the 1700s and 1800's was not always long and prosperous, unless you were a large landowner with servants or slaves, and didn't have to do the 'dirty work' of basic survival. Even then, if your stubborn riding or coach horse took a fright, he could break your neck; if the resultng paralysis didn't kill you, the pneumonia from lying still would.
As for the LTC insurance - my dear, most families took care of their own back then; there were few nursing homes, and sanitariums for diseases like epilepsy, "consumption" (tuberculosis) and cancer were considered hellholes where no one wanted to go to die. Insisting that the lack of insurance proves your points indicates only that you have not studied history as well as you might've.
Not to disparage sound homeopathic treatments and remedies, but a lard-and-mustard plaster did not cure pneumonia, laudanum (cocaine) was not a cure-all as it was touted, and castor oil might have moved your bowels but wouldn't cast off a tumor. While you are right that healthful living and utilizing homeopathic treatments are a good policy for the most part, please don't exaggerate claims without being cognizant of historical facts.
And how about TB that claimed so many young lives in the 1800's? Or in England in the 1700's when society was completely shaken up with throwing people off the land to make room for the sheep and the only means they had of solving it was to ship them off to Australia? Until vaccinations were invented and widely distributed sometimes families would lose 4 or more children in one week and you only need to visit an old cemetery to see for yourself. These were children who most likely were breastfed and ate a whole natural diet and were given herbs to relieve the symptoms. In NYC, just before cars became popular, the piles of manure were allowed to just lay there and rot and so were the overworked horses after they died in the traces. At the same time, raw milk had become so unwholesome due to unsanitary conditions that they were forced to begin pasteurizing it to keep people from dying from drinking it.
Modern medicine has been a blessing but I think we're missusing our blessing. Antibiotics in particular have been overused and we may end up paying a very heavy price for this. I still see vaccinations as a necessary treatment to prevent disease but it seems that they give too many in one shot very often and I'm still not convinced that this isn't contributing to the autism "epidemic." I will not let my dd's get the Gardasil vax at all.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
