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Bill Sardi
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November 23, 2011: by Bill Sardi
The US Food & Drug Administration is playing a deadly game with the American people, a game that protects over-priced, oftentimes ineffective or inappropriate, and sometimes toxic or lethal drugs, while muzzling any evidence that there are cheaper, safer and more effective and appropriate non-prescription remedies.
The FDA does not consider its mission to inform the American public of less problematic alternatives, even safer drugs within the same class, nor does it inform the public of natural remedies which have the same biological action as Rx drugs. In fact, any natural remedy that does in fact prevent, treat or cure a disease is declared a drug.
Posted in Dietary Supplements, Health Care System ; No Comments »
November 21, 2011: by Bill Sardi
Western processed food diets produce many imbalances that promote chronic disease and premature death. This is well documented in the medical literature. At the risk of oversimplification, a list of these imbalances can be summarized in a chart (below). It is worthwhile to evaluate these major imbalances as a whole rather than individually and to compare them against the Mediterranean diet.
Posted in Diet, Dietary Supplements ; No Comments »
November 3, 2011: by Bill Sardi
The current craze in natural medicine is gluten free. Shops have opened up in my community featuring nothing but gluten-free foods. Gluten is the current phobia. Medically the problem is called celiac disease and it involves the deterioration of the mucus barrier in the small bowel as a result of the innate immune system over-responding to an allergen.
The disease is triggered by consumption of dietary wheat-, rye- and barley-derived gluten and it often manifests with intestinal symptoms such as diarrhea and mal-absorption of nutrients. Part of the problem is the hybridization of grains as explained by William Davis MD in his book entitled Wheat Belly (Rodale Books 2011). His book was preceded by many other damning wheat and grains, such as Life Without Bread by Christian B. Allan and Wolfgang Lutz, Dangerous Grains by Drs. James Braly and Jonathan Wright, and numerous gluten-free cookbooks.
Posted in Dietary Supplements, Vitamins ; No Comments »
November 1, 2011: by Bill Sardi
Commentary: futurist Sonia Arrison and author of 100 PLUS, writes a cogent movie review about the new sci-fi thriller IN TIME and used it to bring a major question to the fore. Should humanity be afraid to live longer? Arrison brings up the reality of longevity — it is a rich man’s game, at least so far. In the movie IN TIME people are allotted a few years to live and then must work to earn more time on the earth or be exterminated. Maybe an anti-aging pill would be dispensed after a day’s labor to keep people alive.
However you don’t need an anti-aging pill to produced dramatic increases in life expectancy. What is needed for most of the world is public hygiene, clean water, available food (hopefully fortified with essential nutrients) and small number of medicines with antibiotics at the top.
Posted in Anti-Aging ; No Comments »
October 31, 2011: by Bill Sardi
I’ve been given a peek of a data report showing the annual sales of dietary supplements ranked by dollar sales. The rank of the top 500 selling supplements may surprise you. It is a list of raw ingredients rather than branded products and it doesn’t include all sales of supplements (Wal Mart, Whole Foods, other big box stores and online sales were not tabulated in this list). However many thoughts come to mind as I review it. I’ll share some of those thoughts with you as I read through the report.
So what do you think is the top-selling dietary supplement today? Vitamin C? Vitamin D? Well actually it isn’t on the list. It is Lovaza, a prescription fish oil concentrate prescribed by doctors to reduce high triglycerides, a blood fat. Annual sales are about $1.5 billion. Once this dietary product became a drug and covered by insurance ($25 co-payment), its sales soared beyond imagination. So consumers play a role in the gouging of pooled funds in insurance plans.
Posted in Dietary Supplements ; No Comments »
October 27, 2011: by Bill Sardi
The CNN article entitled “Steve Jobs: A Difficult Patient” provoked hundreds to comment online. Here is a sampling of some of the responses:
Mr. Jobs survived by nearly 9 years a slow-growing form of pancreatic cancer first discovered in 2003. He initially shunned surgery (a drastic operation called a Whipple procedure) which is a very trying operation for surgeon and patient. You can get a view of this complicated operation at the Mayo Clinic website here. The operation involves removal of the head of the pancreas where most tumors originate as well as removal of the gall bladder and the first part of the small intestine (duodenum) and reconnection of the digestive organs.
Posted in Cancer, Dietary Supplements, Modern Medicine, Resveratrol ; No Comments »
October 12, 2011: by Bill Sardi
In recent days the Journal of Nutrition reported that dietary supplements make a significant contribution to the daily need for vitamins and that meeting the Recommended Daily Allowance could not possibly be accomplished via foods alone. But, ERASE, ERASE! Never mind that. On a day when a report in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition claimed that doubling vitamin D blood levels would reduce the global vitamin D–sensitive disease mortality rate by an estimated 20 percent, the news media chose to run with a front-page headline that made it sound like multivitamins kill.
The multivitamin study does instruct, but its interpreters attempt to scare the public away from vitamin pills to soften them up for the next blow – the FDA is scheming to cut the daily vitamin and mineral requirements in half, a move that would ensure a certain level of disease to treat in the population.
Posted in Dietary Supplements, Vitamins ; No Comments »
October 10, 2011: by Bill Sardi
The e-mails, telephone calls and personal inquiries were continuous. Since 2004 when Steve Jobs was first diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, so many people, knowing the dire prognosis of this form of cancer (97% succumb within 2 years of diagnosis), and knowing I had written a 500-page book about cancer, asked if I would write to Mr. Jobs about promising alternative therapies.
Finally, after so many inquiries (a couple from Apple employees), I relented and wrote a letter and sent it to his office at Apple and suggested he consult with his doctors about well-referenced natural remedies, while still unproven, were the most promising.
Doctors kept Mr. Jobs alive for 7 years with chemotherapy and finally a liver transplant. But the immune-stunting drugs employed to avoid organ rejection did him in say news reports. Mr. Jobs had some quality of life to the end, saying his goodbyes and staying on as the visible leader of Apple till his end.
Posted in Cancer, Dietary Supplements, Modern Medicine ; No Comments »
October 8, 2011: by Bill Sardi
Males have heard time and again that the PSA test, which is a marker of inflammation in the prostate gland, is an inaccurate way to determine whether the prostate is cancer free and its use should be abandoned. A repeat of this same message has just been issued. But as an Associated Press report says men “may not listen” because the vast majority of men over age 50 already get tested. Doctors have continued to string along instead of dropping the test from their physical exam regimens – it’s good for business. Men are fearful, even that tough bearded former Marine. A survey some years ago showed if men are told they have prostate cancer and their options for treatment are given to them at that time, most men will opt for immediate surgical removal of the prostate gland. But if the decision is delayed for two weeks and men have opportunity to educate themselves about treatment options, far fewer will opt for treatment. So the PSA builds fear and fear results in impulsive decisions to undergo treatment, in many cases for men who don’t have prostate cancer at all. So how do you stop the train? Great Britain doesn’t even use the PSA test. This is immaterial. Doctors are playing upon patient fears to boost their business. What medical board will chastise them? None. It will be business as usual. — Bill Sardi, Knowledge of Health, Inc.
Posted in Health Care System ; No Comments »
September 30, 2011: by Bill Sardi
All roads to adult wellness and longevity lead to resveratrol, but the public isn’t buying it. An estimated 345 producers of dietary supplements have all raced to enter their version of resveratrol pills into the marketplace, but not much more than 100,000 American take these red wine pills. It is inexplicable why resveratrol continues to astound in the research laboratory but physicians are loathe to recommend it and consumers reticent to take this pill that may be the pill that ends all other pills.
The broad biological scope of the red wine molecule resveratrol is becoming legendary. Dr. Dipak Das at the University of Connecticut has documented the large number of genes that resveratrol controls. Resveratrol is beneficial for brain, heart, liver, blood circulation, immunity, cholesterol, blood clotting, etc, etc. It is difficult to address the breadth of resveratrol’s biological action without writing an encyclopedia.
Posted in Anti-Aging, Dietary Supplements, Health Care System ; No Comments »
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