Health-Essentials.info Newsletter: August 2008

Greetings from Lincoln, Nebraska.  As summer is wrapping up, I hope that you are well and prospering in all that is good.

As I've been getting this newsletter written (not a short process), I've also been working with my brothers to arranage a special trip for our parents' 60th wedding anniversary.  Coming up with something appropriate for such a special occasion has not been easy, but it's great to see the plans finally coming together.  Congratulations, Mom & Dad.  We love you.

I'm getting this newsletter out a bit earlier than normal.  It's always been my hope to get more than one out each month; but this month, I wanted to make sure of it.  It seems that, the day I published my last newsletter, my websites experienced a denial of service attack.  That made all of my links not work.  This problem continued for most of that week.  I think the problem is mostly resolved now, so you can go back and take another look, if you'd like.

I've also started posting my newsletters to a blog.  The address is http://anson-health.blogspot.com.  Feel free to share the address with anyone.

 

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The ADHD/Iron Connection

In the July 2008 issue of Alternativess for the Health-Conscious Individual (Volume 12, No. 13, page 101), Dr. David Williams cites a report from Paris, France that, he says, will probably never see the light of day.  Here are the primary details:

Researchers at Hôpital Robert Debré have found that supplementing the diets of those who suffer from attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) with iron works just as well as Ritalin, or other stimulant drugs, to relieve symptoms.  The theory behind this discovery is that ADHD is a symptom of oxygen deprivation, caused by an anemic or pre-anemic state.  Here's how it works:

The researchers theorized that, with the rapid growth that takes place during childhood, extra oxygen is required to support the new growth and increased activity.  This oxygen is carried to the tissues in the iron-rich hemoglobin of the red blood cells.  If there is a deficiency in iron intake, children quickly become anemic, or enter into a pre-anemic state, experiencing constant fatigue, brain fog and erratic behavior.

While the conventional (pharmaceutical) answer is to place these children on some kind of stimulant, these researchers found that iron supplements are just as effective.  The iron was also well-tolerated.  [Editor's note: With iron supplements, there are no negative side-effects, as are often found with pharmaceuticals.  Iron supplements also cost a small fraction of what Ritalin, or other stimulants, cost].

In the study done at Hôpital Robert Debré, and reported in Pediatr Neurol 08;38:20-26, one group of children (ages 5-8 years) with ADHD were given 80 mg per day of iron for 12 weeks; another group was placed on placebo.  During the study period, those on iron supplements showed remarkable improvements in behavior, ability to focus attention and learning ability, and had a significant decrease in the ADHD Rating Scale.  Those taking the placebo showed no change.

In this study, the amount of iron supplemented was pretty high; but, it was administered for a rather short period of time.  With improvements in diet, to include iron-rich foods, it is possible that the supplementation could be discontinued after a few months.

This deficiency of iron has been routinely noted in other studies on ADHD.  However, iron supplements are rarely even mentioned in the treatment of ADHD.

Other possible contributing factors for ADHD

Dr. Williams notes that iron deficiency is not the only thing that can contribute to attention deficit problems.  He noted blood sugar-handling problems and adrenal fatigue (which can often be caused by blood sugar problems) and deficiencies of the omega-3 fatty acids DHA and EPA.

Research conducted by Dr Terry Friedman has also shown that therapeutic-grade essential oils can have a profoundly positive impact on ADHD.  His studies have shown that inhaling the oil of vetiver can return brain waves to normal patterns.  (See the Ancient Secrets of Life DVD.)

I've even known a young boy who was — to be kind — a nightmare when exposed to normal florescent lighting.  When the tubes were replaced with full-spectrum lighting, he was the sweetest kid you could imagine.

Diet: A critical factor in ADHD

But, getting back to the idea of iron and omega-3 fatty acids: It is a simple fact that, for most people, our diets just are not what they should be.  Some of that is just poor choices; but, some of it is that foods simply do not provide the nutritive value that they once did.  It takes 10 servings of vegetables to give you the nutritive value of one serving from 50 years ago.  The main reason for this is modern agricultural production.  The foods we eat today, even when we are eating the best we can are:

• grow in sterile, mineral-depleted soil,
• from seed that is hybrid for production, not food value,
• supported by synthetic chemicals, which are toxic in their own right, and which destroy the healthy bacteria needed for the proper utilization of the foods,
• harvested before they're fully mature, meaning that many of the key phyto-nutrients are never produced in the food, and
• transported over long distances, to be processed, packaged or sold as "fresh" long after harvest, resulting in significant loss of the precious little food value that was in the food to begin with.

When you add in how we prepare our food and eat our meals, it's a wonder that any of us are not sick.  It truly is critical for good health to use a good, all round dietary supplement on a daily basis.

Recommendations:

First off, in dealing with ADHD — or any health issue — it's important to lay a solid nutritional foundation.  Besides eating whole, organic foods to the degree that is possible (an exciting new option is Beyond Organic, where you can get beef — including healthy hot-dogs — cheese, kefir, spring water and probiotic-infused chocolates), I strongly recommend taking a good, broad-spectrum dietary supplement.  My first recommendation would the be dōTERRA's LifeLong Vitality Pack.  This is a truly amazing set of supplements that can make a profound difference in how you feel.  Another recommendation is either Nutrilite Double X or Garden of Life's Living Multi^® Optimal Formula, Living Multi^® Optimal Formula for Men or Women.  Nutrilite also has children's vitamins, and Garden of Life^® has a new line called Vitamin Code and which includes a formula for children. 

For added iron support, you could try Atrium's ferrous aspartate.  Each tablet provides you with 18 mg of iron, which should be great for maintenance, after the initial 12-week course at 80 mg per day.  Of course, multiple tablets, taken in divided doses, would give you the 80 mg.

Another option for iron supplementation is ferrum phos, a homeopathic cell salt remedy.  While this may not be suitable for the initial 12-week course (although some would probably find it sufficient), you may find it very effective in maintaining optimal levels of iron in the system.  I know that I can usually tell the difference with a single dose.  For a more well-rounded cell salt regimen (something that I would recommend), you could go with Energique's Multi-Cell Salt.  It provides you with a balanced combination of all 12 biochemic cell salts, and is excellent for supporting wellness.

For omega-3 support, I'd recommend dōTERRA's xEO Mega.  It is an excellent blend of sea- and land-based omega-3s, enhanced with essential oils.  I should note here that, because this supplement is processed according to the highest standards, it does not have a fishy smell or "talk back" (due to oxidation).

Another consideration in ADHD

Something else to be considered: Getting your children to bed at a decent time.  I remember that, growing up, I was always in bed by 8:30 p.m.  I hated that more than you would know; but, it was also very helpful.  I'm amazed that today, when I'm out for a walk late in the evening, there are a lot of very young children still up after 10:30 at night.  This is not healthy for them, and is a very good way to create imbalances that lead to sleepiness and lack of focus during the day.

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The Heart-Stopping Truth about Organ Donation

Without any doubt, if I was in need of critcal care for some injury or acute health problem, there is no place I'd rather be than in the United States.  The advances in medicine that mark our medical system, when it comes to trauma and acute medical events, are like none other.  And, while the US hasn't always been the pioneer in some of these procedures, our doctors have generally advanced them with truly amazing skill.  Among these extreme measures in health care are organ transplants.

But, there is an ugly side to organ donation that its proponents don't like to talk about: By some definitions, the leading cause of death among organ donors is the organ donation procedure itself.

When I first heard about this, I was reminded of an old episode of the TV show Law & Order.  In this episode, a transplant surgeon, seeking advancement in his career, took a heart-lung block from a donor under suspicious circumstances, and was charged with murder.  The standard for determining the death of the donor was brain death; but, as it was demonstrated at trial, the surgeon had used a morphine drip.  "Why?" was the damning question.

While on Law & Order, this was presented as an aberrant case, where the doctor was playing God, the truth of the matter is that this is more standard operating procedure than not.  The facts about this are generally hushed up, simply because (in the words of Stuart Youngner, director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics at Case Western Reserve University), "The OPOs [organ-procurement organizations] are afraid that, if we have these discussions publicly, it will slow down donations dramatically."

In this light, I'd like to share with you a link to this story, The Heart-Stopping Truth about Organ Donation, by Steve Salerno.  It was sent to me by a member of my newsletter list (thanks Lorne), and I though that I'd pass it along to you.  The following is a synopsis of this article.

With organ transplantation, there is an urgent need to retrieve organs from the donor before they go stale.  There are policies in place that define death, which must be established before organs can be harvested; however, there has long been an arbitrariness to these policies — often hidden deep in the fine print.  For example, one hospital wanted to implement a new definition of death; but some liver transplant doctors said, "That's too long.  If we wait [this long], we're not going to have a useful organ anymore.  Let's make [the standard this long]."  And that was that.  As a result, if you go without a pulse for two minutes in some hospitals, you're dead.  They take your organs.  In other places, at two minutes, they're still trying to revive you.

But, isn't "death" being dead?

Not any more.  By the old standards, death meant that the patient's heart had stopped beating; but hearts could be stubborn that way.  Sometimes they just keep beating.  In many cases, by the time the heart actually stops, most other major organs have already failed.

Enter Harvard.  In 1968, a committee produced a report entitled, A Definition of Irreversible Coma, which cited two reasons to define irreversible coma (brain death) as a new criterion for death:

1. "increased efforts to save those who are desperately injured", a reference to the high costs of life support, and
2. "controversy in obtaining organs for transplantation."

This report was codified in a document called the Uniform Determination of Death Act, and now is the sine qua non of death determination in all 50 states.  But, critics of this report see it as a far-reaching medical judgment made largely, if not purely, for non-medical reasons.  Stuart Youngner said, "The thrust of the Harvard decision was, 'Let's call them dead so we can't be accused of killing them when we take their organs.'"

In fact, it sometimes appears the transplant teams themselves want to hedge their bets.  In an investigation of the Cleveland Clinic, the so-called Church of Transplantology, there was the little matter of the morphine drip.  As in that pesky episode of Law & Order, the supposedly dead patients were still to be infused with morphine while awaiting transplant.  The questions is: Why would they give "dead" people morphine?  Dead people shouldn't be in pain, should they?  With nobody offering a convincing answer, the investigator supplied one himself, "In case they're going too fast here, the morphine will kill any pain."

But there's more: In a BBC report, Anesthesiologist Philip Keep said that "nurses get really upset.  You stick the knife in, and the pulse and blood pressure shoot up."  But, it's not just pulse and blood pressure.  In many instances, "dead" patients are simply unwilling to just lie there.  They may exhibit movements that look suspiciously life-like.  There may be slow movement of the arms or legs, consistent with squirming from pain.  Muscles may contract in coordinated movements, where either the shoulders raise up or the back arches.  And, in a few patients, when the ventilator is permanently disconnected, there is the "Lazarus sign": for a few seconds, the "dead" person sits up in bed, with arms outstretched.

In an effort to squelch such disturbing manifestations, many British hospitals administer anesthesia prior to harvest.  As Dr. Keep noted (without apparent irony), "If you don't give anything at all, the patient will start moving and wriggling around, and it's impossible to do the operation."

All of this highlights the fact that the popular belief, peddled by the transplantation community, that brain death is as much a bedrock medical concept as conventional cardiac death may not be as certain as is generally assumed.  By the commonly accepted terms, a brain-dead patient is dead.  Period.  But, in fact, "brain death" is an expedient "medical fiction" (to use Stuart Youngner's phrase), invented to enable physicians to declare patients dead, in a timely fashion and a controlled environment.  Dr. Robert Truog, director of the multidisciplinary intensive care unit at Boston's Children's Hospital and medical ethics professor at Harvard, says, "There's an overwhelming need for organs to transplant.  Yet, I groaned when I read an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, ... that claims there is no longer any controversy about brain death."

The underlying problem with organ transplants

Much of the problems with the policies governing the definition of death are aggravated by the severe lack of donated organs.  Waiting lists for these donations are very long, and the wait for a suitable organ is all-too-often longer than the would-be-recipient can wait.  About 16% die before an organ can be found for them.

But, there's an even deeper underlying problem here: According to Charlotte Burke, Director of Health Promotion and Wellness of the Lincoln-Lancaster County (Nebraska) Health Department, we're a nation of illness fixers rather than illness preventers.  There's been money to treat chronic diseases, so there's been little incentive to prevent them.  For most Americans, "health care" means hospitals and doctors.  They find it easier to take a pill to fix the problem.  Easier, but expensive.  Of the roughly $1.75 trillion spent on direct health care costs in 2006, an estimated $1.3 trillion was spent on chronic diseases.  (From the article Worth a pound of cure by Mark Andersen, Lincoln Journal Star, Monday, August 11, 2008.)

The fact is: As with most chronic diseases, the need for organ transplants would be all-but-eliminated if our thinking (and resulting actions) about health care switched from managing diseases to promoting optimal health.  Simply eating better, more natural foods, supplementing the diet with appropriate nutritional factors, following a regimen of detoxification and cleansing and other basic life-style issues would go a very long way to idling the current health care system.  Adding the use of therapeutic-grade essential oils could lift us all to new levels of health.

While I am very thankful for the medical system we have in the US, it's my conviction that doctors, hospitals — and especially organ transplants — are, in all but trauma situations, not health care victories, but testaments to our failures.  Although many people in this country bestow on doctors something of God-like status (and some doctors take for themselves God-like prerogatives [cf Philippians 2:6]), in my experience and from reports I have heard, they often present a serious and powerful impediment to the wellness of this nation.

It's time we take back health care, and make it about health again.

 

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Until next time,

Tom

Tom Anson | Health-Essentials.info
Health information you can use … from an alternative perspective

301 Glenhaven Dr | Lincoln, NE 68505
Phone: 402-489-5064 | www.health-essentials.info

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¹ Another good way to boost glutathione levels is with the use of citrus oils, like grapefruit, lemon, lime and wild orange, or the blend Citrus Bliss™.  These oils (about five drops) can be placed in a capsule and ingested; however, for smaller children, it would be better to apply the oils topically, like on the bottoms of the feet.