Diabetes

Diabetes is a devastating disease, it cripples, it kills and many think it's incurable. The truth is, it's curable if you really want to get better. I have read a lot about different treatments for diabetes over last few years, after all, my family has suffered enough from it. 2 family members are dead due to diabetes and the third one is almost blind.
Let's start by looking into causes, because causes give the best understanding on how to cure it. There are two main causes of diabetes, one if inability to produce enough insulin and another is inability to use insulin. First one is a characteristic of type 1 diabetes where the second is type 2. more often then not inability to produce insulin ends up effecting people with type 2 diabetes as well. Now let's look at these two causes even closer and see what causes the cause. Insulin production can be low due to weakened pancreas that was overworked because it needed to produce more and more insulin to make up for inability of the body to use all of it which is often seen in people with type 2 diabetes. It can also be due to distraction of cells in the pancreas by our own immune system which is the cause of type 1 diabetes. To simply say that autoimmune disease is the cause of type 1 diabetes is to say nothing, immune system got to this point somehow, so how? First immune system was most likely already compromised due to toxins, overuse of antibiotics, lack of healthy normal flora and so on. Plus whey protein. Here is the fact few know about, cow's milk has proteins that are hard for humans to digest, one of these proteins is whey protein. If we consume too much whey protein it ends up sitting in our system unable to be absorbed. Immune system figures it's a foreign body and builds antibodies that will attack and destroy this invader. Whey protein is similar in structure to insulin producing cells in the pancreas, so immune system gets confused and attacks pancreas, hence autoimmune disease.
Treatments for this problem are many, first of all, take care of pancreas, don't overwork it but instead eat foods that will help it. Flex seeds for example will actually help rebuild the pancreas cells. Second, fix immune system. Cut out animal products treated with antibiotics as this is one of the causes of immune system problems (actually in one article I read a few month ago it suggested low fat, low salt, low sugar, vegan diet and showed that results of this diet compared to regular diabetic diet is twice as effective in treatment of type 2 diabetes). Eat probiotics and prebiotics (foods that help normal flora already present grow). And cut down on whey protein including products made of cow's milk. As far as I know goat's milk is safe as it's closer to human milk then cow's milk is.
Inability of the body to use the insulin we should is usually caused to extra pounds to be more specific, fat cells. So, this one is easy and is part of treatment of type 2 diabetes in both traditional and alternative medicine. Loose the extra weight and you will be better.
Well, this is all for today, I will keep on adding more and more articles about different treatments of both types of diabetes as I go.

Schizophrenia

After thinking about how I start this blog, what disease I should write about, I decided to started from the very disease that started my interest in the subject of medicine, schizophrenia. A devastating disease that effects too many people to be ignored. It ruins not only lives of those who have it, but those close the the people effected by it.

For many years I wanted to become a psychiatrist so I could better understand it and perhaps be able to help those facing this dreadful disease. One day I realized that traditional medicine doesn't have an answer, so I quit it. This is how I started studying alternative medicine and this was perhaps my main goal in studying it, I wanted to find a cure for schizophrenia.

Now, in order to understand what schizophrenia is, let's look at what research has shown. Research has shown that it's not this and not that, but is some of this and a little of that. Basically scientists don't know what it is other then it physically effects the brain. From my experience in the medical field I can conclude only one thing from it all, schizophrenia is not a disease itself, it's a symptom of many disorders. It's basically like headache, just much more harmful. There are many reasons why people get headaches, same way as there are many reasons as to why people get schizophrenia. In many cases it's caused by a combination of factors. Today I will tell you about one of them, one very simple reason that causes problems not only in the brain, but in the whole body, vitamin deficiency.

It has long been known that lack of certain B vitamins can cause similar symptoms as are present in people with schizophrenia. These include: difficulty in concentration, hallucination, agitation, manic and paranoid behavior, poor memory, depression, lassitude, panic, confusion, and insomnia. In fact these symptoms so closely resemble schizophrenia that in 1966 Dr. Abram Hoffer suggested that deficiency of these vitamins is in fact the very cause of the disease. It was found that patients suffering from schizophrenia were excreting a high toxic pyrrole known as kryptopyrrole (KP) which reacts with vitamin B6 forming a complex that binds with zinc. This causes deficiency in both, vitamin B6 and in zinc. Supplementing B6 and zinc in these patients showed good results.

Hoffer was not the only one who noticed importance of nutrition in patients with schizophrenia. Dr. Carl Pfeiffer was another one. He recognized two subgroups depending on blood histamine level.

Low histamine group included symptoms like thought disorder, grandiosity, paranoia, over-arousal, hallucinations, hypomania, and mania. This group is associated with low zinc, and folate levels and high serum copper. Treatment for this group included supplementing folic acid, vitamin B12, niacin(B3), vitamin C, with zinc and manganese taken to reduce copper levels.

High histamine group is less frequent and is characterized by little fat, long fingers and toes, severe depression, compulsion and phobias. It was found that folic acid aggravated these symptoms causing more severe depression.

Treatment of schizophrenia using vitamins has started even before these studies were done. In 1939 nineteen schizophrenic patients were successfully treated with vitamin B3 (niacin). In 1949 a study showed 29 patients cured with niacin. A double blind study of niacin in 1962 sowed a 75% success rate in people with scizophrenia with no rehospitalization compared to 31% of the control group not receiving niacin therapy. And these are just few studies, there were more. There are other nutrients too that showed to be helpful.

I must say, when I first read the overwhelming amount of studies showing successful treatment of schizophrenia with something as simple as vitamins I was angry, angry because it's not commonly used in the medical field. Angry because this information is not a common knowledge as it should be. Angry because I didn't know about it before. I am happy to share it with you in hopes that it might help some of you. This information should be out there, it should be known. I found it by accident looking through yet another book on alternative medicine (which I have tons of). I couldn't find it in any other book and was very happy I finally found such important information. If you wish to read the book, it's BETTER HEALTH THROUGH NATURAL HEALING How to Get Well Without Drugs or Surgery by Dr Ross Trattler N.D., D.O. With assistance of Dr Adrian Jones N.D.