Tuesday, July 31, 2018

Has Drug-Driven Medicine Become A Form of Human Sacrifice?

"Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution the time will come when medicine will organize itself into an undercover dictatorship. To restrict the art of healing to doctors and deny equal privileges to others will constitute the Bastille of medical science. All such laws are un-American and despotic."
~ Attributed to Dr. Benjamin Rush,
Signer of the Declaration of Independence
Benjamin Rush accurately foretold a grave possibility facing Americans today, namely, that the art and science of healing be restricted to a select class of allopathic physicians, who have the sole legal right to recommend and administer medicines, and whose pharmacopeia excludes – as a matter of principle – all the healing foods, vitamins and herbs which have been used safely and effectively for countless millennia in the prevention and treatment of disease.
We have entered an era where medicine no longer bears any resemblance to the art and science of healing.  The doctor no longer facilitates the body's innate self-healing capabilities with time, care, good nutrition and special help from our plant allies.  To the contrary, medicine has transmogrified into a business enterprise founded on the inherently nihilistic principles of pure, unbridled capitalism, with an estimated 786,000 Americans dying annually from iatrogenic or medically-caused deaths.*
Turning Disease Into Gold With The Drug-Based Printing Press
Many modern diseases are, in fact, created by fiat (not unlike modern currencies): age-old symptoms of nutritional deficiency or chemical poisoning are repackaged and renamed in Latin and Greek as would-be monolithic disease entities, and subsequently rolled out to the consumer as new markets; each disease representing a veritable gold mine of "treatable" symptoms; each symptom providing justification for the prescription of a new set of patented, toxic drug-commodities.
The "medicines" themselves are often devoid of intrinsic value, being nothing more than rebranded and re-purposed chemicals, intended (though all too often failing) to be administered in sub-lethal concentrations. Indeed, many of these chemicals are too toxic to be legally released into the environment, and should never be administered intentionally to a human who is already sick.  You need look no farther than a typical drug package insert to find proof that the side effects of most drugs far outnumber their purported beneficial effects.
These chemicals, in fact, are so highly leveraged against their true value (or lack thereof), that they can sell for as much as 500,000% percent from cost! For example, this chemo drug costs 4,000 times more than gold by weight. Only medical/pharmaceutical and financial institutions (e.g. Federal Reserve) are legally empowered to generate the illusion that they arecreating something of value out of nothing of value, on this scale. This manipulation of perceived value, which is the basis for the global dominance of the drug-based medical model, is not unlike how financial institutions created toxic derivative products (e.g. Credit Default Swaps), essentially creating the illusion of financial wellbeing and prosperity, at the very moment that they were planting the seeds of death within the global economy; ruining the lives of countless millions in the process.
The Undercover Medical Dictatorship
Within our present dominant medical system, healing has not simply been forgotten butintentionally exorcized as it represents the antithesis of perpetual profitability which requires the incurability of the human body.  Were the truth be told, and the body's self-regenerative capabilities acknowledged, the entire superstructure of drug-based medicine and hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue it generates annually, would crumble overnight.  When a handful of turmeric has more chemotherapeutic activity than any drug yet to receive FDA approval, or an enzyme from pineapple is superior to a 40 year old blockbuster chemotoxic agent, one begins to understand why the hundreds of studies proving natural substances can destroy cancer are never discussed. You can't compete with free, effective and safe in a medical marketplace dominated by expensive, ineffective and unsafe drugs.
If this degeneration into quackery and snake-oil salesmanship which is modern drug-driven medicine were simply a lesson in what bad things can happen when health care is no longer a basic human right but strictly a profit-driven commodity, perhaps Americans could find it within themselves to once again free themselves from the shackles of oppression.  After all, do we not consider ourselves the very originators of freedom, independence and democracy?  Have we not such great faith in these principles that we practically trip all over ourselves (crushing entire countries as we fall) in our Promethean effort to export these values overseas whether we are invited to do so or not?  Would we stand for less, when it comes to our own health freedom?
Sadly, the "undercover dictatorship" Benjamin Rush foretold is not simply a homegrown one we can root out from the inside, as it were.   Although the American Medical Association (AMA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) behave as if they are at the top of this pyramid of power relations, they serve far lower on the hierarchy.  While the government of the United States and American corporate lobbying groups may appear to be behind the FDA's shameless pandering to the interests of the drug companies, transnational corporations and organizations -- and a hand full of elite governing them -- are in fact pulling the strings.  
The United States no longer enjoys global economic and cultural hegemony.  We are now embedded in an international playing field where multinational and transnational organizations like the drug company Pfizer, or the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), have power and influence that overshadows the US or any other particular government or nation-state.   These larger organizations blur the divisions traditionally drawn between public and private institutions, insofar as their agendas and mandates are consistent with global economic imperatives which do not account for the self-proclaimed sovereignty of any particular nation-state's constitution or laws above its own. 
For example, the United States may soon no longer be able to allow the over-the-counter sale of many dietary supplements, due to our membership in the World Trade Organization and its ratification of the Codex Alimentarius. We already have prescription-only-vitamins on the US market, and a very dangerous precedent has already been set with the criminalization of herbs like cannabis, and more recently ephedra.
Pharmageddon: The Death of Natural Medicine
What is so remarkable about the present state of affairs, is that it may have been predicted long ago, as evidenced by this passage in Revelations:
"At the end of times the merchants of the world will deceive the nations through their Pharmacia."
(sorcery) - Rev 18:23
Some believe we are now on the precipice of a medical end-of-times or "Pharmageddon," if you will, where medicine is no longer directly associated in any way with healing, rather, is a form of mass control and a highly organized means of defrauding the public of both its wealth and health, simultaneously.
After all, is there any greater absurdity than a medical model that treats the symptoms of disease with sub-lethal dosages of toxic chemicals and in which there is no attempt to uncover, understand or remove the causes of those imbalances?
After all, what disease has ever been found to be caused by a lack of a drug?
Is acid reflux caused by a lack of proton-pump inhibitors?
Is heart disease caused by a lack of statin drugs?
Is osteoporosis caused by a lack of Fosamax?
Is cancer caused by a lack of chemotherapy?
Is depression caused by a lack of Paxil?
Absolutely not!  Then why would anyone consider it sound practice to use potentially toxic chemicals as a first-line treatment for conditions that are not caused by a lack of a chemical?  To the contrary many diseases are caused exactly by culminative exposures to chemicals that not unlike drugs are biologically alien to the body.  i.e we are treating poisoning with poisons!
Can we dignify this approach by calling it medicine?  Or, is it more accurately described as a form of sorcery?  
form of sorcery
Pharmaceuticals and Human Sacrifice
The sole reliance on Pharmaceuticals reveals quite a lot about the largely subconscious agenda underpinning modern medical practice.  The Greek word Pharmakon has a wide range of meanings, with "drug" being the most widely recognized one.  But the root of this word usage goes back much farther:
"A Pharmakós (Greek: φαρμακός) in Ancient Greek religion was a kind of human scapegoat (a slave, a cripple or a criminal) who was chosen and expelled from the community at times of disaster (famine, invasion or plague) or at times of calendrical crisis, when purification was needed." [Source]
The sacrificial dimension of the Pharmakós carries on in the nostrums and potions later named after this ritualistic object:
"The term "pharmakos" later became the term "pharmakeus" which refers to "a drug, spell-giving potion, druggist, poisoner, by extension a magician or a sorcerer."A variation of this term is "pharmakon" (φάρμακον) a complex term meaning sacrament, remedy, poison, talisman, cosmetic, perfume or intoxicant." From this, the modern term "pharmacology" emerged," [Source]
Calling pharmaceutically-based medicine sacrifice-based, is not just metaphor. Animal sacrifice, in fact, undergirds the entire evidence-based model of drug development and testing, requiring millions of animals be tortured and destroyed every year. In juxtaposition to Ayurveda, traditional Chinese medicine and countless other traditional, nature-based medical systems, which used living, healthy bodies as the model for preventing and treating disease in the sick, Western medicine took another, quite radically different path in an obsession with pathology. 
The karma, if you will, of this divergent path often leads patients, especially later in life, to be cut open themselves on an operating table, or poisoned to death, with the very same chemicals and procedures that the animal testing once done in their name, justifies.
The reality is that medical practice, and the science that informs it, is as much mythos as logos, and one no longer has to look to religion for the absolutist claim to truth. Medical science has laid claim to the body in the same way that religions once laid claim to the soul. The physician today -- albeit a glorified "applied pharmacologist" -- has become the "priest of the body," capable of influencing the course of life or death by the quality, or combinations, of nostrums (s)he is able to apply to the problem (i.e. patient) at hand.
Just as monotheism depends on there being "one God," modern medical science depends on the "evidence-based" concept that there is one truth, and one right way to apply it. This, by implication, gives absolute power to those who would claim to know the difference.
Natural medicine
Liberation Through Natural Medicine
In Benjamin Rush's time the medical dictatorship of which he spoke had not yet come to pass, and though magical potions like mercury and questionable techniques like bloodletting were used in colonial times, herbs were still considered and employed as legitimate medicines. Even if many wise women herbalists were eliminated as competition by being branded witches and sometimes murdered, the herbs themselves were not categorically demonized because no vast armory of pharmaceutical drugs had yet been created to supplant them.
The herbs and foods themselves have now been both vilified as dangerous and lampooned as completely ineffectual, generating the ridiculous contradiction that we are supposed to be dumb enough to accept as truth: namely, that they are both impotent and unsafe.
Given these circumstances confidence in the safety and efficacy of natural substances in the prevention and treatment of disease has not only waned, but the positive association between food and healing has been outright denied by medical authorities.  It is illegal for non-doctors to make health claims for natural substances even if thousands of years of use in folk medicine and a vast emerging body of scientific research now confirms their benefits.   You can't say cherries cure gout even if its true. (truth is no longer the criteria that decides what you can or cannot say).
I started the website GreenMedInfo.com in August 2008 in order to provide free and convenient access to the massive amounts of research that have accumulated on the health benefits of natural substances over the past 50 years.  The government database known as Medline (which is freely searchable) contains over 28 million biomedical citations from over 5,000 scientific journals, many of which focus specifically on the therapeutic action of foods, vitamins and spices on serious, even life-threatening disease.
I believe that it is only through the free, uncensored and democratic dissemination of health information that we can secure our health freedom and through speaking truth to power, expose the fraud which is strictly profit-driven pharmaceutically-based medicine.
Feel free to explore the 41,000 + biomedical citations posted on GreenMedInfo.com that vindicate the safety and efficacy of natural substances in the prevention and treatment of disease. View the Research Dashaboard here.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of GreenMedInfo or its staff.

Thursday, July 26, 2018

FDA Drug Safety Communication: FDA warns about serious bleeding risk with over-the-counter antacid products containing aspirin

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is warning consumers about the risk of serious bleeding when using nonprescription, also known as over-the-counter or OTC, aspirin-containing antacid products to treat heartburn, sour stomach, acid indigestion, or upset stomach. Many other products for these conditions are available that do not contain aspirin.
These widely used products already contain warnings about this bleeding risk on their labels; however, we are continuing to receive reports of this serious safety issue. As a result, we will continue to evaluate this safety concern and plan to convene an advisory committee of external experts to provide input regarding whether additional FDA actions are needed.
OTC aspirin-antacid products are sold under various trade names, including Alka-Seltzer Original, Bromo Seltzer, Medique Medi Seltzer, Picot Plus Effervescent, Vida Mia Pain Relief, Winco Foods Effervescent Antacid and Pain Relief, and Zee-Seltzer Antacid and Pain Reliever. They are also available as generic products.
Consumers should always read the Drug Facts label carefully when purchasing or taking an OTC product to treat heartburn, acid indigestion, or sour or upset stomach. If the product contains aspirin, consider whether you should choose a product without aspirin to relieve your symptoms.
Aspirin is a commonly used pain reducer and fever reducer. It is a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) that can increase the risk of bleeding, including in the stomach and gastrointestinal (GI) tract. Ask your pharmacist if you need help reading the Drug Facts label.
If you have one or more of the following risk factors, you may have a higher chance of serious bleeding when taking aspirin-containing antacid products:
  • Are 60 years or older
  • Have a history of stomach ulcers or bleeding problems
  • Take a blood-thinning or steroid medicine
  • Take other medicines containing NSAIDs such as ibuprofen or naproxen
  • Drink three or more alcoholic drinks every day
Taking more of these medicines than the amount recommended or for a longer period than recommended will increase the risk of serious bleeding.
In 2009, a warning about the risk of serious bleeding was added to the labels of all OTC products that contain NSAIDs, including aspirin-containing antacid products. However, a search of the FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) database identified eight cases of serious bleeding events associated with these products after the warning was added. All of these patients were hospitalized. Patients had underlying conditions such as the risk factors above that put them at greater risk for developing serious bleeding events (see Data Summary). The FAERS database includes only reports submitted to FDA so there are likely additional cases about which we are unaware.
We are continuing to evaluate this safety issue and will notify the public of the advisory committee meeting by posting notices in the Federal Register and on the FDA Advisory Committees web page and when we have additional information to share.
We urge consumers and health care professionals to report side effects involving OTC aspirin-containing antacid products or other medicines to the FDA MedWatch program, using the information in the “Contact FDA” box at the bottom of the page.

Contact FDA

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and press 4
Report a Serious Problem to MedWatch
Complete and submit the report Online.
Download form or call 1-800-332-1088 to
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Tuesday, July 24, 2018

Are You Addicted to Facebook?

When describing the cultural impact of social media, to call it “phenomenal” would be an understatement. But is the overuse of social networking sites like Facebook on par with the use of physically addictive and/or mind-altering substances? 
In a trend that shows no signs of slowing, the number of people who use social media has experienced a meteoric rise from just under a billion worldwide users in 2010, to more than 3 billion estimated users by 2021.[1] With nearly 2.2 billion active users each month,[2] Facebook leads the pack as the social networking site (SNS) where we’re spending the bulk of our time online.
Not only are more people using social networking sites, we’re also spending increasing amounts of time each day liking, commenting, and sharing our lives online. Don’t assume that this is only a fad amongst young people: since 2012adults are spending 50% more time on Facebook each day. An adult in the U.S. uses Facebook for an average of 135 minutes per day, equating to nearly 16 hours—that’s two, full workdays—per week.[3] What accounts for the magnetism people young and old, feel for social media?
Social Engineering
Let’s break it down into parts. Social—our inherent human need to connect. Media—today, media is essentially, digital information. It comes in many forms: articles, photos, videos, infographics, to name just some of the media types we are routinely exposed to on social networking sites. So far, it doesn’t sound all that sinister, right?
This is the part that should prick everyone’s ears. The delivery of articles, ads, and even your Friend’s posts, is called “serving content.” This content is designed to stimulate our sense of connection, or opposition, with the world around us. Marketers know what keeps us up at night, and they know what we are (Google) searching for. The exact content that YOU are getting served is determined by complex, proprietary algorithms, and code that adapts to nearly every online action that you take. One thing is certain: you are being served content that are specifically curated to get your attention. Sure, it’s addictive. It’s designed to be that way.
We live in a time when many people feel socially insecure. “FOMO,” the “fear of missing out,” is a known motivator, especially among younger users of social media, that keeps them in a state of habitually checking social accounts for status updates, responses to posts, reactions to shares. For some, the ability to Like, Share, and Comment on Friend’s musings provides a sense of engagement that feels real, and is on our time, and our terms—a safer and more economical alternative to actually socializing. We take willing part in this process, applying glamorous filters through which we selectively share our lives.
"God Only Knows What It Is Doing To Our Children's Brains"
What if all the “feel good” we get in this virtual interaction comes at a price—that we are unwittingly addicted to social media? According to Sean Parker, the founding president of Facebook, that was the company’s intention all along. When referring to Facebook's earliest mission, Parker said: "How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?"
Parker, who came clean about his former company’s agenda at the Axios conference in November 2017, described the Facebook founders conscious exploitation of “a social-validation feedback loop” that plays on inherent vulnerabilities in human psychology. "The inventors, creators — it's me, it's Mark [Zuckerberg], it's Kevin Systrom on Instagram, it's all of these people — understood this consciously. And we did it anyway."[4] When the makers of the machine expose its underpinnings, look away at your own risk. It’s time for a wake-up call: every user of social media should know what happens when our brains get stuck in this loop, and what we can do to get unstuck.
A New Type of Psychiatric Condition?
In the early 2000s, members of the psychiatric profession were faced with a new breed of disturbance: young people, primarily middle-class boys, who had become dangerously addicted to internet gaming. Parents were increasingly concerned with the disturbed behavior and in some cases, declining health of their children.
The symptoms of Internet gaming addiction, or IGA, are certainly cause for concern: social withdrawal, decline in interest in outside activities, distorted perception of time, guilt and obsessive behavior, depression and anxiety, loss of weight, change in complexion or pallor, changes in sleep patterns, and increased bouts of illness.[5] While not considered an official psychiatric condition, a child displaying these symptoms, particularly in concert, cannot be considered healthy, nor to be developing normally.
Studies on internet gaming addiction reveal that “excessive use of the Internet [is] linked to a variety of negative psychosocial consequences.” IGA alters brain wave patterns in ways that mirror other addictive disorders, such as addictions to drugs and alcohol.[6]
The somewhat broader Internet Addiction (IA) is defined as “problematic or pathological use of the internet” and is another non-recognized but increasingly common social disease. Excessive time spent in online networks rather than with real-life social groups, has been linked to increased levels of loneliness, depression, academic, social, and occupational impairment, and suicide ideation.[7] This is the darker side of this sea-change in how we are connecting: more people feel disconnected than ever before.
Obviously, creating a new psychiatric disorder has its own dark side: justification would now exist for 'treatment' using psychiatric medications which are arguably some of the most dangerous substances the pharmaceutical industry has ever created. But the essential point -- that social media has the potential to create behavioral addictions and distortions on par with other DSM-V categorizable disorders -- is taken. This is actually not the first time we have reported on Facebook-related psychospiritual problems. You can read our 2012 article to get more insight into this issue: Do You Have Facebook Affective Disorder FAD?
Are You Addicted?
Researchers are aware of this overall uptick in negative effects, and generally agree that overuse of Facebook and other SNS constitutes a real problem.[8] To that end, they have begun to develop concrete ways to measure the presence, pervasiveness, and potential consequences of Facebook addiction. In 2012, a group of Norwegian researchers developed the Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale,[9] which asks six basic questions related to your Facebook use. Answers are scaled one to five, from “very rarely” to “very often,” with regards to your Facebook activity. If you answer “often” or “very often”, on four of six questions, you might have an addiction to Facebook.
(1) Very rarely, (2) Rarely, (3) Sometimes, (4) Often, and (5) Very often
  1. You spend a lot of time thinking about Facebook or planning how to use it.
  2. You feel an urge to use Facebook more and more.
  3. You use Facebook to forget about personal problems.
  4. You have tried to cut down on the use of Facebook without success.
  5. You become restless or troubled if you are prohibited from using Facebook.
  6. You use Facebook so much that it has had a negative impact on your job/studies.
Try a Digital Media Fast
If you scored highly (or higher than you’d like) on the scale of Facebook addiction, do not despair. The awareness that you are being programmed is often enough to snap a person out of the digital fog. Another sound method of reprogramming our attention is to take an extended media fast. Choose a period of time that makes sense for your lifestyle and connectivity requirements, but as a rule, it should make you feel at least a little uncomfortable. If it’s easy, then you don’t really need it, right?
Start by putting your cell phone on Airplane mode at a designated time each night. And don’t immediately turn on the TV—negative news stories have similarly bad effects on our stress hormones.[10] Make a serious commitment to turning off all news, video, social media, and if you can get away with it—email. Take time away from the glow of LED screens and EMF radiation. Listen to the natural sounds in your environment, or better yet, get away to a place where you can enjoy the sounds of nature. Not unlike our electronic devices, our spirits require a reboot at times. Clear out the junk that is stored in your short-term memory, and make more room for meaningful experiences, with real friends, connecting eye-to-eye, and smile-to-smile.
Also, consider using an app that, well, reminds you not too use your apps: 6 Apps to Stop Your Smartphone Addiction.

References
[10] Marin MF, Morin-Major JK, Schramek TE, Beaupré A, Perna A, et al. There Is No News Like Bad News: Women Are More Remembering and Stress Reactive after Reading Real Negative News than Men. PLoS ONE 2012;7(10)
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of GreenMedInfo or its staff.