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Flu Shot Season - Think twice before you shoot!

I'd like to repeat the Flu/Alzheimer's connection that so many of you have asked about.

According to Hugh Fudenberg, MD, the world's leading immunogeneticist and 13th most quoted biologist of our times (nearly 850 papers in peer review journals), if an individual has had five consecutive flu shots his/her chances of getting Alzheimer's Disease is ten times higher than if they had one, two or no shots.

I asked Dr. Fudenberg why this was so and he said it was due to the mercury and aluminum that is in every flu shot (and some childhood shots). The gradual mercury and aluminum buildup in the brain causes cognitive dysfunction. Is that why Alzheimer's is expected to quadruple?  

Randall Neustaedter OMD author of The Vaccine Guide says this: The flu vaccine gets the most-useless-vaccine-of-all-time award. Now the CDC is recommending the vaccine for children under two years old and all adults over 50. Don't fall for it.

Flu Facts

Dear Dan,

I have a dear friend who called me a few weeks ago asking my opinion. Her MD had referred her to see a psychiatrist and to commit herself into a hospital. She looked the papers over that she was suppose to sign first and called me to see what I thought.

I told her that she needed to be tested for physical diseases. I explained that many doctors don't know what to look for that can be the source of the "mental illness" or making it worse. I sent her a copy of Safe Harbor's last newsletter which had recommendations for tests that should be run and a copy of the Field Manual (on how to do a basic mental health medical exam) which I got off of your website (http://www.alternativementalhealth.com/articles/fieldmanual.htm).

I gave it to her to pass on to the doctor if need be. I told her to look it over and to demand that tests be done! I highlighted the statement in the manual that the doctor has a legal and professional responsibility to locate any physical diseases.

She called me up crying today after she had gotten back from seeing the doctor - she was crying for joy. She told her doctor that she would go to the psychiatrist like he recommended and go to the hospital but not until he ran diagnostic tests on her to determine that what she was experiencing was not due to a medically untreated disease. She said that there was a particular test she wanted done. It was a specific test to detect a rare blood disease she thought she may have.

You see, she is on Medicare, and even though she had requested many years ago that this test be done, no doctor would do it. They had not heard of this disease and thought she was just imagining her severe pain. She has been put on antidepressants four different times throughout the years. She stopped however because they made her suicidal. She was not that way prior to the medications.

Anyway, her doctor called her in today and told her to sit down. He told her that she did have this rare deadly blood disease and told her over and over again how he now understood what she was saying. (About how she was in so much pain.) Apparently it is EXTREMELY painful! Apparently it is SO painful that in its last stages one goes psychotic. Not because it is part of the disease but because it is SO painful. To the doctor this was bad news that she has this disease, to her it was a blessing. It was because for years she has been told her pain was all in her head. That she was mentally ill (depressed) and lazy. Finally after 25 years it looks like the source of the problem has been found. There is finally understanding and maybe it is not too late. She thanked me profusely for being her friend and understanding her. Everyone else thought she was crazy.

Thank you for what you and your volunteers are doing. 

Veterinary medicine is adopting psychiatric drugs at an alarming rate. The field of behavioral medicine is being medicalized in a manner paralleling the human psychiatric profession. This is not a surprise as most veterinary behavioral graduate programs use psychiatric literature to educate their graduates. The result is an increasing dependency upon psychotherapeutic modalities and diagnostic matrices by veterinarians. What is currently a major problem for people in the mental health field is now spreading to the veterinary field as veterinarians look to human psychiatry as a solution for behavioral problems in animals.

Veterinary behaviorists are developing diagnostic criteria, which promote the use of psycho-active drugs as agents to solve behavior problems. Many of these behavioral problems are real, but the use of agents not properly researched or approved for these uses is troubling. Since we know that many psychotropic drugs cause brain injury after relatively short periods of use, veterinarians need to be better informed before adopting such treatments. The current trend of human medical practitioners that are adopting nondrug treatments for their patients is encouraging and proper documentation of successful methods will assist humans and pets alike.

As an integrative veterinarian of twenty years experience, I do not use psychotropic drugs as therapy. While it is true that some cases have elusive causes, it is generally worthwhile to pursue these causes and then administer effective treatment to resolve the condition. Veterinarians face similar challenges to the human mental health field and there is much that we can learn from one another. For instance, pets that suddenly display abnormal behaviors should have a complete medical evaluation including physical examination, blood pressure, urinalysis, complete blood count, serum chemistries and thyroid testing. Finding and treating the correct medical cause can solve many behavioral problems. In this regard, veterinary behaviorists are doing an excellent job.

Difficulty arises when no specific cause for the abnormal behavior can be located. There is a tendency to attach an agreed-upon label and then prescribe a drug to solve the problem. This happens for many reasons. There is a genuine desire to help these pets and their owners and drugs promise a quick fix. Veterinarians are trained to prescribe a pill for a problem and once a behavior has a medical name established then it becomes nearly habitual to prescribe whatever medication is currently trendy. One example of this is the condition known as "separation anxiety."

Dogs that become overly upset and demonstrate annoying behaviors such as destruction of property or excessive vocalization when left alone are labeled as suffering from separation anxiety. We state that dogs suffer from separation anxiety, when usually the biggest suffering is on the part of the owner. If we consider that dogs are social animals and that instinct dictates that being left alone is akin to being left as a meal for a wandering predator, then we see that this disorder is actually based upon very survival oriented behavior. What these dogs need is correct training so that they come to understand that they are safe. Studies show that training helps the majority of these pets and that use of a psychiatric drug causes diarrhea and only shortens the problem by a short time over training. We have no studies on the long-term use of these medications, but veterinarians are prescribing them in large amounts, and they are very profitable to sell. Are we damaging brain elements? Do individual dogs treated have increased risks for allergies or cancer? We simply don't know.

Modern psychiatric therapy has been progressively medicalized. Scientific method is sadly missing. Often conditions are named merely to describe a set of findings with no real pathology documented. Once a name exists, it becomes easier to attach a therapy to the name. If the name is based upon a correct assessment and accurate understanding of the condition, then that therapy can be found to be truly useful. Sadly, in biologic based mental health there are so few truly effective therapies that we can become desperate to find a treatment before we really understand the condition.

Prescribing psychiatric drugs for mental disorders becomes a stimulus-response activity and the result is devastating. Practitioners who routinely use nutritional means, allergy testing and other modalities see many patients suddenly recover from illnesses that have only descriptive diagnoses before. A delusional patient recovers when his thyroid is properly diagnosed and treated. His actual working diagnosis is hypothyroidism, and while delusional psychotic may be descriptively accurate, the psychopharmaceutical agent given is often times extremely destructive, and may cause even more pathology to occur. Integrative and holistic practitioners frequently see these problems and are very concerned with the efforts to medicalize behaviors and to present drugs as solutions for many of these disorders. Hopefully, in the future behavioral problems will be better handled through the work of such groups as Safe Harbor.

Through the spring and summer, we have noticed a lot of e-mails regarding attempts to "debunk" the recovery movement. People in positions of authority claiming that those of us who have these difficult symptoms can never get well and that we need to be kept in our place - even forced to do what others have determined is "the right thing" for us to do, without consideration for our own wants, needs and goals. We find this to be very disturbing.

First I want to applaud those people who have spoken out so strongly against this counter movement.

And then we remind ourselves, and we want to remind you, that once a movement reaches a certain number of people, there is no turning back. And that is true of the recovery movement. There is no turning back. The movement is too big. We have learned too much about ourselves. We know that many of the myths we were taught were not true. We know the difference between good and bad treatment. And we know lots and lots and lots of things we can do to help ourselves feel better when we are not feeling well. We have taken back control of our lives.

And we have done this with the assistance and support of many, many wonderful, supportive health care providers, family members and friends who have walked this hard journey with us. There is no turning back.

Although often referred to as "wheat allergy," Celiac Disease (also called Celiac Sprue) is not an "allergy" but rather an intolerance to the protein in gluten, a substance found in wheat and other grains. It actually harms (destroys) the villi (miniscule "fingers" that make up the intestinal lining) in the small intestine that take in nourishment. The mental disorders that Celiac brings to a child and adult is due to the malnutrition caused by the damage to the small intestine.

It is my wish to have Celiac Sprue disease a common subject and something parents and doctors can consider when they see their children lagging behind in school and social skills. Note that this list was compiled with the help of many people willing to share.

22 people replied.

20 people saw improvement from a gf (gluten-free) diet. (One had just started the diet and it was too soon to tell)

All spoke of delayed learning prior to a gf diet either in themselves or their children.

The physiological, cognitive, and emotional changes that took place are as follows:

Before going gluten-free, students had the following difficulties/complaints:

When my eldest son was 23, he was failing all his college classes and was plagued with visual & auditory hallucinations. I was scared to death he would end up on major tranquilizers and be in and out of institutions for the rest of his life.

About that time I was diagnosed with celiac disease (see above article) and thought perhaps that was his problem. I had been unable to get my son into a doctor's office for his problems, but somehow I managed to talk him into cutting out "white stuff" from his diet (flour & sugar). The transformation was almost overnight. He was suddenly able to concentrate on his school work and all his delusions and demons left. He eventually was diagnosed with celiac disease & began the gluten-free (gf) diet in earnest. He further refined his diet to omit dairy products which also caused him unpleasant symptoms.

He's now fulfilling his dream to attend a four-year university & pursue a degree in history.

My youngest son, age 17, has suffered with ADD symptoms for many years with the usual problems -- obnoxious behavior that annoyed teachers, family and peers, under achievement and resorting to illicit drugs for comfort.

After seeing the success of his elder on the gf diet, he voluntarily began the gluten-free, milk-free diet. After six weeks, he noted how calm he'd become and was enjoying being included in more social activities. He's strictly adhered to the diet for almost 18 months now and his ADD symptoms are well controlled. He's now a senior in high school, succeeding academically, popular with his peers and teachers and happy at home.