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Dr. Lake, co-author of Chinese Medical Psychiatry, spoke at Safe Harbor's Non-Pharma II conference in 2003. He announced at that conference that an effort had been made at the 2003 annual American Psychiatric Association meeting to form a committee on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) but the committee did not come to fruition.

While CAM has caught on like wildfire in much of traditional medicine, the field of psychiatry has been one of the last realms where CAM has had not a significant influence.

But at this year's meeting of the American Psychiatric Association (APA), thanks to the efforts of a number of psychiatrists, an official caucus has been created within the APA to promote the use of CAM in American psychiatry.

The APA guidelines defines a caucus as a group of self-selected special interest psychiatrists for whom there is no other vehicle or subspecialty organization already relating to the APA. The purpose of an APA special caucus is to promote communication and networking among psychiatrists/members of the association who share a special interest; and to provide a voice to association members who share a common interest so that they may bring to the association's attention important or emerging issues that will affect patient care and the practice of psychiatry within that special interest area.

Safe Harbor would like to URGE psychiatrists who are APA members to take part in this caucus to promote this critical area of care within psychiatry. This is a very special chance to infuse a breath of fresh ideas into American psychiatry that would eventually have far-reaching effects into millions of lives.

Dr. Lake and his participating colleagues are to be commended for their humanitarian efforts in persisting along this course and for planting a seed that will ultimately sprout a forest of hope and recovery for psychiatric patients across America.

I am Mrs J and, living life now, I just wanted to give you a personal update and to share some recent victories: Firstly, I made the first page of my local paper for being one of two convenors of a writers conference that turned over a profit to a nonprofit organization; secondly, a piece of my poetry won first place and the mayor of my city presented the award on behalf of the city; and thirdly, a piece of my writing just appeared in a teacher's magazine (circulation 58,000)!

Life is getting better and better. I work with children, helping them to write essays. It is truly wonderful to watch a child gain certainty and knowledge. It is very true that helping the individual, one can get a forward advance in the future and culture of civilization. But there are more successes to be had, so off I go to find them and enhance the world around me.

I began treatment with Dr. Traub in July of 2003. My medical history consisted of a chemical imbalance called Bipolar Disorder. With Dr. Traub's expertise in homeopathic medicine and her experience with this condition, I was given a remedy that changed my life. I felt better immediately. I never was one who slept well or regularly. Now I sleep soundly and I feel better than I've ever felt in my life. My moods are much better since I sought homeopathic treatment. I was cleared of my prior diagnosis and now do not take any medication at all. I am so grateful for Dr. Traub's thoroughness and attention to details of my medical profile. She is kind, supportive and her treatment has made me healthier than I've ever been. I have referred friends and family to Dr. Traub and they have had wonderful experiences as well.

-- NZ

I was diagnosed bipolar two years ago. I started to take lithium, antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs. The problem with those drugs are that I felt "flat," I mean, without emotions. I gained weight, too, and had acne problems. My husband was afraid of the side effects of lithium (including kidney damage) so he started to look for natural options. We found Dr. Traub and started to have a consultation with her in April 2003, and she helped to wean me off of drugs using only homeopathic medicine. After three or four months on homeopathic treatment I?m really fine, I?m off all medications and enjoying life again with my husband and my children. I?m really thankful to her.

-- from Mexico

"Mark was such a cheerful little baby until he was about six months old and I introduced solid food. We moved at this time, and I assumed his radical change in behavior was the result of the move. I never suspected it was triggered by the foods and baby vitamins he ingested.

"His record for sleep was 3 hours. A day with my son alternated between loudness, constant motion, and short periods of sleep -- generally one or two hours. By age one he slept through the night, but woke screaming. This was his only form of communication except for one word: 'see.' When we got a puppy, Mark learned to imitate it. Looking back, it's funny to recall that my son spoke two words, one of which was 'woof.' But at the time, my husband and I didn't laugh at that, or at much of anything else, for that matter. I was with this miserably unhappy baby for 24 hours each day. Who would want to baby-sit? There were times when I thought I was cracking up, and I even daydreamed of being institutionalized -- somewhere restful and quiet!

"The few other adults I encountered weren't much help. 'You're spoiling him.' 'He certainly knows how to get his way.' Why was I made to feel so guilty? I turned to my doctor for help and received a sarcastic, 'If he's this bad at two, we'll refer you to a psychiatrist.'

"When Mark was one and a half he got a terrible case of diarrhea. (I didn't realize at the time that it was caused by cow's milk.) This went on for three months, and all the medications my doctor tried were of no help. Another doctor in the group told me to put Mark on a very restricted diet, with only three foods. Gradually the diarrhea stopped, but most astonishing was the dramatic change in Mark's behavior. Gone was the child who behaved as though he was possessed, and my sweet little boy was back. ('See, he outgrew it,' explained a relative.)

"On the Feingold diet, my two-year-old's vocabulary of one word and a bark suddenly became a torrent of words and even some short sentences. Within a week he was naming all of the letters of the alphabet."

The chemical most commonly used to fluoridate America's drinking water is associated with an increase in children's blood lead levels, according to research presented to the 17th International Neurotoxicology Conference ("Children's Health and the Environment," Little Rock, Arkansas, October 17-20, 1999), as quoted at www.orgsites.com/ny/nyscof.

Pro-fluoridation literature uniformly cites a handful of studies done on sodium fluoride, an aluminum industry waste product used in fluoride toothpastes and dental treatments. Since 1997, the FDA has required fluoride toothpastes to carry the warning: "...if the child swallows more than a pea-sized amount, contact a Poison Control Center immediately."

Here's some enticing promotional copy from a Chinese manufacturer's website:

While far from proven safe, sodium fluoride is significantly less toxic than the cheaper silicofluorides used in most fluoridated communities.

Fluoride applied topically to teeth may provide some decay resistance, but no published research supports the assumption that ingesting fluoridated water has the same effect.

Researchers Roger D. Masters, Ph.D., of Dartmouth College, and chemical engineer Myron Coplan, found that the silicofluorides (SiF) do not separate completely, as sodium fluoride does. "As a result, water treatment with silicofluorides apparently functions to increase the cellular uptake of lead," according to their findings published in the International Journal of Environmental Studies (September 1999).

Masters and Coplan studied lead screening data from 280,000 Massachusetts children. They found that average blood lead levels are significantly higher in children living in communities whose water is treated with silicofluorides. (Lead and arsenic are significant components of the "chemical soup" recovered from the smokestack scrubbers of phosphate fertilizer plants and repackaged as a water treatment.)

"Data from the Third National Health and Nutrition Evaluation Survey (NHANES III) and a survey of over 120,000 children in New York towns (population 15,000 to 75,000) corroborate this effect," adds the New York State Coalition Opposed to Fluoridation (www.orgsites.com/ny/nyscof/_pgg5.php3).

Masters and Coplan reported that some minorities are especially at risk in high SiF exposure areas, with significantly higher blood lead levels than they do in unfluoridated communities.

Silicofluorides are used by over 90% of U.S. fluoridated towns and cities. Ironically, children with higher blood lead levels also have more tooth decay (Journal of the American Medical Association, June 23/30, 1999).

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), lead poisoning can cause learning disabilities, behavioral problems, and at high levels, seizures, coma and even death.

"Lead is a highly significant risk factor in predicting higher rates of crime, attention deficit disorder or hyperactivity and learning disabilities," said Dr. Masters.

The Aluminum Connection

Research findings covered in previous issues of Alternative Mental Health News point to a link between Alzheimer's Disease and aluminum in the brain. Unfortunately, fluoride has a strong affinity for aluminum and helps the metal atoms get past the "blood-brain barrier."

Isabel Jansen, R.N., wrote of a simple experiment regarding the use of aluminum pots, where you can easily prove for yourself that both the aluminum and the fluoride content in water both increase dramatically, when combined:

"In January 1987, experiments performed at the Medical Research Endocrinology Dept., Newcastle upon Tyne, England, and the Physics Dept of the Univ. of Ruhana, Sri Lanka, showed that fluoridated water at 1 ppm, when used in cooking in aluminum cookware, concentrated the aluminum up to 600 ppm, whereas water without fluoride did not. (Science News, 131:73)

"The researchers suggested that because of the known fact that aluminum is neuro-toxic and is in abnormally high concentrations in the brain of Alzheimer's and other neurological disease victims, including AIDS, that these findings raise questions about adding fluoride to the water supply of communities to reduce tooth decay.

"Because of these findings, a test was made of Antigo, Wisconsin water which had been fluoridated for 33 years. The water was examined by a certified Wisconsin laboratory, and showed that when it was used in cooking in aluminum cookware, it concentrated the aluminum by 833 times and increased the fluoride content by 100%.

"The maximum allowed aluminum content of water is set by the World Health Organization at 200 micrograms per liter. This makes Antigo water, when cooked in aluminum, 75 times over the maximum. No test was made of distilled water, as the Antigo Water Dept. does not dispense distilled water. Antigo water pipes are also encrusted with (calcified) fluoride from 26 to 3,100 ppm. This latter was analyzed and diagnosed by the Wisconsin Dept of Hygiene as being aluminum fluoride. Regardless of which findings are true, to chance exchanging a hole in a tooth---which can be repaired at a nominal fee---for dementia (organic brain disorder) in later years, for which there is no remedy at any price, hardly seems to be a good bargain.

"Therefore, it would seem imperative that other communities test their water in the same manner to see if it produces the same results, as tests may vary depending on the mineral variations of the water and the type of aluminum cookware. This simple test can be done by anyone, with the help of a laboratory to do the analysis." ISABEL JANSEN, R.N. (Journal of the National Academy of Research Biochemists - Jan/Feb '90)

These quotes about aluminum are thanks to users.rcn.com/mgfree/Medical/Fluorine/FluorineApathy.html.

If Your Water Is Fluoridated

If you are drinking bottled water, be sure to check out the guidelines at www.bottledwater.org. Ironically, many companies add fluoride to bottled water, as listed at www.bottledwater.org/public/fluorida.htm.

In fluoridated areas, 80% of the fluoride assimilation is through the skin in bathing, so drinking bottled water alone is not enough. Few home water filtration systems are equipped to trap the chemical, so read the fine print if you are about to install a system.

Sailors used to take one-minute showers. Travelers have learned to do so in areas where water is scarce. Cutting back does not have to be this extreme to be effective, however. Consult the references at www.aquasafe.us and the other websites listed in this article for information about who is most at risk (kidney patients, diabetics, small children) and what exposure levels you should be concerned about in your area.

Dr. Alan Gaby, medical editor of the Townsend Letter for Doctors and Holistic Medicine reports, "Time-lapse cinematography studies have shown that first-grade children sitting under fluorescent lights become hyperactive, compared to those exposed to standard lighting.

"The radiation emanating from television sets (not to mention the questionable programming) may also have an adverse effect on behavior. In one study, rats were placed in a cage fifteen feet away from a television set. Although the sound was turned off and all visible light from the screen was shielded by a piece of black cardboard, the rats became hyperactive and aggressive. However, if a lead shield was placed over the black cardboard, the rats behaved normally."

Radiation exposure decreases as the square of distance. This means, for example, that children sitting a foot from the television are bombarded with 25 times more radiation than they would be at five feet away, and 225 times more than the unfortunate rats in the study.

Now, a study has been published linking early television exposure and subsequent attentional problems in children. (Pediatrics Vol. 113 No. 4 April 2004, pp. 708-713)

"Cross-sectional research has suggested that television viewing may be associated with decreased attention spans in children. However, longitudinal data [data covering an extended period of time, often several years] of early television exposure and subsequent attentional problems have been lacking," says the abstract of the study.

When study author Dr. Dimitri Christakis of the University of Washington, Seattle, analyzed longitudinal data for 1278 children at age 1 and 1345 children at age 3, he found:

"...for each additional daily hour of television that young children watched on average, the risk of subsequently having attentional problems [by age 7] was increased by almost 10."

This means that 1- to 3-year-olds who watched eight hours of television a day "would have an 80 percent higher risk or attentional problems compared to a child who watched zero hours," he explained.

"Our hypothesis is that it's the rapidity of image-change that's potentially damaging to children's brains," Christakis said. "They are experiencing events unfolding in a surreal fashion -- this is not how life unfolds."

Christakis, a pediatrician at Seattle's Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center, tells all of the parents he works with that "they should not let their child watch television during the first two years of life, and subsequently they should exert extreme caution both with respect to the amount and content." Current guidelines issued by the American Academy of Pediatrics agree.

Reported on in Psychology Today (www.psychologytoday.com/htdocs/prod/PTOArticle/pto-20040406-000015.asp), the study by Andrea Faber Taylor and Frances Kuo adds to the lab's earlier finding that neighborhood ties are stronger, and reports of domestic violence less frequent, in public housing developments when grass and trees are part of the environment.

The new findings were consistent regardless of the child's age, gender, family income, geographic region or severity of diagnosis. Parents rated their child's behavior after extracurricular and weekend activities. The researchers eliminated the effects of physical exercise as a factor.

If doctors eventually prescribe "green time" for the treatment of ADHD, it has the advantage of being widely accessible, free of side effects, nonstigmatizing and inexpensive, Kuo says.