you are correct to question the relationship between these plaques and the dementia known as alzheimers.
To paraphrase a quote:
'Modern medicine had tried to cure the symptoms of disease. The Cayce readings focused on building a healthy body that could throw off disease and disorder.' (emphasis added. pretty sure the quote is from With This Gift.)
The problem with curing a symptom is that the cause of the problem always manifests itself in a new form.
For example, the primary factor in polio outbreaks was the large amount of sugar consumed in industrial countries:
... The fact that polio has not been prevented by advanced sanitation and hygiene indicates that its incidence is controlled and influenced by factors quite different from the factors that bring about the spread of typhoid and the other diseases. As previously stated, advanced sanitation and hygiene are to be found in the richer countries, and one of the unfortunate evils that accompany wealth is the consumption of sugar in the form of luxury foods such as ice cream, candies, soft drinks, cakes, pies, pastries, and the like. Poor countries cannot afford luxury foods, sanitation and hygiene. That is how I would explain the greater incidence of polio in countries with advanced sanitation and hygiene. The following table shows the extreme differences in sugar consumption in various parts of the world and it will be readily noted that the countries with the lowest sugar consumption are most backward in sanitation and hygiene.
Thus we see that sugar consumption is by far the greatest in the richer countries where one would also expect to find advanced sanitation and hygiene. Epidemics have occurred with the greatest frequency and severity in the high sugar consuming countries. In fact, epidemics have never been reported in the natives of the low sugar consuming countries, such as China.
Sure, polio was conquered by a vaccine. But now we have epidemics of cancer, heart disease, alzheimers, and many other degenerative diseases.
I suspect that my greatgrandparents were much healthier than my grandparents. They lived their lives, and had a relatively quick decline (1-2 years?) before they died. My grandparents have been living in a long, slow (multi-decade) downward spiral into infirmity. Improvements in lifespan today can primarily be attributed to modern sewage systems, and improved survival rates for children less than 5.
The medical monopoly just takes credit where no credit is due.
Liked your comment, but I think you're missing something.
In Secrets of Power, Vol. 1, Ingo Swann talks about how social institutions have been set up to "depower" the masses. (Mr. Swann is something of a word nazi and notes that "depower" is not yet in the dictionary, but that it should be. It refers to how an individual loses his Power. The book is heavy heavy reading, so I don't recommend it - I've only been able to skim through it.)
This is especially obvious in the perennially broken government schools. John Taylor Gatto tells us that the government schools were specifically set up to depower the population (to use Mr. Swann's word), and make them (us) suitable for factory work. Pre-government school, the american ideal was an independant livelihood. Post-government school, most people hope for a good job with a good company with good benefits.
One of the side-effects of depowerment, is that people don't realize their creative potential. If the government schools taught people to use their power of creativity, more would figure out, like you, that the rat race isn't worth running.
Also see my other comment in this story, about hidden inflation and making your own food.
An ugly fact of the government's mismanagement of the U.S. "dollar" is that it now takes two incomes to provide for the standard of living that one income provided pre-federal reserve. Inflation has been especially bad since the 1970's, and government policy encouraging all the well-paying manufacturing jobs to move to Mexico, Canada and Asia has only made things worse for the working joe & jane.
What's more, taken at all levels, tax rates are especially traumatic. The income tax in and of itself isn't too bad, but when you add Social Security's 14%, Medicare's... 2% (?), state income tax, sales tax, property tax, etc - many of us are paying well in excess of 50%. Seen from this perspective, the husband works to put food on the table, and the wife works to support the government.
With that said, I agree that there are many non-essentials that people waste their money one. Some of the best nutrition advice I've ever read:
When Adelle Davis, the famous nutrition writer, appeared on the Johnny Carson show, she was asked to give a "rule of thumb" for healthy eating. She said, "If it is advertised in the media, don't buy it." An excellent rule indeeed. Unfortunately the TV station blipped her out. Viewers never heard the comment.
When money goes into advertising, cuts must be made elsewhere so the cheapest ingredients are used -- hydrogenated vegetable oils, high fructose corn syrup, white flour and additives that mimic the taste of properly prepared whole food. SWF
Food ingredients are cheap, but buying prepared food is expensive because there's a whole chain of suppliers who are taking their cut.
I made pizza for a date last night. I pre-made the dough in the morning by mixing 3.5 cups of freshly ground flour, 1/2 cup coconut oil (would've used a stick of butter, but I was out), 2 cups raw milk, and a scoop of probiotics in the food processor with a dough blade. Let the dough ferment for 12 hours or so (to make the wheat more digestable - something about digestion inhibitors in grains & beans; see the cookbook offered above). In the evening I spread my dough on a pizza pan, baked at 300 degrees for 30 minutes. Added a can of tomato sauce, cheese, chopped garlic, red bell pepper & carrot, and some kind of mildly spicy bell pepper I had around. Was going to make sausage to go on it, but I didn't have any ground meat handy. Bumped the temperature in the oven up to 350 and cooked for another half hour.
The most expensive ingredient in my pizza was the cheese. I guess I paid $9 for the pound. If I had planned ahead, I could've ordered a 6 pound 'wheel' of cheese from the business formerly known as Tucson Cooperative warehouse (delivered to my local buying club) for 3.45/pound. Can of organic tomato sauce from Trader Joe's is ~$1.10. I think the cost of the wheat and vegetables were insignificant. Meat would've added another $2 or $3 (1/2 pound of grass-fed ground beef w/ spices from one of the sausage recipies in the cookbook above)
She liked it, and I didn't pay someone else to cook for us. And while it was cooking, we had some nice private time to continue my touching (girls like to be rubbed). Couldn't do that at a restaurant.
Grandpa had Papa John's pizza on Saturday. When I saw him on sunday, "Wasn't nearly as good as your's".
I've recently picked up a pair of older laserjets - a LaserJet 4L and a 5mp. $5 apiece. The 4L needs a new cartridge, the 5mp needs a little grease. I talked to a guy at a computer shop who used a 4L of his own for printing invoices: "the thing's built like a mack truck, take care of it and it'll go forever."
The 4L is dated October 1993, "Made in U.S.A. from foreign and domestic components." Don't see that anymore.
I think it was at the end of the 9/11 documentary In Plane Site that I saw some clips of local news coverage of the Oklahoma City bombing. Apparently, while rescuers were cleaning up, there were multiple reports of undetonated explosives in the basement of the building. Strangely, most such reports didn't make it onto the national news circuit.
Of course, I find the whole idea that a truck bomb could do such extensive damage to a steel-reinforced concrete building all by itself patently absurd.
Apparently a brigadier general thought the same. From his report to congress:
Conclusion
The Murrah Federal Building was not destroyed by one sole truck bomb. The major factor in its destruction appears to have been detonation of explosives carefully placed at four critical junctures on supporting columns within the building.
The only possible reinforced concrete structural failure solely attributable to the truck bomb was the stripping out of the ceilings of the first and second floors in the "pit" area behind columns B4 and By. Even this may have been caused by a demolition charge at column B3.
It is truly unfortunate that a separate and independent bomb damage assessment was not made during the cleanup__before the building was demolished on May 23 and hundreds of truck loads of debris were hauled away, smashed down, and covered with dirt behind a security fence.
When the picture at Tab 4 was made, all evidence of demolition charges had been removed from the building site (i.e., the stubs of columns B3, A3, A5, A7 and the demolished junctures at the header with columns A3, A5 and A7.
All ambiguity with respect to the use of supplementing demolition charges and the type of truck used could be quickly resolved in the FBI were required to release the surveillance camera coverage of this terribly tragic event.
Terrorists tend to be incompetent; it takes the work of intelligent overseers to make them effective. It seems that usually those organizers usually belong to rogue factions of various intelligence services.
See John Perkin's Confessions of an Economic Hit Man for more on the Feral Government's response to the 70's oil crisis. Before "we" got involved, the Saudis let goats eat their garbage, because they were all so good that none of them would stoop to the level of garbage collector. Now they import asians to pick up the trash. And so on...
The commentary on the petro-dollar were largely inspired by a recent Freedom Report from Texas congressman Ron Paul (not online at that site; I got a hardcopy in my now-deceased Grandmother's mail earlier this year - March or so?). I don't have my copy handy, and the scan is on another computer. But this looks like it might be what I read: The End of Dollar Hegemony - Part I, Part II
Let's just hope we don't get stuck some other war which will sap the budgets out of our technological development...
You obviously haven't been paying attention.:)
"United States Federal Government on the fast-track to bankruptcy, News at 11"
The only reason "we've" lasted so long with the twin deficits (trade and federal budget) as large as they are is because of the "petro dollar".
Sometime in the 70's, a U.S. president struck a deal with an Arab royal family that was, essentially, "we'll use our military to keep you in power, if you accept our 'dollar' and only our 'dollar' in exchange for your oil."
Even though manufacturing started fleeing the U.S. in the 80's (in response to inflationary pressures at home) and the trade deficit started ballooning, the dollar has held it's ground relative to other countries' currencies. Why? Because the trade partners who were now building "our" stuff for "us" needed the dollar to buy oil for themselves. So, instead of having a "trade" - a U.S.-produced widget for a Tawaineese-produced widget - foreign manufacturers were happy to take a "dollar", because they could go buy a barrel of oil with it.
The petro-dollar has been breaking down for at least 6 years. Saddam said he wanted Euros for Iraqi oil circa-2000. Iran and Venezuela are now moving in the same direction. Who's to blame them? What good is a dollar, if you've already got all the oil you need?
America's 20th Century industry was so obsessed with drugs...
Seeking health is by necessity an individualized process. Medicine is a "practice" and not a "science" because everyone responds differently, sometimes radically, sometimes ever so slightly, to the same treatment protocol.
The obsession with drugs came about by certain interests hijacking the medical education process (AMA, Flexner report, etc), standardizing on allopathic modalities (suppressing or treating the symptoms with drugs - tylenol for a fevor, shot to boost red blood cell count, etc), and lobbying to to suppress all alternatives. This allows for moneyed interests on Wall Street to profiteer on an otherwise private transaction, by artificially making their high-priced product an integral part of the medical process.
Some professions have succeeded in counter-lobbying for their right to practice too, with Osteopathic being the only full-privledged of the alternatives (though most D.O.s have been subsumed into medical orthodoxy with only a handful today implementing Dr. Still's revelation in their practice). Chiropractic and naturopathy are two of the others. I'm not a big fan of chiropractic, but it has its uses. Not familiar with naturopathy, Osteopathic Manipulation is the greatest. (see my comment history:).
Drugs and surgery have their places, but usually some other therapy is called for.
(I took my grandmother out to Mayo Clinic weekly for six months for a $1k injection of some drug to boost her red blood cell count. She had bone cancer, and was also undergoing various chemotherapies - her doctor was "practicing" on her. After 6 months and $50k+ spent on her behalf by Medicare/supplemental, she started hospice care, and finished in a week. Doctor: "oops, lost another one. Maybe these drugs will work on the next patient..." Total waste of money, time and effort.)
when I first read this story today, I thought it evidence of a pole shift. That's the theory that the north pole shifts around every so often. The last time it shifted, the new artic flash-froze a bunch of wooly mammoths that used to be in a much warmer area.
The Chandler_Wobble is the name given to the unstable rotation on the axis.
The American Free Press' Jim Tucker has been chasing the bilderburgers for years. In his Bilderberg Diary (can't find a direct link, but put 'bilderberg' in the search box on this page) he says attendees are a virtual who's who of the (self-selected) "international elite". U.S. attendees affiliated with the government are also breaking the law, by discussing policy in secret.
American Criminals: Public Policy in Private
In the United States, the Logan Act states explicitly that it is against the law for federal officials to attend secret meetings with private citizens to develop public policies.
Although Bilderberg 2005 was missing one of its luminaries--US State Department official John Bolton, who was testifying before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations--the US Government was well represented in Rottach-Egern by: Allan E. Hubbard, Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and director of the National Economic Council; William Luti, Deputy Under-Secretary of Defense; James Wolfensohn, outgoing president of the World Bank; and Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of State, an ideologue of the Iraq war and incoming president of the World Bank. By attending the Bilderberg 2005 meeting, these people broke United States federal law.
Shrub's not a bilderberger, but Clinton was, and so was Pa Bush. Reagan wasn't, but his Vice President was. Carter was, iirc... Seems like a conspiracy to me.
ah, but the thing is, the discomfort's there from the moment I sit down. It started 7.5 years ago, in my first semester at college. I learned to ignore it, and while it does get worse if I don't take a break, the difference between taking a break and not is nearly imperceptible. Your suggestions might have done something for me then, but based on what I've learned since I started with the Osteopathic treatment program, what I've been through these last few years was inevitable.
But I'm getting better now. The difference between tonight & 4.5 years ago (when I was still in College) is amazing. Before I was miserable after 30 minutes, now it takes 6 hours to really screw me up. Which is why I pimp Osteopathic care every chance I get.
It seems like your fiance would benefit from a consult with a capable Cranial Osteopath, or "biodynamic" cranio-sacral therapist. At least pick up a copy of Andrew Weil's Spontaneous Healing and read chapter 2.:)
While your suggestions are just fine, they're worthless to someone who has a real structural problem. I wrote the following in an email to my Cranial Osteopath when requesting an appointment sooner than 3 weeks out.
During one of our early sessions (about a year ago, for me it seems like quite a long time), you said something about about the work being something like "peeling an onion" [in that the "trauma"/"lesions" comes off in layers]. I like the analogy, but I've settled on something slightly different for my own personal case.
My body's condition is something like a bonfire. Big logs of firewood were set at birth. Bumps & falls added to the pile, and another load of combustibles were added when I sustained the head injury almost 8 years ago. Even carrying around this big load, I was relatively stable. Then I went off to college, and the laptop & all-nighters on projects were the sparks that set the stack on fire.
Osteopathic treatment is like removing the wood from the fire. Fire Fighter [Doctor Osteopathic] comes along, "let's see what we can get at today," and pulls out the biggest pieces of firewood that are accessible. The fire goes into hibernation for a bit, until I go and stir it up again with the computer/whatever.
At first I didn't notice much of anything [from the osteopathic treatments]. But no one had ever recognized the fire before, so I stuck with it, and after a while, "neat - the fire is starting to go down..."
My little status reports are biased towards optimism - "Fire's down by 5% this week!" But the 2 or 3 weeks between appointments still drag, with the fire fully flared up after a week or so.
I've gone & poured liquid oxygen on my little 10% pile of firewood [the time before last he said the level of trauma in my body was 10% of what it was a year ago, when I started treatment with him] over the last couple of days, and it's all flared up again, with something new this time - a distinct pressure on the left side of C1 [1st cervical vertebrae], I think. And... "T1" [1st thoracic vertebrae] has been clunking real good...
After my last appointment, I tried to avoid the internet, but I went and checked my email and before I knew it I'd spent 6 or 8 hours on the computer. Arms all inflamed, etc etc.
The writer who asked the question has a bonfire going in his arms/shoulders/wherever. Most the usual suggestions for "RSI" won't do anything to deal with the "stack of wood" (trauma/structural misalignments/etc) that creates the conditions for the bonfire to thrive.
Also see my comments in this thread (be sure to follow the link to my comments in an earlier story), and perhaps others I've made in the last year (buy a subscription).
they will always give their money to the one who gives them the cheapest up-front deal.
I bought a book last fall... the title escapes me, but it was on helping independant businesses survive & thrive when competing with megastores. His point was that the only thing Mal*Wart has going for it is price. Their staff don't really care about their jobs, so when a customer goes in, they have to know exactly what they want because the staff is just there to restock the shelves. Which is why they have a liberal return policy - so that you can take an item back when you realize that it's the wrong thing.
People by crap because they don't have a salesman to let them know what the advantages are to going with a superior product. Wal*Mart is incapable of competing with a good specialist.
See also Snapper pulls their line of high-end lawnmowers from Wal-Mart for another example. When someone goes to "Wal*Mart" for a lawnmower, all they see is a line of mowers from $90 to $190. They probably don't know much about mowers, so yes, they'd be inclined to go for the cheapest one. But if you went to a Snapper retailer, the salesman would inquire as to your needs - postage stamp or footballl field? how often do you cut it? etc, etc. They'll tell you that you can go for their cheapest model, but to expect to be fixing it every 3-4 seasons. That they have a Snapper that they've been using for 20 years, and these are all the features that make Snapper worth the premium.
As with every other product in the Wal-Mart generation, the primary consideration is the initial purchase price: very little else seems to matter with the majority of the the purchasing public.
It's not that people don't care about quality, but due to the Mal*Wart effect (wages adjusted for inflation have been declining since the 70's), people can't afford the quality they used to. Wal*Mart pays their employees such that they can only afford to shop at Mal*Wart.
The unstated goal of "Free Trade" has been to increase the country's wealth disparity - the rich get much much richer, while most the rest of us get just a little bit poorer. Who benefits from Intel shifting their motherboard assembly plant from Palo Alto to China, or Maytag moving an assembly plant to Mexico? Certainly not the Americans who used to put the motherboards or washing machines together. Intel benefits, but only because they can stay competitive with their competitor who went to China first. I'm not trying to be an anti-corporate bigot or anything, as I see it the leaders of Intel and Maytag and most the others are just taking the rational steps necessary for their survival in a poisonous economic landscape.
It's not Xenophobia. If they want to lift themselves up by their own bootstraps that's fine. But at the present we have AMERICAN/Western companies going in and setting up operations in China specifically because it's "low cost". Which is bullshit. Like I said in the comment linked below, the free market naturally levels the playing field. No one job in an economy is more important than any other job. But we seem to have forgotten, or lost sight of the fact, that "all men/women are created equal" (not that they are equal, but have the same basic potential).
The problem is INFLATION, and how regular Americans have been getting squeezed since at least the 70's, perhaps much longer.
While it's true that some osteopaths use manipulative technique that is functionally similar to chiropractors (the last doctor that I visited before my present Osteopath was a D.O. who did crack my neck), a handful are way more advanced.
I agree that most forms of Chiropractic manipulation are invasive (with the exception of Network Spinal Analysis, and possibly Craniopathy). Sometimes a little crack is all a person needs, but most people don't benefit. It's said that Palmer (founder of Chiropractic) spent a year and Still's school of Osteopathy before he struck out on his own, claiming to have independantly discovered his technique. If that's the case, Osteopaths are incapable of being "Chiropractors", while you could possibly label Chiropractors as incompletely educated Osteopaths.
"Cranial Osteopath" is a bare minimum... A handful of cranial osteopaths are on the cutting edge (e.g., Biodynamic Cranial Osteopathy), while most seem to be stuck at Sutherland's initial findings first presented in the 1930's.
I'm sorry your bad experience has so colored your beliefs regarding the profession. My Experience with a competent osteopath has been an extremely positive interaction. Modern osteopathic manipulation is totally non-invasive. Usually the doctor just lightly holds a couple spots on my body until he feels a release. Sometimes I feel something let go, othertimes I don't notice it until much later in the day/week.
If gentle Osteopathic treatment is required to get the effect, so be it. Much better than the alternative of staying stuck in the downward spiral I was in.
God is "spirit" or "soul". "Man" is a "spirit" first (in the creator's own likeness), who happens to temporarily take possession of a physical body to allow for a material experience. Said physical body is analogous to a radio receiver, channeling the entity who rightfully (or unrightfully, as the case may be with malevolent possession) has claim to it.
materialism vs. vitalism, etc etc.
The amnesia of everything that came before is part of the deal for getting a body. No "cloak" no body, though some/many children remember their previous incarnations, and many people learn to pierce through the veil later in life.
I had a couple posts a while back about this... Someday I'll subscribe to see what I've written.:)
Nah. What we REALLY need is to deregulate public rights of way. Local governments decide who will and who won't be allowed to run wire from telephone pole to pole or in pipes underground. They're the biggest barriers to competition because they essentially make it illegal by preventing alternatives.
While I agree with you in theory, I also think that cities with one company's phone or power lines are more aesthetically pleasing than a city with 4 (wired) phone providers and 4 power providers on every pole. (which was the case in NYC before regulation, though I'm disinclined to find a link to that picture at the moment...)
The problem is that it's not enough for a corporation to make a living selling their product or service. No, they have to maximize profit for their shareholders. Hence the obsession with infinite growth (also known as "cancer").
Roseville, California used to have an independantly run telephone company - "The Roseville Telephone Company". Apparently it was bought out by SureWest, and I don't know how big SureWest is...
I think the ideal solution is an interconnected patchwork of local, independant companies focused around providing a service for their local customers. None of this "maximize return for our distant shareholders" crap.
LASIK was just the vehicle which delivered the blow (monovision) to her immune system.
If she had a monovision contact (like a former boss, who loves his reading contact but who's health is rapidly going downhill) the result would be essentially the same, except you can take a contact out.
Government schools had done you good. John Gatto must be right when he says their program is specifically designed to prevent people from learning how to extract meaning from text.
Osteopath?!?!? Let's all be clear on this, you're advocating CHIROPRACTIC...
An OSTEOPATH is NOT a Chiropractor. Why do you equate the two professions? I went to 5 or 7 different chiropractors, and they're all in the dark ages as compared to my OSTEOPATH.
My OSTEOPATH has NEVER, EVER cracked any of my bones. Most the time I can't tell that he's done anything at all. Then I notice that something's slightly better later in the day, or later in the week. Incremental improvement. It's been slow, but totally worthwhile.
Hey, no hard feelings. I made the same mistake myself. I decided I needed an osteopath who did manipulation, but believed that manipulation had died out and today's D.O.s were functionally equivalent to M.D.s. So I went to a chiropractor, then another and another. But there was a little nagging voice that said "you need an OSTEOPATH, dipshit!" And later that week I told an M.D. at a booksigning how I'd decided I needed to see an Osteopath. He asked why, I told him ("hands don't work, ala Carpal Tunnel or RSI or thoracic outlet syndrome"), he asked if I'd tried something else (I had), then said that Osteopathic treatment might be right for me, and whenever HE needed an osteopath he went to this guy 100 miles away.
P.S. please read my two/. posts linked to in the grandparent.
Sorry to hear about your eyes. My mom had LASIK surgery 10 years ago, and got the Monovision setup. While she's happy with the results, I'm certain the Monovision is responsible for her weight gain, immune disfunction, and overall lack of energy. (She had a case of the shingles recently, and she's only 53. Shingles is usually developed by much older people.) Did you have the monovision setup? If so, I'd definitely suggest getting a lense for the closeup eye...
I asked my doctor (see the paragraphs about how my prescription has been changing) what he could do with a person who'd already had LASIK surgery. He said that, while he'd ideally get to them before the surgery, he could still release some of the "trauma" incurred by the surgery itself...
Muscles are what pull the eye out of shape. Lasik resurfaces the front of the eyeball, but doesn't do anything about the muscles locked in spasm (if anyone wants to refute this, please explain why my 22 year old brother's prescription has been getting stronger of late, and why my prescription has changed so much over the past year). The "See Clearly Method" (and other "natural" vision improvement programs) use relaxation & exercises to release the tension from these muscles. Osteopathic manipulation is the missing master-key from all vision improvement programs.
My doctor says there's only about a hundred who do the osteopathic vision prescription thing, so I'm at a loss to help you find a doctor like mine.. Jealous' site has a couple of doctor's names ("teaching staff"), so I'd start there. The only other osteopath I know of who does vision prescriptions is Stephen Davidson (though there is no mention of the vision thing on his site).
Corptocracy: When Corporations & Government become integrated. I first read the term in John Perkins' Confessions of an Economic Hitman, though I'm sure it's been used elsewhere too.
Not supposed to be able to happen, but how better to explain how the same group of people keep getting recycled through government service? Yes, I'm a "conspiracy theorist".:)
I do not believe that many physicians would forgoe recomending inexpensive treatment...
That's because the philosophical model they were trained in is inaccurate. M.D.s are trained that a patient needs something done externally to fix the problem - surgery, drugs, etc. Still's philosophy was that 'a body will fix itself if the impediments are removed'.
Anecidotal evidence (such as you presented) means almost nothing to a scientist. Especially if this evidence comes from someone selling something (in this case, your D.O..) "Shock" is something I've never heard of. The word activates my mental "con artist" sensors.
This is just an informal post on Slashdot, which will recede into the dustbins shortly. "Shock" is what the osteopath feels in a body with his hands, but because you've never heard the term before it must be a form of con artistry? Sounds like a logical fallacy to me.
Here's a Bibliography if you're interested in persuing it. But I don't care about research. Research is useful, of course, but all that matters to me is, does it work? I'm satisfied with knowing that there's a solid theoretical basis for the treatment modality.
Eyeglass prescriptions change periodically without treatment.
I first got glasses 15 years ago. My prescription was stable until 7.5 years ago, when it got stronger by 1/4 diopter in each eye after I took a nasty bump to the head (that's how my body incurred a good deal of "trauma" or "shock"). It stayed at -2.25L, -2.75R for the next 7.5 years. I mentioned that I wore contacts to the doctor at the second or third visit, and he said, "oh really? Let's see how they are." He got behind me, put his hands on my temples, "close your eyes. Open your eyes." Instantly, "oh, these are totally wrong for you! We'll have to fix this too..." My prescription has been changing every other month, the right eye steadily racheting downward, the left eye oscillating between -2.00 and -1.75. You can say that's just a "periodic change", but I know better.:)
When D.O.s first came around, their philosophy was based on pseudo-science and quackery. Look it up.
I've read a few independant histories of Andrew Taylor Still (written by researchers, not Osteopaths), and they all say that he had a remarkable healing presence. Osteopathy is a paradigm shift. Still's philosophy states that the body wants to be healthy, and will fix itself if the impediments to health are removed. This was at a time when most doctors were drugging with mercury and doing primitive surgeries. Still's philosophy was a light in a dark age.
Today, most of them are just as useful as regular physicians.
And a handful are a thousand times more useful than a "regular" physcician. I went to several different M.D.s, and they were all frickin worthless - "you need to exercise more" *3, and one recommended a chiropractor. I did plenty of exercise, and it didn't do anything for me.
You keep using that word, "quackery", yet I don't think you know what it means. It's a concept used to subvert effective healing practices that don't rely on patented pharmaceuticals & expensive tests & procedures. Look it up.
Medicine is an art because no two bodies are the same. Every individual has a unique experience, necessitating different treatments. Identical symptoms in different bodies can be from different causes. Pharmaceutical-based medicine is silly because it treats patients as one-offs from a human assembly line, and also because it treats the symptoms and not the cause.
Say what you will about homeopathy, my experience is that it works well. There's even good research supporting its efficacy - see 13 things that do not make sense (linked to from/. some time back), #4 Belfast homeopathy results:
MADELEINE Ennis, a pharmacologist at Queen's University, Belfast, was the scourge of homeopathy. She railed against its claims that a chemical remedy could be diluted to the point where a sample was unlikely to contain a single molecule of anything but water, and yet still have a healing effect. Until, that is, she set out to prove once and for all that homeopathy was bunkum.
...
My post was not about bypass surgery; I only mentioned it as an example of an expensive procedure that gets overused.
EVERYONE who's considering bypass surgery should get a full course of IV EDTA Chelation therapy. EDTA Chelation has been refered to as "like a roto-rooter for the arteries", although that's not really an appropriate analogy for how it works. See the link for more information.
But EDTA's patent has expired, so there's no money in marketing it. I've never done it myself, but I think it goes for $120 or $150/session. 10 sessions makes $1200 or $1500. The doctor who starts the IV is the only one who profits, unlike bypass surgery where a whole team gets in on the insurance money gravy train.
Yes, bypass surgeries do work, sometimes. But usually there are superior choices that happen to be a fraction of the cost, and if the patient had to pay the bill themselves they'd go for the less invasive options every time. It's only because Insurance and Government have subsidised the high-cost bypass for so long that it's considered "mainstream".
You bring up a good point here. Thousands upon thousands of research trials have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that placebos are powerful medicine. But you can't patent a placebo and sell it for $100/pill, so the placebo gets shelved in favor of more profitable treatment options.
While pharmaceuticals have their uses, the primary effect of the overdosing of America is to make the pharmaceutical companies wealthy at the expense of the people's health.
I myself did many, many things that could be qualified as a placebo, but I never got the desired effect. I suppose you'd say that my eyeglass prescription decreasing from -2.75 to -1.25 in the one eye is a placebo artifact too (see the link on vision at the osteopath's website I linked to in the grandparent. The other eye's prescription decreased by -.25 at the first prescription, and has been bumping between -1.75 and -2.00 over the last 9 months). Osteopathic manipulative medicine is an artform based on scientific principles. Just about everyone could benefit from a checkup, but all most doctors know to do is to cover up the symptoms with a drug, and so "scientific consensus" dismisses a powerful treatment modality.
While my treatment program has spanned the course of a year (at the last appointment I was told that the level of "shock" in my body was 10% of when I started), the doctor told me during one visit that some months prior he'd had three or four new patients in a row that only needed a single visit, and *poof*, all better. These were people who'd spent 10 years making the rounds of allopathic "medicine", and were still screwed up. I don't remember specifics, other than a guy who was hunched over & had heart problems, even though all the standard tests said his heart was fine. The Osteopathic doctor released the strain that held the man in a hunched-over position, and his heart immediately started working better.
These doctors (and biodynamic cranio-sacral therapists too) get real results. My experience is that the osteopathic philosophy is useful, and while I know you mean well trying to protect everyone who reads this from "quacks", maybe you should consider the possibility that there's something useful here.:)
If someone else is paying for my healthcare, why should I care what it costs?
For example, when my grandmother was dying of cancer, Medicare and her supplemental picked up 95+% of the tab. Her doctor sent her to a nutritionist at first, as a way of acknowledging the mountain of research that proves nutrition is an important part of health. Grandma later said, "she wanted me to eat 5 servings of vegetables a day. She's CRAZY!" The doctor never mentioned nutrition again, and stuck to the high-tech/high-cost treatments he'd been trained in. She died after six months, after having spent $50k+ of other people's money.
A year ago I started seeing a Doctor of Osteopathy in the Cranial Field for some Osteopathic Manipulation. He works from a home-office, has an answering machine for an assistant, answers all his own messages, and basically does everything himself. He gives me a receipt that I can submit myself for insurance reimbursment, if I so desire. He doesn't accept insurance because a) he'd need an employee to handle the billing b) his practice is full regardless c) many insurances are likely to disallow his kind of therapy, or pay him pennies on the dollar.
In January I decided to see a homeopathic M.D. to see if there was something I could do about my cold hands. After taking an extensive history, he decided that my autonomic nervous system was probably out of balance, and injected me with novocain (same as what dentists use to numb the mouth) in a couple locations. He also gave me a couple of homeopathic remedies, and some fish oil/vitamin E at the next visit. I'm out $400 or $500 for his services, and am totally pleased with the results. He doesn't bill insurance either, also because it's not worth his time.
If I'd gone the conventional route, my insurance would've had to spend $2000 or $5000 on diagnostic tests (an MRI goes for $1000, and CAT scans aren't cheap either), $20,000 on hand surgery/whatever, and I still would've had the problem. As it is, I've spent approx $5,000 with the D.O., and I'm totally satisfied because the treatment program works.
Health Insurance should be carried for accidents, because you never know when you might have a $40,000 medical bill (like me, 8 years ago: a helicopter flight, a plane flight, a cat scan or two, 10 days in the hospital, etc...). But we should all pay our way, for the costs associated with living.
Modern Medicine has evolved with almost univeral insurance coverage, so our doctors have the mindset of "if cost were no object, what would I do?" (this is not a concious thing, but a mindset that gets passed from generation to generation of medical professionals) Which explains why there are so many $60,000 heart bypass surgeries being done, even though some researchers say that bypass surgery belongs in the medical archives, because it is almost universally incompatible with the patient's long-term outcome. I clipped a story from the paper a few weeks back about a guy who died in his 50's, 3 weeks after having a bypass operation. Re-plumbing the heart while ignoring the rest of the vascular system seems like a foolish way to go about attaining health. But it makes the heart surgeon wealthy, so why should he do anything else?
Slashdot Mirror
To paraphrase a quote:
'Modern medicine had tried to cure the symptoms of disease. The Cayce readings focused on building a healthy body that could throw off disease and disorder.' (emphasis added. pretty sure the quote is from With This Gift.)
The problem with curing a symptom is that the cause of the problem always manifests itself in a new form.
For example, the primary factor in polio outbreaks was the large amount of sugar consumed in industrial countries:
Sure, polio was conquered by a vaccine. But now we have epidemics of cancer, heart disease, alzheimers, and many other degenerative diseases.
I suspect that my greatgrandparents were much healthier than my grandparents. They lived their lives, and had a relatively quick decline (1-2 years?) before they died. My grandparents have been living in a long, slow (multi-decade) downward spiral into infirmity. Improvements in lifespan today can primarily be attributed to modern sewage systems, and improved survival rates for children less than 5.
The medical monopoly just takes credit where no credit is due.
Liked your comment, but I think you're missing something.
In Secrets of Power, Vol. 1, Ingo Swann talks about how social institutions have been set up to "depower" the masses. (Mr. Swann is something of a word nazi and notes that "depower" is not yet in the dictionary, but that it should be. It refers to how an individual loses his Power. The book is heavy heavy reading, so I don't recommend it - I've only been able to skim through it.)
This is especially obvious in the perennially broken government schools. John Taylor Gatto tells us that the government schools were specifically set up to depower the population (to use Mr. Swann's word), and make them (us) suitable for factory work. Pre-government school, the american ideal was an independant livelihood. Post-government school, most people hope for a good job with a good company with good benefits.
One of the side-effects of depowerment, is that people don't realize their creative potential. If the government schools taught people to use their power of creativity, more would figure out, like you, that the rat race isn't worth running.
Also see my other comment in this story, about hidden inflation and making your own food.
What's more, taken at all levels, tax rates are especially traumatic. The income tax in and of itself isn't too bad, but when you add Social Security's 14%, Medicare's
Also see my comments here and here.
With that said, I agree that there are many non-essentials that people waste their money one. Some of the best nutrition advice I've ever read:
Food ingredients are cheap, but buying prepared food is expensive because there's a whole chain of suppliers who are taking their cut.
I made pizza for a date last night. I pre-made the dough in the morning by mixing 3.5 cups of freshly ground flour, 1/2 cup coconut oil (would've used a stick of butter, but I was out), 2 cups raw milk, and a scoop of probiotics in the food processor with a dough blade. Let the dough ferment for 12 hours or so (to make the wheat more digestable - something about digestion inhibitors in grains & beans; see the cookbook offered above). In the evening I spread my dough on a pizza pan, baked at 300 degrees for 30 minutes. Added a can of tomato sauce, cheese, chopped garlic, red bell pepper & carrot, and some kind of mildly spicy bell pepper I had around. Was going to make sausage to go on it, but I didn't have any ground meat handy. Bumped the temperature in the oven up to 350 and cooked for another half hour.
The most expensive ingredient in my pizza was the cheese. I guess I paid $9 for the pound. If I had planned ahead, I could've ordered a 6 pound 'wheel' of cheese from the business formerly known as Tucson Cooperative warehouse (delivered to my local buying club) for 3.45/pound. Can of organic tomato sauce from Trader Joe's is ~$1.10. I think the cost of the wheat and vegetables were insignificant. Meat would've added another $2 or $3 (1/2 pound of grass-fed ground beef w/ spices from one of the sausage recipies in the cookbook above)
She liked it, and I didn't pay someone else to cook for us. And while it was cooking, we had some nice private time to continue my touching (girls like to be rubbed). Couldn't do that at a restaurant.
Grandpa had Papa John's pizza on Saturday. When I saw him on sunday, "Wasn't nearly as good as your's".
Plenty of LaserJets still in use today.
I've recently picked up a pair of older laserjets - a LaserJet 4L and a 5mp. $5 apiece. The 4L needs a new cartridge, the 5mp needs a little grease. I talked to a guy at a computer shop who used a 4L of his own for printing invoices: "the thing's built like a mack truck, take care of it and it'll go forever."
The 4L is dated October 1993, "Made in U.S.A. from foreign and domestic components." Don't see that anymore.
Of course, I find the whole idea that a truck bomb could do such extensive damage to a steel-reinforced concrete building all by itself patently absurd.
Apparently a brigadier general thought the same. From his report to congress:
Terrorists tend to be incompetent; it takes the work of intelligent overseers to make them effective. It seems that usually those organizers usually belong to rogue factions of various intelligence services.
I usually give links to back up what I say...
See John Perkin's Confessions of an Economic Hit Man for more on the Feral Government's response to the 70's oil crisis. Before "we" got involved, the Saudis let goats eat their garbage, because they were all so good that none of them would stoop to the level of garbage collector. Now they import asians to pick up the trash. And so on...
The commentary on the petro-dollar were largely inspired by a recent Freedom Report from Texas congressman Ron Paul (not online at that site; I got a hardcopy in my now-deceased Grandmother's mail earlier this year - March or so?). I don't have my copy handy, and the scan is on another computer. But this looks like it might be what I read: The End of Dollar Hegemony - Part I, Part II
Let's just hope we don't get stuck some other war which will sap the budgets out of our technological development...
:)
You obviously haven't been paying attention.
"United States Federal Government on the fast-track to bankruptcy, News at 11"
The only reason "we've" lasted so long with the twin deficits (trade and federal budget) as large as they are is because of the "petro dollar".
Sometime in the 70's, a U.S. president struck a deal with an Arab royal family that was, essentially, "we'll use our military to keep you in power, if you accept our 'dollar' and only our 'dollar' in exchange for your oil."
Even though manufacturing started fleeing the U.S. in the 80's (in response to inflationary pressures at home) and the trade deficit started ballooning, the dollar has held it's ground relative to other countries' currencies. Why? Because the trade partners who were now building "our" stuff for "us" needed the dollar to buy oil for themselves. So, instead of having a "trade" - a U.S.-produced widget for a Tawaineese-produced widget - foreign manufacturers were happy to take a "dollar", because they could go buy a barrel of oil with it.
The petro-dollar has been breaking down for at least 6 years. Saddam said he wanted Euros for Iraqi oil circa-2000. Iran and Venezuela are now moving in the same direction. Who's to blame them? What good is a dollar, if you've already got all the oil you need?
America's 20th Century industry was so obsessed with drugs ...
:).
Seeking health is by necessity an individualized process. Medicine is a "practice" and not a "science" because everyone responds differently, sometimes radically, sometimes ever so slightly, to the same treatment protocol.
The obsession with drugs came about by certain interests hijacking the medical education process (AMA, Flexner report, etc), standardizing on allopathic modalities (suppressing or treating the symptoms with drugs - tylenol for a fevor, shot to boost red blood cell count, etc), and lobbying to to suppress all alternatives. This allows for moneyed interests on Wall Street to profiteer on an otherwise private transaction, by artificially making their high-priced product an integral part of the medical process.
Some professions have succeeded in counter-lobbying for their right to practice too, with Osteopathic being the only full-privledged of the alternatives (though most D.O.s have been subsumed into medical orthodoxy with only a handful today implementing Dr. Still's revelation in their practice). Chiropractic and naturopathy are two of the others. I'm not a big fan of chiropractic, but it has its uses. Not familiar with naturopathy, Osteopathic Manipulation is the greatest. (see my comment history
100 years of Medical Robery
Real Medical Freedom
Drugs and surgery have their places, but usually some other therapy is called for.
(I took my grandmother out to Mayo Clinic weekly for six months for a $1k injection of some drug to boost her red blood cell count. She had bone cancer, and was also undergoing various chemotherapies - her doctor was "practicing" on her. After 6 months and $50k+ spent on her behalf by Medicare/supplemental, she started hospice care, and finished in a week. Doctor: "oops, lost another one. Maybe these drugs will work on the next patient..." Total waste of money, time and effort.)
when I first read this story today, I thought it evidence of a pole shift. That's the theory that the north pole shifts around every so often. The last time it shifted, the new artic flash-froze a bunch of wooly mammoths that used to be in a much warmer area.
The Chandler_Wobble is the name given to the unstable rotation on the axis.
Shrub's not a bilderberger, but Clinton was, and so was Pa Bush. Reagan wasn't, but his Vice President was. Carter was, iirc... Seems like a conspiracy to me.
ah, but the thing is, the discomfort's there from the moment I sit down. It started 7.5 years ago, in my first semester at college. I learned to ignore it, and while it does get worse if I don't take a break, the difference between taking a break and not is nearly imperceptible. Your suggestions might have done something for me then, but based on what I've learned since I started with the Osteopathic treatment program, what I've been through these last few years was inevitable.
:)
But I'm getting better now. The difference between tonight & 4.5 years ago (when I was still in College) is amazing. Before I was miserable after 30 minutes, now it takes 6 hours to really screw me up. Which is why I pimp Osteopathic care every chance I get.
It seems like your fiance would benefit from a consult with a capable Cranial Osteopath, or "biodynamic" cranio-sacral therapist. At least pick up a copy of Andrew Weil's Spontaneous Healing and read chapter 2.
After my last appointment, I tried to avoid the internet, but I went and checked my email and before I knew it I'd spent 6 or 8 hours on the computer. Arms all inflamed, etc etc.
The writer who asked the question has a bonfire going in his arms/shoulders/wherever. Most the usual suggestions for "RSI" won't do anything to deal with the "stack of wood" (trauma/structural misalignments/etc) that creates the conditions for the bonfire to thrive.
Also see my comments in this thread (be sure to follow the link to my comments in an earlier story), and perhaps others I've made in the last year (buy a subscription).
they will always give their money to the one who gives them the cheapest up-front deal.
... the title escapes me, but it was on helping independant businesses survive & thrive when competing with megastores. His point was that the only thing Mal*Wart has going for it is price. Their staff don't really care about their jobs, so when a customer goes in, they have to know exactly what they want because the staff is just there to restock the shelves. Which is why they have a liberal return policy - so that you can take an item back when you realize that it's the wrong thing.
I bought a book last fall
People by crap because they don't have a salesman to let them know what the advantages are to going with a superior product. Wal*Mart is incapable of competing with a good specialist.
Ah yes, "The Good News About Reatailing" series, and the book I bought was Thriving in the Shadow of Giants.
See also Snapper pulls their line of high-end lawnmowers from Wal-Mart for another example. When someone goes to "Wal*Mart" for a lawnmower, all they see is a line of mowers from $90 to $190. They probably don't know much about mowers, so yes, they'd be inclined to go for the cheapest one. But if you went to a Snapper retailer, the salesman would inquire as to your needs - postage stamp or footballl field? how often do you cut it? etc, etc. They'll tell you that you can go for their cheapest model, but to expect to be fixing it every 3-4 seasons. That they have a Snapper that they've been using for 20 years, and these are all the features that make Snapper worth the premium.
As with every other product in the Wal-Mart generation, the primary consideration is the initial purchase price: very little else seems to matter with the majority of the the purchasing public.
It's not that people don't care about quality, but due to the Mal*Wart effect (wages adjusted for inflation have been declining since the 70's), people can't afford the quality they used to. Wal*Mart pays their employees such that they can only afford to shop at Mal*Wart.
The unstated goal of "Free Trade" has been to increase the country's wealth disparity - the rich get much much richer, while most the rest of us get just a little bit poorer. Who benefits from Intel shifting their motherboard assembly plant from Palo Alto to China, or Maytag moving an assembly plant to Mexico? Certainly not the Americans who used to put the motherboards or washing machines together. Intel benefits, but only because they can stay competitive with their competitor who went to China first. I'm not trying to be an anti-corporate bigot or anything, as I see it the leaders of Intel and Maytag and most the others are just taking the rational steps necessary for their survival in a poisonous economic landscape.
It's not Xenophobia. If they want to lift themselves up by their own bootstraps that's fine. But at the present we have AMERICAN/Western companies going in and setting up operations in China specifically because it's "low cost". Which is bullshit. Like I said in the comment linked below, the free market naturally levels the playing field. No one job in an economy is more important than any other job. But we seem to have forgotten, or lost sight of the fact, that "all men/women are created equal" (not that they are equal, but have the same basic potential).
The problem is INFLATION, and how regular Americans have been getting squeezed since at least the 70's, perhaps much longer.
See 1970's, redux, my comment from last August.
While it's true that some osteopaths use manipulative technique that is functionally similar to chiropractors (the last doctor that I visited before my present Osteopath was a D.O. who did crack my neck), a handful are way more advanced.
I agree that most forms of Chiropractic manipulation are invasive (with the exception of Network Spinal Analysis, and possibly Craniopathy). Sometimes a little crack is all a person needs, but most people don't benefit. It's said that Palmer (founder of Chiropractic) spent a year and Still's school of Osteopathy before he struck out on his own, claiming to have independantly discovered his technique. If that's the case, Osteopaths are incapable of being "Chiropractors", while you could possibly label Chiropractors as incompletely educated Osteopaths.
"Cranial Osteopath" is a bare minimum... A handful of cranial osteopaths are on the cutting edge (e.g., Biodynamic Cranial Osteopathy), while most seem to be stuck at Sutherland's initial findings first presented in the 1930's.
I'm sorry your bad experience has so colored your beliefs regarding the profession. My Experience with a competent osteopath has been an extremely positive interaction. Modern osteopathic manipulation is totally non-invasive. Usually the doctor just lightly holds a couple spots on my body until he feels a release. Sometimes I feel something let go, othertimes I don't notice it until much later in the day/week.
If gentle Osteopathic treatment is required to get the effect, so be it. Much better than the alternative of staying stuck in the downward spiral I was in.
Compare: "I am a body" vs. "I have a body".
:)
God is "spirit" or "soul". "Man" is a "spirit" first (in the creator's own likeness), who happens to temporarily take possession of a physical body to allow for a material experience. Said physical body is analogous to a radio receiver, channeling the entity who rightfully (or unrightfully, as the case may be with malevolent possession) has claim to it.
materialism vs. vitalism, etc etc.
The amnesia of everything that came before is part of the deal for getting a body. No "cloak" no body, though some/many children remember their previous incarnations, and many people learn to pierce through the veil later in life.
I had a couple posts a while back about this... Someday I'll subscribe to see what I've written.
See books by Robert Monroe, Ingo Swann, etc...
Nah. What we REALLY need is to deregulate public rights of way. Local governments decide who will and who won't be allowed to run wire from telephone pole to pole or in pipes underground. They're the biggest barriers to competition because they essentially make it illegal by preventing alternatives.
While I agree with you in theory, I also think that cities with one company's phone or power lines are more aesthetically pleasing than a city with 4 (wired) phone providers and 4 power providers on every pole. (which was the case in NYC before regulation, though I'm disinclined to find a link to that picture at the moment...)
The problem is that it's not enough for a corporation to make a living selling their product or service. No, they have to maximize profit for their shareholders. Hence the obsession with infinite growth (also known as "cancer").
Roseville, California used to have an independantly run telephone company - "The Roseville Telephone Company". Apparently it was bought out by SureWest, and I don't know how big SureWest is...
I think the ideal solution is an interconnected patchwork of local, independant companies focused around providing a service for their local customers. None of this "maximize return for our distant shareholders" crap.
LASIK was just the vehicle which delivered the blow (monovision) to her immune system.
If she had a monovision contact (like a former boss, who loves his reading contact but who's health is rapidly going downhill) the result would be essentially the same, except you can take a contact out.
Government schools had done you good. John Gatto must be right when he says their program is specifically designed to prevent people from learning how to extract meaning from text.
/. posts linked to in the grandparent.
Osteopath?!?!? Let's all be clear on this, you're advocating CHIROPRACTIC...
An OSTEOPATH is NOT a Chiropractor. Why do you equate the two professions? I went to 5 or 7 different chiropractors, and they're all in the dark ages as compared to my OSTEOPATH.
My OSTEOPATH has NEVER, EVER cracked any of my bones. Most the time I can't tell that he's done anything at all. Then I notice that something's slightly better later in the day, or later in the week. Incremental improvement. It's been slow, but totally worthwhile.
Hey, no hard feelings. I made the same mistake myself. I decided I needed an osteopath who did manipulation, but believed that manipulation had died out and today's D.O.s were functionally equivalent to M.D.s. So I went to a chiropractor, then another and another. But there was a little nagging voice that said "you need an OSTEOPATH, dipshit!" And later that week I told an M.D. at a booksigning how I'd decided I needed to see an Osteopath. He asked why, I told him ("hands don't work, ala Carpal Tunnel or RSI or thoracic outlet syndrome"), he asked if I'd tried something else (I had), then said that Osteopathic treatment might be right for me, and whenever HE needed an osteopath he went to this guy 100 miles away.
P.S. please read my two
... or rather, just covers them up.
Sorry to hear about your eyes. My mom had LASIK surgery 10 years ago, and got the Monovision setup. While she's happy with the results, I'm certain the Monovision is responsible for her weight gain, immune disfunction, and overall lack of energy. (She had a case of the shingles recently, and she's only 53. Shingles is usually developed by much older people.) Did you have the monovision setup? If so, I'd definitely suggest getting a lense for the closeup eye...
I asked my doctor (see the paragraphs about how my prescription has been changing) what he could do with a person who'd already had LASIK surgery. He said that, while he'd ideally get to them before the surgery, he could still release some of the "trauma" incurred by the surgery itself...
Muscles are what pull the eye out of shape. Lasik resurfaces the front of the eyeball, but doesn't do anything about the muscles locked in spasm (if anyone wants to refute this, please explain why my 22 year old brother's prescription has been getting stronger of late, and why my prescription has changed so much over the past year). The "See Clearly Method" (and other "natural" vision improvement programs) use relaxation & exercises to release the tension from these muscles. Osteopathic manipulation is the missing master-key from all vision improvement programs.
My doctor says there's only about a hundred who do the osteopathic vision prescription thing, so I'm at a loss to help you find a doctor like mine.. Jealous' site has a couple of doctor's names ("teaching staff"), so I'd start there. The only other osteopath I know of who does vision prescriptions is Stephen Davidson (though there is no mention of the vision thing on his site).
Corptocracy: When Corporations & Government become integrated. I first read the term in John Perkins' Confessions of an Economic Hitman, though I'm sure it's been used elsewhere too.
:)
Not supposed to be able to happen, but how better to explain how the same group of people keep getting recycled through government service? Yes, I'm a "conspiracy theorist".
I do not believe that many physicians would forgoe recomending inexpensive treatment...
:)
That's because the philosophical model they were trained in is inaccurate. M.D.s are trained that a patient needs something done externally to fix the problem - surgery, drugs, etc. Still's philosophy was that 'a body will fix itself if the impediments are removed'.
Anecidotal evidence (such as you presented) means almost nothing to a scientist. Especially if this evidence comes from someone selling something (in this case, your D.O..) "Shock" is something I've never heard of. The word activates my mental "con artist" sensors.
This is just an informal post on Slashdot, which will recede into the dustbins shortly. "Shock" is what the osteopath feels in a body with his hands, but because you've never heard the term before it must be a form of con artistry? Sounds like a logical fallacy to me.
Here's a Bibliography if you're interested in persuing it. But I don't care about research. Research is useful, of course, but all that matters to me is, does it work? I'm satisfied with knowing that there's a solid theoretical basis for the treatment modality.
Eyeglass prescriptions change periodically without treatment.
I first got glasses 15 years ago. My prescription was stable until 7.5 years ago, when it got stronger by 1/4 diopter in each eye after I took a nasty bump to the head (that's how my body incurred a good deal of "trauma" or "shock"). It stayed at -2.25L, -2.75R for the next 7.5 years. I mentioned that I wore contacts to the doctor at the second or third visit, and he said, "oh really? Let's see how they are." He got behind me, put his hands on my temples, "close your eyes. Open your eyes." Instantly, "oh, these are totally wrong for you! We'll have to fix this too..." My prescription has been changing every other month, the right eye steadily racheting downward, the left eye oscillating between -2.00 and -1.75. You can say that's just a "periodic change", but I know better.
When D.O.s first came around, their philosophy was based on pseudo-science and quackery. Look it up.
I've read a few independant histories of Andrew Taylor Still (written by researchers, not Osteopaths), and they all say that he had a remarkable healing presence. Osteopathy is a paradigm shift. Still's philosophy states that the body wants to be healthy, and will fix itself if the impediments to health are removed. This was at a time when most doctors were drugging with mercury and doing primitive surgeries. Still's philosophy was a light in a dark age.
Today, most of them are just as useful as regular physicians.
And a handful are a thousand times more useful than a "regular" physcician. I went to several different M.D.s, and they were all frickin worthless - "you need to exercise more" *3, and one recommended a chiropractor. I did plenty of exercise, and it didn't do anything for me.
You keep using that word, "quackery", yet I don't think you know what it means. It's a concept used to subvert effective healing practices that don't rely on patented pharmaceuticals & expensive tests & procedures. Look it up.
Medicine is an art because no two bodies are the same. Every individual has a unique experience, necessitating different treatments. Identical symptoms in different bodies can be from different causes. Pharmaceutical-based medicine is silly because it treats patients as one-offs from a human assembly line, and also because it treats the symptoms and not the cause.
EVERYONE who's considering bypass surgery should get a full course of IV EDTA Chelation therapy. EDTA Chelation has been refered to as "like a roto-rooter for the arteries", although that's not really an appropriate analogy for how it works. See the link for more information.
But EDTA's patent has expired, so there's no money in marketing it. I've never done it myself, but I think it goes for $120 or $150/session. 10 sessions makes $1200 or $1500. The doctor who starts the IV is the only one who profits, unlike bypass surgery where a whole team gets in on the insurance money gravy train.
Yes, bypass surgeries do work, sometimes. But usually there are superior choices that happen to be a fraction of the cost, and if the patient had to pay the bill themselves they'd go for the less invasive options every time. It's only because Insurance and Government have subsidised the high-cost bypass for so long that it's considered "mainstream".
You bring up a good point here. Thousands upon thousands of research trials have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that placebos are powerful medicine. But you can't patent a placebo and sell it for $100/pill, so the placebo gets shelved in favor of more profitable treatment options.
:)
While pharmaceuticals have their uses, the primary effect of the overdosing of America is to make the pharmaceutical companies wealthy at the expense of the people's health.
I myself did many, many things that could be qualified as a placebo, but I never got the desired effect. I suppose you'd say that my eyeglass prescription decreasing from -2.75 to -1.25 in the one eye is a placebo artifact too (see the link on vision at the osteopath's website I linked to in the grandparent. The other eye's prescription decreased by -.25 at the first prescription, and has been bumping between -1.75 and -2.00 over the last 9 months). Osteopathic manipulative medicine is an artform based on scientific principles. Just about everyone could benefit from a checkup, but all most doctors know to do is to cover up the symptoms with a drug, and so "scientific consensus" dismisses a powerful treatment modality.
While my treatment program has spanned the course of a year (at the last appointment I was told that the level of "shock" in my body was 10% of when I started), the doctor told me during one visit that some months prior he'd had three or four new patients in a row that only needed a single visit, and *poof*, all better. These were people who'd spent 10 years making the rounds of allopathic "medicine", and were still screwed up. I don't remember specifics, other than a guy who was hunched over & had heart problems, even though all the standard tests said his heart was fine. The Osteopathic doctor released the strain that held the man in a hunched-over position, and his heart immediately started working better.
These doctors (and biodynamic cranio-sacral therapists too) get real results. My experience is that the osteopathic philosophy is useful, and while I know you mean well trying to protect everyone who reads this from "quacks", maybe you should consider the possibility that there's something useful here.
If someone else is paying for my healthcare, why should I care what it costs?
For example, when my grandmother was dying of cancer, Medicare and her supplemental picked up 95+% of the tab. Her doctor sent her to a nutritionist at first, as a way of acknowledging the mountain of research that proves nutrition is an important part of health. Grandma later said, "she wanted me to eat 5 servings of vegetables a day. She's CRAZY!" The doctor never mentioned nutrition again, and stuck to the high-tech/high-cost treatments he'd been trained in. She died after six months, after having spent $50k+ of other people's money.
A year ago I started seeing a Doctor of Osteopathy in the Cranial Field for some Osteopathic Manipulation. He works from a home-office, has an answering machine for an assistant, answers all his own messages, and basically does everything himself. He gives me a receipt that I can submit myself for insurance reimbursment, if I so desire. He doesn't accept insurance because a) he'd need an employee to handle the billing b) his practice is full regardless c) many insurances are likely to disallow his kind of therapy, or pay him pennies on the dollar.
In January I decided to see a homeopathic M.D. to see if there was something I could do about my cold hands. After taking an extensive history, he decided that my autonomic nervous system was probably out of balance, and injected me with novocain (same as what dentists use to numb the mouth) in a couple locations. He also gave me a couple of homeopathic remedies, and some fish oil/vitamin E at the next visit. I'm out $400 or $500 for his services, and am totally pleased with the results. He doesn't bill insurance either, also because it's not worth his time.
If I'd gone the conventional route, my insurance would've had to spend $2000 or $5000 on diagnostic tests (an MRI goes for $1000, and CAT scans aren't cheap either), $20,000 on hand surgery/whatever, and I still would've had the problem. As it is, I've spent approx $5,000 with the D.O., and I'm totally satisfied because the treatment program works.
Health Insurance should be carried for accidents, because you never know when you might have a $40,000 medical bill (like me, 8 years ago: a helicopter flight, a plane flight, a cat scan or two, 10 days in the hospital, etc...). But we should all pay our way, for the costs associated with living.
Modern Medicine has evolved with almost univeral insurance coverage, so our doctors have the mindset of "if cost were no object, what would I do?" (this is not a concious thing, but a mindset that gets passed from generation to generation of medical professionals) Which explains why there are so many $60,000 heart bypass surgeries being done, even though some researchers say that bypass surgery belongs in the medical archives, because it is almost universally incompatible with the patient's long-term outcome. I clipped a story from the paper a few weeks back about a guy who died in his 50's, 3 weeks after having a bypass operation. Re-plumbing the heart while ignoring the rest of the vascular system seems like a foolish way to go about attaining health. But it makes the heart surgeon wealthy, so why should he do anything else?
See also:
100 years of Medical Robery
Real Medical Freedom