WOMEN are more perceptive than men, and they often decide the actions of men or divert the courses. Cecilia Uwadi did just that to me this week. She is the production editor of The Nation newspaper. Often boisterous when production deadlines are going to be missed, she surprised me on Wednesday last week when, calmly, she told me on the telephone I had overwritten the column for last week. The implication was that I was going to be asked to cut it to size, and that would have involved time. Now, the more time you lose after copy deadline, the more you eat into the printer’s time, the fewer the copies the printer would print, and the more the cash the newspaper would lose in the market. I was several kilometres away. Cecilia suggested we stop the copy at the banks, and I continue it today as a second part of an ongoing series. I replied that I didn’t have the energy for that. Writers do not like second or third parties to tamper with their thoughts, because their butchering may destroy the story line. But I trusted Cecilia, and gave her the nod. I had wanted to address readers’ letters this week, especially the one from a woman in Awka who was going bald on the sides of the scalp, and, in addition, always had bags in her lower eyelids. Her bags reminded me of those of K.R., a tall, handsome and well-mannered gentleman. Those bags have defied therapy to improve potassium intake to balance it with sodium, as blood sodium elevation and blood potassium depletion, like allergy and poor blood circulation, are possible causes of “bags”. I haven’t seen K.R. lately to know if cayenne, especially when combined with the biochemic cell salt ferrum phos, got the blood moving faster and emptied the bags. If the bags remain defiant, other possible causes of them could be suboptional kidneys, especially if there are dark rings around the eyes, and/or an underactive thyroid gland, for which the Dr. Broda Barnes home self-test is a sure diagnostic tool. I do not wish to plunge into these matters today. I received two touching letters from readers of last week’s column which advised me to heed Cecilia’s suggestion about a follow-up column to last week’s column. But if you don’t mind, I‘d quickly say Bell’s Kidney Cleanse and Function Tea and/or Amazon KDCL or new comer Kidney Rescue can help sluggish kidneys. As for the slow thyroid gland, it has been found that, while its problems may come from within it, exhausted adrenal glands often cause thyroid slowdown as well. The adrenals respond to Borage oil, Pantothenic Acid (Calcium Pentothanate or Vitamin B5), Plant Sterols and Sterolins, and many proprietary Adrenal Essentials formulations, which include adrenal glandulas in the blend. As for the thyroid gland, Dr. Broda Barnes (please check on the internet) found that most laboratory tests for thyroid function were often unreliable, and he developed a diagnostic technique which many doctors agree is better, and use, even if not l00 per cent foolproof. To do this self-test, shake down well and keep a good mercury (not digital) thermometer under your pillow at night before you go to bed. When you wake up in the morning, do not move in bed. Place the thermometer under your armpit for about 10 minutes. Menstruating women should do it on the second day of their cycle, other people any time. The normal temperature reading would lie between 97.8 and 98.2 degrees Fahrenheit. This reading should be consistent over three days. Anything below this reference range suggests underactive thyroid gland or hypothyroidism, which has been linked to about 100 diseases, many of them degenerative. Anything above the range suggests overactive thyroid gland or hyperthyroidism, which may be a cause of rapid heart beat (tachycardia), consumption and thinness, bulging eyes (Grave’s disease) and allied ailments, overheating, profuse sweating, nervousness, insomnia and even headaches or blurry vision from too much energy in the system. While eating goistrogen-rich foods such as Cabbage does help slow the racing thyroid, the treatment of choice is Buggleweed, which is not readily available in Nigeria. Many doctors prescribe a synthetic hormone, Synthroid, which has been proven inferior to the natural equivalent, Armour thyroid, a glandular extract from animal thyroids of which Dr. Alan Gabby M.D., who, like Dr. Barnes, uses it, said: “I frequently see patients who are being treated for hypothyrodism with thyroxin (synthrold) but who continue to experience typical hypothyroidism symptoms, such as fatigue, depression, cold extremeties, fluid retention and dry skin. However, after switching to an equivalent (or sometimes even less equivalent) doses of Armour thyroid, their symptoms disappear rapidly”.
Please, permit me to make two more quick points on this matter before we return to Walking Corpses in viral hepatitis (1). Hypothyrodic people hardly convert beta carotene to Vitamin A. A deficiency of Vitamin A may cause night blindness and dry skin. Without Vitamin A, the thyroid gland cannot make its major hormones, and may remain a lame duck. Many men and women reporting low sexual drive or fertility problems need to do the Berne’s Basal Body Temperature self-test to determine their thyroid status.
Walking Corpses
The first touching response to last Thursday’s column was from a reader who sought anonymity. He said in a cell phone text message:
Sir, now that hepatitis patients are WALKING CORPSES as described by you in your article of today (25/ 10/12)… you have given them no hope again in life. I read you every week, sir. I feel sad about the title”
I replied immediately. “Oh no. You got me wrong. The column was meant to warn that all of us could be walking corpses … I spoke of people who died behind the wheel and of my uncle who died of diabetes. One of them didn’t know his blood sugar level had gone up over 500. The idea is… don’t be a walking corpse. Run lab tests regularly to catch ailments young and nip them in the bud. That was why Boluke Chemists was brought into the picture.”
This reader felt better and brighter with this re-assurance to reply:
“Thank you, Sir. I agree with you. There are people who have never done FBC (Full Blood Count), as cheap as it is. Even FBS (Fasting Blood Sugar) and RBS (Random Blood Sugar). An elevated WBC (White Blood Cell) in my FBC result in 2008 made the lab attendant to do HBsAg for me without asking him to do it. It was positive. I have since then taken precautionary measures right from dieting, regularly yearly. Viral load count test. My last load was UNDETECTABLE because it was below 200. I have vaccinated the whole household, and my knowledge of the disease has increased
“I have just completed the reading of Dr Gish in the 7th Annual Liver Update (which) is available in the Cleaveland Clinic Journal of Medicine 2008. It is quite revealing. You can read it in
HYPERLINK “http://m.ccjm.org.co”
“I also have a friend who is a very close friend and a hematologist with bias for blood disorders. He also believes in the submission of Dr Gish. Early detection can add few years to carriers but, sadly, thousands do not even know they carry the deadly virus in their system. I am 48, and I just hope I will get some additional years with the consolidated efforts I have made and I am making”
Yes, there is hope for “additional years” in Mother Nature in which is anchored the Creator’s Will Grace and Love for human health. We experience this Will Grace and Love when, in overcoming chronic illness, we recognise that He, who decreed the formation of our bodies by Mother Nature, had provided through these same forces, long before the bodies came into being, all that would be needed for their nurture in health and healing in illness. We only have to discover and use them aright in humble gratitude to the Creator. Didn’t doctors believe last century that liver cells once damaged or dead were not regenerable? Aren’t all the nutrition oriented doctors saying today that Milk thistle, a once unknown herb, helps liver cell regeneration? Milk thistle gained this reputation when, in animal experiments, it made the liver overcome the destructive capacity of carbon tetrachloride. This chemical is reputed to be one of the worst enemies of the liver, and scientists rank the liver-protecting capacity of any herb in terms of its ability to neutralise it. The first research, since replicated in many laboratories worldwide, divided animals into three groups. The first was given Milk thistle before and during exposure to the chemical. The second was given Milk thistle only after exposure. The third was not given Milk thistle. All animals in the last group died, with heavy liver damage. Mortality averaged about 50 per cent in the second group given Milk thistle 24 hours after exposure. No death occurred in the group which took Milk thistle before and during the exposure. This is why herbal doctors always prescribe Milk thistle in liver therapy. Last Thursday, I mentioned many equally good hepaprotective herbs which Hepatitis-challenged people should take, if need be for life, for remnants of the hepatitis army may regenerate and regroup for another battle. In fact, we do not have to wait for vanquished hepatitis to strike before we take them…for life. Didn’t Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine, advise us a long time ago: LET FOOD BE YOUR MEDICINE AND MEDICINE YOUR FOOD? Ever since I suggested it to a member of the DANTATA family who had a liver condition in the 1980s and Milk thistle helped him, for which he gave me a present, THE HERBS BOOK by James LUST, I have used Milk thistle regularly. Some of the other liver herbs I mentioned last week were Amazon Liver Support and Carquega, which features as an ingredient in the former.
I will quickly make brief remarks about them, briefly address Kyolic Aged Garlirc Extract, which I also recommend, move on to the second reader’s text message and, if time permits, mention some other terrific herbs which space did not permit mention last week.
Amazon Liver Support
In the Amazon region, this proprietary product is used traditionally, as the clinical paper says, for hepatonic, hepatoprotective and antihepatoxic for steatosis, hepatitis, fatty liver, cirrhosis and other live diseases and conditions. Eight herbs make up the product, the star herb of which, in my view, is CARQUEJA. When researchers gave a group of rats lethal doses of the liver poison phalloidin, 76 per cent of them died, but 100 per cent survived in another group which took Carguega along with the poison. Chanka piedra (the Yoruba call it ehinbisowo or ehin olube) is another star item in Amazon Liver Support. I mentioned it, too, in passing last weak. No fewer than five human studies in the Amazon belt have confirmed it to “effectively protect against liver damage from various chemical liver toxins.” Two studies on children beset with hepatitis and jaundice found Chanka Piedra extracts to be “hepatoprotective” (liver protecting) and antihepatotoxin” (disabling liver poison). One point arises from this which I do not wish to discuss in detail today. In the last 50 years, doctors advised pregnant women in England to eat animal liver because of its rich store of nutrients. But what if that animal liver had a large quantum of hepatoxins and not enough antihepatotoxins and hepatoprotective agents? Of course, the human liver loss of these toxins is doomed, if the animal liver consumer does not have enough protection in, and for his or her own liver. I don’t, for this reason and more, relish animal liver, remembering that three of my maternal cousins, all from the same mother, died of liver failure! In India, doctors found Chanka Piedra was “an effective single drug in the treatment of jaundice in children.” The same report quotes British researchers as saying that “children treated with a Chanka Piedra extract for acute hepatitis had liver function return to normal within five days.”
Kyolic Aged Garlic Extract
This is natural organic, sliced garlic naturally aged (without heating) in a special process for about 20 months to concentrate the healing forces of the natural herb to about 50 times of their natural powers. It is odourless, besides, and as the product literature, suggests, packs 50 punches to one of natural garlic. In the review of scientific journals and meetings, more than 100 clinical trials in various parts of the world are rated by researchers who confirm claims made by Wakunaga, of Japan, the producers. In this presentation are heading such as:
•Aged Garlic Extract and Coenzyme Qio decreases Arterial Stiffness
Retards Progression of Coronary Artery Calcium in Risk Fire Fighters.
•Aged Garlic Extract has Immunodulating Activity in Humans.
• Aged Garlic Extract increases Adiponectin in subjects with Metabolic
Syndrome
•Aged Garlic Extract lowers Blood Pressure in Patients with Treated but Uncontrolled Hypertension: A Randomized Control Trial.
There are reports about other ailments, especially tumours, sickle cell anemia, immune boosting, blood disorders, Nitric oxide bioavailability, and Reproductive effects, Anti-stress and Anti-Age Effects, Brain and Anti-Depression Effects.
Liver detoxifying and Protective effects of Kyolic Garlic are also well researched by Wakunaga. There are reports that Kyolic Aged Garlic Extract
• “Protected cells from Toxic Carbon Tetrachloride and Paracetamol (Acetaminophen)
•“Enhanced Metabolism of “Acetaminophen in Humans.
• “Prevented Mutagenic Effects of the Liver Toxic Afflatozin B1
• “Prevented the Toxic Effects of Phenobarbital and Bromobenzene
• “Enhanced Detoxification of Acetaldehyde of Enzymes in Liver
• “Inhibited cholestergenessis in Hep G- 2 cells”.
Carqueja
Used traditionally for digestive disorders, it is described as the South American version of Milk thistle. Midly hypertensive (lower blood sugar), it goes well for gastric ulcers, increases bile production, improves gastroenteritis, kills Helicobacter pylori, a cause of peptic and duodenal ulcers, helps in acid reflux (heartburn), illeocecal valve disorder, elimination of liver flulces (flat worms are a which cause of liver cirhosin and cancer), and gall bladder stones.
The Second Message
It says: “I am Hepatitis B positive and have been treating it off and on for close to two years now. For (the) past two months, I was on medication taking LIVOLYN tablet for liver. I was asked to conduct other tests of viral hepatitis which are Hbe Ag and Hb DNA viral load because I complained of itching. The result of the Ag is Negative but I could not do the DNA because of cost.
Another reader said: last year, my wife to whom I complained about my health decided to run a test on me based on her experience on similar complaints of most of the ex-militants at Obubra Camp during their re-orientation programme. The test showed that I was positive to Hepatitis B virus. To confirm the test, we went to a private hospital … and it was true that I am positive. The doctor showed me by saying the disease kills faster than HIV/AIDS and there is no known cure for it. That was the only good news I had from that hospital. Now, the challenge I have is where to get real counselling and how to manage the situation. Sometimes, I drink Livolene.
In conclusion, there is hope in Mother Nature for hepatitis cure. Many hints were given in this column last Thursday. Today, I pass on the suggestions of one of my nutrition-conscious doctor friends. He suggests Vitamin C, which is antiviral, be used as part of a therapy at between 5000mg and 10,000mg a day. I add that the Alkaline or Buffered brand be used to avoid acid build-up from ascorbic acid. I suggest, also, a good Bioflavonoid complex as bioflavonoid are antiviral. He suggests, also, DMG to increase tissue oxygenation which kills viruses. That’s why Ubiquinol (most active variant of CoQio) is a food ally, like 35 per cent food frade Hydrogen Peroxide. ZEOLYTE may also be fried. It is a powerful detoxifier (mixture of Zenolytre and Humic Acid Powers). Can we ever stop screening the hands of Mother Nature in our healing efforts. We needn’t become walking corpses if we see her as a gift from God and let her into our homes, nay our bodies. Now, Cecilia, when last did you have your liver function checked?