People have been killed.  Wildlife is dying.  Fisherman are unemployed.  And somehow the oil industry executives responsible for it all still get to sleep in the comfort of their own beds at night.

Well, when it comes to food and human health, there is one corporation that has more control over all of us than any other – Monsanto.  Find out what lengths this corporation goes to in order to protect its interests… SCARY!

Know people who can keep your injuries to a minimum

Injuries are a part of sport.  The training and the competition inevitable results in damage to the body.  In fact, you ask any athlete and they will tell you that they are never 100 percent healthy.

As you pursue higher and higher levels of athletic competition, the various gaps between you and your opponents in terms of talent and dedication become narrower.  So, eventually, the difference between elite athletes comes down to who is more able to prevent and recover from injury.

A strong mind is critical to being able to perform athletically.  At the same time, however, I often find that athletes push their bodies too hard when injured.  Athletes should definitely surround themselves with a trusted team of medical practitioners and get to know about therapies such as prolotherapy that can give them an edge over their opponents and prolong their careers.

In the end, H1N1 was a bad flu virus - that's it

I was surprised to find the addition of a special “V” section when I opened my Globe and Mail newspaper this morning.  The headline of this special insert is “Front Line Medicine” and is  prefaced by a blurb about the proud history of research and development of vaccinations in Canada.

Yep, this special informational supplement is a six-page collection of vaccine advertisements and reports by pharmaceutical companies, advocacy groups, and Dr. David Butler-Jones (Chief Public Health Officer, Public Health Agency of Canada).  The message repeated time and again is that immunizations are safe and effective and that not enough Canadians are lining up to get their shots.

It is interesting to see the changes in approach that the government and the pharmaceutical companies are take with the Canadian public depending on the situation.  When the H1N1 paranoia was at its peak, there was a lot of fear-mongering and pressure to get vaccinated not only for one’s own personal health but to also “protect” others around them from getting sick.  Then, when it was clear that there was insufficient amounts of the vaccine, the message changed again to say that only certain portions of the population really actually needed vaccination and the rest would be fine.  Then, in December 2009, demand for H1N1 vaccination bottomed-out after activity of the disease in Canada virutally vanished.  And then Canadians were left to pay the bill for millions of doses of useless surplus vaccines.

The fact is that more Canadians are catching on that maybe vaccinations are not the best answer to public health.  They are not as easily scared and pressured into a form of treatment and are willing to seek out alternatives.  Oh, and as if that wasn’t enough, they’re not happy about the “experts” wasting their money and handing it over to the pharmaceutical industry.

The World Health Organization grossly overstated the severity of H1N1 and was largely responsible for creating the paranoia and boosting revenues for vaccine makers.  If there’s any consolation, at least Canadians didn’t over re-act as much as the French.

Chronic tennis elbow responds well to prolotherapy

According to Dr. Rodney S. Van Pelt, MD in his article in the Journal Of Prolotherapy, there’s about a 90% success rate using prolotherapy injections in and around the elbow.

Tennis elbow, also known as lateral epicondylitis, results from repetitive forceful extension of the elbow. As the name suggests, this injury occurs very commonly in tennis players who create injury of the extensor tendons by hitting backhand strokes with the racket. The injury is so common, that at least half of all tennis players will experience this injury at some point.

Because tennis “elbow” does not really involve the elbow, but rather the extensor tendons of the forearm, this can be a very chronic injury that is slow to heal. Even resting the arm (which is difficult because the injury almost always involves your dominant arm) often does not help, although supportive athletic straps can redistribute pressure on the affected area.
By using prolotherapy, you can achieve complete tissue repair and eliminate pain that results from chronic tennis elbow.

Marketing fake "health foods" is big business

Needless to say, there is a lot of money that goes into marketing “health foods” to people.  You don’t have to look any further than the sponsors of the 2010 Winter Olympics to see the extent that companies will go to convince you that their product is good for you.

Everybody knows that you need to drink plenty of water to stay healthy.  However, many people just have a hard time drinking water because they prefer coffee, juice, or pop.  Lately, however, a number of companies are peddling variations of water – flavoured water, alkaline water, water with vitamins, etc.  While a few products are OK, most are pricey and some are actually not good for your health.  Misleading claims, tricky labeling, and endorsements from celebrities are all meant to hide the truth that you already know: there’s no way around it, you just have to drink water.  Plain old water.

The soft drink company that owns a popular “healthy water” beverage said it best in one of its old slogans: “Ain’t nothing like the real thing, baby.”

Extreme athletics are hard on joints

The perfect recipe for osteoarthritis is repetitive trauma to your joints.  Well, imagine your knees absorbing the impact of 60 moguls and 2 jumps (each with a force of about 2000 pounds of pressure!) in under 24 seconds.  Now imagine practicing doing that hundreds of times day after day in the pursuit of becoming an Olympic champion.  That’s why it seems to be a forgone conclusion that freestyle moguls skiers like Canadian Olympic gold medalist Alexandre Bilodeau will wind up with premature knee joint damage.

Extreme forces like these cause incredible stress on the ligaments and cartilage in the knees.  That’s why the importance of  treatments such as prolotherapy for athletes and anyone with joint problems is so great.  Visit my website to find out more about how you can stimulate your body to repair your ligaments, eliminate pain, and avoid surgery.

Cutting weight the wrong way can be deadly

On the eve of the Olympics, I find myself feeling so inspired by the dedication of all the athletes who will be competing. All the training and dieting takes a tremendous amount of discipline and the mind is at least as equally as important as the body if you want to go for the gold.

One of my favourite Olympic sports has always been wrestling.  It is a sport that requires a great combination of physical strength, endurance, and technique.  It wasn’t until I actually competed in freestyle wrestling, however,  that I learned about another big part of the sport – “making weight”.

To compete, athletes must not weigh more than the agreed upon weight by a certain time (usually on the day of or the day before competition) or else be disqualified.  It’s not uncommon, however, for wrestlers, boxers, mixed martial arts fighters, and any other athletes who compete in sports that are divided into weight classes to find themselves 5 or 10 pounds too heavy with only hours before the weigh-in.  Time to cut weight.

Starvation, rubber shirts, layered clothing, stationary bikes, and saunas are some of the tools commonly used to start sweating out water and shedding startling amounts of weight in a short period of time.  However, you are also losing a dangerous amount of electrolytes.  At best, you stress your heart and liver, your brain is foggy, you end up dehydrated, and enter your bout against your opponent in a weakened state.  At worst, like too many young collegiate wrestlers, you wind up dead from complications of severe dehydration such as kidney failure and cardiac arrest.

Instead of using your strong athlete’s will to push your body to dangerous extremes, exercise that discipline to maximize your potential.  If you know that you will be competing, plan a healthy and gradual weight cut that includes proper nutrition.  Not only will your athletic performance benefit, but you will guarantee yourself a much longer career.

Anti-inflammatories may be damaging your joints

The cover story of the most recent issue of the Journal of Prolotherapy features the connection between ligaments, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (known as NSAIDs), and degenerative osteoarthritis.

Common NSAIDs include Aspirin, ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin), naproxen (Aleve), and Celebrex.  Acetaminophen (Tylenol) is not included in this group of drugs because it is a pain killer but not an anti-inflammatory.

NSAIDs are some of the most commonly used medications.  About 20-30% of elderly people regularly use NSAIDs for conditions including osteoarthritis.  However, long-term use of NSAIDs has many negative side effects including liver toxicity, stomach and gastrointestinal damage, cardiovascular disease, and even death.

The irony is that NSAIDs actually accelerate the arthritis that they are being used for.  They stop the body’s ability to stimulate the building blocks for cartilage in the joints.  This causes the breakdown of joints and the progression of osteoarthritis in your hips and knees, thus increasing the need for more joint replacement surgeries.

Instead of using NSAIDs on a long-term basis to mask the symptoms of joint disease, consider eating a healthier diet free from trans fats, adopting moderate exercise, and using prolotherapy to stimulate joint repair and tissue growth.

Excess medical imaging radiation may cause cancer

Any loving parent would do whatever they could to help their sick or injured child.  That includes ordering any tests and medical imaging studies.  There is a recent move in the medical community to establish stricter guidelines for the use of CT scans for children after mounting evidence that shows these scans may potentially cause cancer.   Up until now, there aren’t well enough defined standards for CT scans and there is tremendous variation in the amounts of radiation that patients are exposed to.  In some cases, some CT scanners were exposing patients with up to 440 times the amount of radiation in a single x-ray.

This move follows recently revised guidelines in the US for increasing the starting age of yearly mammograms from 40 to 50 years of age.  This has created a lot of confusion and even anger from women who fear that there will be more cases of undetected breast cancer just because health organizations are trying to save money.  However, the radiation that breast tissue is exposed to during mammograms could actually increase the risk of breast cancer for high-risk patients.  Furthermore, starting annual mammography screening at too young of an age  only increases the amount of radiation exposure.

We have to change our attitudes about medical imaging and the belief that they are totally benign.  We now know that radiation from these tests increases the risk of cancer and that insisting on unnecessary MRIs, CT scans, and x-rays is not only expensive but potentially deadly.  However, we also must remember that these tests save lives too.  The point is not to avoid all medical imaging, but rather to use it only when needed and to do more research into safer medical imaging techniques such as digital breast thermography.

Your body is exposed to chlorine every day

Metro Vancouver put out a campaign to encourage everyone to stop buying bottled water and start drinking tap water to reduce waste from all the plastic bottles.  In terms of the environment, it’s a great idea.  But is it healthy?

The method of putting chlorine in water to get rid of bacteria has been used for over a century.  It’s important to get rid of harmful organisms in the drinking water to prevent disease.  But there are also some negative effects of exposure to chlorine on a daily basis.  Aside from drying out your skin and hair, chlorine can disrupt your internal gut flora and result in digestive problems.

Chlorine is also an antagonist to iodine.  What that means is that the chlorine interferes with the biological processes in your body that require iodine – namely thyroid gland function and your hormonal balance.

Even if you don’t drink the tap water, you probably shower or bathe in it.  If so, you still absorb a lot of chlorine through your skin (not to mention those of us who enjoy using swimming pools and hot tubs).  Bottom line?  Drink from the tap but consider filtering the water that you drink and bathe in.  That way, both you and the environment can stay healthy.