Their aim is not to make vitamins illegal or to declare garlic a "toxic drug". That's unadulterated conspiracy theory bullshit. (ETA: Like all UN committees, they make recommendations and encourage nations to adopt the. - hello, climate change - but cannot enforce participation in any way.)
Of course, Alex Jones knows its all part of the Illuminati's plan to institute the New World Order.
The lack of credibility for these claims is staggering.
For people who like to confuse Orthomolecular Medicine with "alternative" medicines, here is a link below from the International Society of Orthomolecular Medicine which discusses the confusion.
Here is a chunk from this website which highlights the differences...
"Orthomolecular, on the other hand, because it is identified with Linus Pauling, our greatest living scientist, and because it rests on vast body of research in the basic and clinical sciences, does force a major revision in medical thinking. Nutrition, which has been the stepchild of medicine and generally considered a dead issue in medicine, suddenly is at the crux of this new medical movement. No wonder then, that Orthomolecular became a buzzword to the medical establishment, who saw it only as megavitamins and judged it as quackery.
By contrast, the word, Holistic became the subject of numerous symposia, journal articles, welcomed by editors eager to promote the image of modern medicine as a progressive and responsive institution. But as it gained supporters, Holistic Medicine also gained additional theories and practices, some of dubious value, some downright unscientific, Even the most broad-minded and liberal-minded editor had to recoil from permitting such things as psychic healing and kinesiology within the pages of a refereed journal. Soon the word "Alternative, came to replace Holistic in the medical journals. Now the establishment could pick and choose individually between the various therapies that had gathered under the holistic umbrella; nutrition, biofeedback, chiropractic, acupuncture, herbalism, homeopathy, massage, hypnosis, iridology, kinesiology, astrology, psychic healing and other intuitive therapies, to name a few.
The orthomolecular movement was faltered with identity confusion and, in fact, many of our own members seem to have chosen Holistic as their preferred badge-word. This is good for the short run, I agree: it is attractive to patients and profitable while being non-controversial and safer professionally as well. In the long run, however, I think Holistic Medicine has no future. It has already lost its identity, except as a clearing house for medical novelty. Most important, because it does not identify strongly with science it has lost reliability.
Meantime, Orthomolecular Medicine retains scientific reason for being: its basic science foundations of nutrition, biochemistry and clinical nutrition have grown at a prodigious rate. Megavitamin niacin therapy, which was considered dangerous and controversial in treating schizophrenia, is now the standard of care in the hyperlipidemias. What began as megavitamin therapy now employs a broad data base and a variety of therapies applicable to numerous medical and psychiatric conditions. It is ironic that this positive growth of orthomolecular science and therapy has actually clouded the identity of the Orthomolecular movement. On the one hand we are confused with Holistic Medicine; on the other we are seen only as the avant garde of orthodox medicine In hopes of defining our true identity let me update the concept of Orthomolecular Medicine as anew medical specialty..."
From the ISOM Website.
Tell you what - Find corroboration for their claims from a website that *doesn't* have a direct relationship to or is in the business of further "orthomolecular" and we can talk. Everything you post is from ortho-whatever.com. You are only picking sources that have a vested interest in furthering this idea.
Everyone here, whether they've disagreed with you or not, has acknowledged that nutrition is an important aspect of health and health care. However, mega-dosing with vitamins is NOT NUTRITION. It's an alt-med idea that has been circulating for decades without showing any sort of tanglible, measureable result. And I'd also like some evidence - again, not from your echo-chamber sites - that the people who attempted to reproduce Hoffer's results all did it completely differently than he did. Because until you do pony up some evidence, I call bullshit.
ETA: And something not hopelessly out of date would be helpful as well - you know, somewhere in the last decade, not 20 or 30 or more years old. Kunin's work does not appear to be more recent than 1983.
Tell you what - Find corroboration for their claims from a website that *doesn't* have a direct relationship to or is in the business of further "orthomolecular" and we can talk. Everything you post is from ortho-whatever.com. You are only picking sources that have a vested interest in furthering this idea.
Preserved for irony factor.
However, mega-dosing with vitamins is NOT NUTRITION. It's an alt-med idea that has been circulating for decades without showing any sort of tanglible, measureable result.
Not really.
http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/8853585/reload=0;jsessionid=YhXzi2hhww...
http://www.ajconline.org/article/S0002-9149(98)00955-2/abstract
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0026049585900927
http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/11695079/reload=0
http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=212257
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=382145
http://www.pnas.org/content/105/32/11105.abstract
http://advances.nutrition.org/content/2/2/78.full.pdf+html
http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/70/14/5749.abstract
These Codex Alimentarius Laws are a threat to our Human Rights.
http://www.gaia-health.com/articles301/000335-codex-alimentarius-is-not-a-medieval-cabal.shtml
How this impacts people who are mentally ill who want to try Orthomolecular Medicine.
If Canada goes the way of Germany and Norway, and sets severely restricted maximum allowable dosages on vitamins to render them totally useless in health recovery, then that leaves people totally dependent on mainstream medicines which are toxic and of limited value, and on treatments which are harsh like Electro Convulsive Therapy which leaves people with permanent brain damage.
People will only be able to get vitamins with a doctor's prescription, doctors who have had only one hour of training in nutrition and what little they have learned boils down to "vitamins are a waste of money and are of no therapeutic value".
With a severe funding crisis to our health care system, these extra doctors' visits for harmless products will place an added financial burden to our existing health care system, and one that is totally unnecessary.
This Codex Alimentarius is a direct threat to peoples' right to good quality health.
Tell you what - Find corroboration for their claims from a website that *doesn't* have a direct relationship to or is in the business of further "orthomolecular" and we can talk. Everything you post is from ortho-whatever.com. You are only picking sources that have a vested interest in furthering this idea.
Who else besides someone who is an orthomolecular medical doctor, someone tied to the original studies, would examine the fine details of the repeat studies? The real problem is that most people don't do that. You were told to do this in the last thread, but you didn't go out and find out for yourself.
Students from all professions blindly trust what they read from their textbooks in university thinking that all angles were meticulously covered to reach these conclusions. Sadly and unfortunately, mainstream medical research is more politically and corporate driven than scientific. Profit motives are more the desired outcome rather than scientific purity and optimal human health.
A case in point: natural dessicated thyroid hormone treatment vs. patented synthetic tyroid hormone treatments. In the website, Stop the Thyroid Madness, people claim that they felt better on natural thyroid hormones but were forced to switch to patented synthetic products instead. They have never felt well since. They also feel that the patented blood tests do not properly measure thyroid functioning, therefore, they feel that they are not being treated properly with proper hormone levels.
http://www.stopthethyroidmadness.com/
To reference post #24, I include the work of Dr. Bonnie Burstow who wrote in her book, Radical Feminist Therapy that chlorpromazine had abolutely no science to back up its use other than it sedated patients. The maker of chlorpromazine and the psychiatrists lobbied the US government to give psychiatrists sole jurisdiction over its distribution to patients. This is political lobbying and corporate greed; not science.
Here is a good Antipsychiatry Mental Health Liberation Movement video.
Here is a youtube video conference with psychologists and nurses discussing Electro Convulsive Therapy.
Another Fantastic Video by Dr. John Breeding.
Recovery: schizophrenia & Mental Illness - Psychology
He references a book by Robert Whitakker called, Mad In America. (2002: Perseus Publishing). which claims that...
100 years ago, schizophrenia had a 60% recovery rate. Today, in western countries, that falls to 0%. In third world countries not influenced by western medicine, that recovery rate for schizophrenia is still 60%. With neuroleptic drugs, you are guaranteed to not recover.
100 years ago, schizophrenia had a 60% recovery rate. Today, in western countries, that falls to 0%. In third world countries not influenced by western medicine, that recovery rate for schizophrenia is still 60%. With neuroleptic drugs, you are guaranteed to not recover.
That is complete nonsense. A hundred years ago, schizophrenics were put into asylums with inhuman conditions; that's where the term, "Bedlam" comes from. And the bit about third world countries having a recovery rate of 60% is an outright lie.
Neuroleptic drugs actually help mitigate the brain damage that schizophrenia causes and also save the lives of seriously psychotic people.
Neuroleptic drugs actually help mitigate the brain damage that schizophrenia causes and also save the lives of seriously psychotic people.
I can't agree with that. They also kill people.
If there was any real science behind any of this, I could get behind it.
BUT. THERE. ISN'T.
Show me, any of you, the real science???
Until then, we're left to our own accord, no?
Perhaps. the Science-Truthers might want to back off, no???
Science, to me, doesn't mean a study on monkees and then a 60% success rate in human studies.
Science, means a 100% success rate in humans with no side effects. Tough bar, I know, but isn't that what Science really is?
Sineed,
SW explained how his daughter was helped by homeopathic treatments. SW says himself that the science behind it is lacking or is still in progress, but that it works.
Why do we have to hear from you again about the lack of science behind homeopathy?
To me, and to most people, the important issue is that his daughter got well.
Since the treatment being administered does not work, she must have had a self-limiting condition that improved without treatment.
I also believe SW when he mentions that his daughter got well.
So do I. See my comment above.
That is automatic, and nothing else would even entertain my mind. But this is not the case with some of you. Some have had the outright gall to claim that positive experiences are false, and not once but many times over and over again.
1. Self-limiting illness;
2. Placebo effects;
3. Confirmation bias - people convince themselves a treatment was effective when it was not;
4. Regression to the mean - people with chronic diseases that have relapsing and remitting courses might take something when their disorder is severe, and it improves not because the treatment worked, but because the disease regressed back to its usual degree of severity. Sometimes it's a problem in medical research.
Are you implying that because there is no science to back it up that his daughter did not get well?
See the above.
Are you implying that when mainstream medical procedures do not work that a person should simply suffer and not look for alternative options?Why?
Folks have every right to try alternatives but with the full knowledge that they will likely consider to suffer, and also be poorer. If alternative remedies are found to work, they stop being alternative remedies and become the standard of care.
There should be a special circle of hell for people who sell expensive, ineffective remedies to desperate people.
We had a medical doctor from England at the clinic I go to. She also took training in homeopathy and used it from time to time in her practice. Do you think that even though she is a qualified medical doctor that she is less of a scientist for taking courses in homeopathy?
Yes. She may be a good doctor in many respects, but if she uses homeopathy, her basic understanding of science is lacking.
Sineed wrote:
Neuroleptic drugs actually help mitigate the brain damage that schizophrenia causes and also save the lives of seriously psychotic people.
I can't agree with that. They also kill people.
Schizophrenia kills 10% of people with it due to suicide. The most dangerous antipsychotic, clozepine, kills a fraction of 1%, and it's not used much for that reason.
anyone anything about SAM-E? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-Adenosyl_methionine?
it seems interesting
Neuroleptic drugs actually help mitigate the brain damage that schizophrenia causes and also save the lives of seriously psychotic people.
This is a lie. It is the neuroleptic drugs which cause the brain damage, and all the other irreversable neurological disabling side effects.
Since the treatment being administered does not work, she must have had a self-limiting condition that improved without treatment.
That is not the story you were told. Therefore you should not fantasize things in your head like that. Unless you know the child personally, you are way out of scope in making such conclusions, expecially without the expertise backing you up to do so.
1. Self-limiting illness;
2. Placebo effects;
3. Confirmation bias - people convince themselves a treatment was effective when it was not;
4. Regression to the mean - people with chronic diseases that have relapsing and remitting courses might take something when their disorder is severe, and it improves not because the treatment worked, but because the disease regressed back to its usual degree of severity. Sometimes it's a problem in medical research.
You are talking way out of your scope here. I have personally experienced a full recovery. I have witnessed others who have had a total and complete recovery for so called incurable degenerative diseases, and you cannot redifine so many peoples' lives like that. Shame on you.
There should be a special circle of hell for people who sell expensive, ineffective remedies to desperate people.
That is why I have put up an anti-psychiatry thread. That is exactly what many feel about psychiatry. Thank you for validating so many peoples' lives with truth, finally~!
Folks have every right to try alternatives but with the full knowledge that they will likely consider to suffer, and also be poorer. If alternative remedies are found to work, they stop being alternative remedies and become the standard of care.
This is simply not true.
Refer to post #121, where I mention that Dr. John Hoffer, Dr. Abram Hoffer's son, who is a professor of Internal Medicine at McGill University. He has received a recent award, the first of it's kind from the Canadian Nutrition Society, for his advanced studies in nutritional sciences.
Whether you want to believe it or not, Orthomolecular medicine is mainstream. A past president of the Canadian Psychiatric Association, and medical professors from highly recognized universities from all around the globe are members of the Internations Society of Orthomolecular Medicine, and are strong proponents of orthomolecular medicine, and nutritional research. You cannot get more mainstream than this.
The main problem is that vitamins cannot be patented. Therefore, there is no money to be made in vitamin treatments,
Mainstream medicine is big business, and the big pharmaceutical companies have their own corporate agendas. Therefore, they will not and do not endorse treatments that work if these treatments do not make them a lot of money.
Conversely, psychiatric drugs have a zero % chance of getting people well, and psychiatrists today are very proud of their dismal outcomes. But, they are all raking in huge profits at peoples' expense. They are PROUD of being zero effective in getting people to recover. Its all about the money.
Therefore, orthomolecular medicine, despite its strong scientific evidence which has convinced so many highly esteemed medical professors from around the world, has faced strong opposition from the pharmaceutical industry because it is seen as a strong threat to future profits. Vitamins are cheaper, safer, and more effective than prescription drugs.
"This is an anti-psychiatry thread for people who have been hurt by the mainstream system to voice their concerns and to seek out alternative solutions to help them improve their health. Treatment options like nutrition, and vitamins, yoga, meditation, etc. are welcome to be discussed."
Thanks GP.
I discovered at a young age that it is very easy to lock people up who are acting out, the why of the acting out seems not important, the medications for the acting out are important and they have side effects. IMV it is not about the health of our society, it is about the control of our society.
I think that Ennir has summed it up the best of anyone on this thread.
What I liked about Dr. John Breeding's videos I posted above is that he says pretty much the same thing. He says that when people talk about mental illness as being biochemical or genetic, it places the blame on the individual and drugs are the treatment for biomedical problems. This way, people don't have to face issues like violence in the home or in school or people not wanting to conform to societal norms. Mental illness does not become an issue of distress to societal problems which need to be addressed like racisim, sexism, homophobia, etc., but rather are personal bio-chemical imbalances in need of direct chemical intervention.
Perhaps. the Science-Truthers might want to back off, no???
They could back off, or they could produce some credible data to back up their constant baseless assertions. Or perhaps I should say, assertions based on mysterious authority? Still waiting on that.
I've cited the following article at least three times now, and neither Sineed nor any other so-called advocate of evidence-based medicine has come up with anything to say about it:
Researchers have long sought to understand what may be the most perplexing finding in the cross-cultural study of mental illness: people with schizophrenia in developing countries appear to fare better over time than those living in industrialized nations.This was the startling result of three large international studies carried out by the World Health Organization over the course of 30 years, starting in the early 1970s. The research showed that patients outside the United States and Europe had significantly lower relapse rates — as much as two-thirds lower in one follow-up study. These findings have been widely discussed and debated in part because of their obvious incongruity: the regions of the world with the most resources to devote to the illness — the best technology, the cutting-edge medicines and the best-financed academic and private-research institutions — had the most troubled and socially marginalized patients.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/magazine/10psyche-t.html?pagewanted=5&...
This was the startling result of three large international studies carried out by the World Health Organization over the course of 30 years, starting in the early 1970s. The research showed that patients outside the United States and Europe had significantly lower relapse rates — as much as two-thirds lower in one follow-up study. These findings have been widely discussed and debated in part because of their obvious incongruity: the regions of the world with the most resources to devote to the illness — the best technology, the cutting-edge medicines and the best-financed academic and private-research institutions — had the most troubled and socially marginalized patients.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/magazine/10psyche-t.html?pagewanted=5&...
Puzzling or profitable?
As an aside, the women's shelter movement was once very political but that, with funding and the shift from grassroots to government control, changed to pathologizing women, they have issues of self esteem, they make bad choices, they are depressed, they have a chemical imbalance, anything rather than address the reality of a profoundly misogynistic society.
Puzzling or profitable?
As an aside, the women's shelter movement was once very political but that, with funding and the shift from grassroots to government control, changed to pathologizing women, they have issues of self esteem, they make bad choices, they are depressed, they have a chemical imbalance, anything rather than address the reality of a profoundly misogynistic society.
It took a lot of lobbying and mobilizing at the grassroots level to force governments to make these funding decisions. It did not just happen nicely nor quietly. There is still a lot of denial about violence against women, and government cutbacks to funding these services is an ongoing threat, as well as men claiming reverse discrimination about being not allowed to provide counselling to battered women. These threats are ongoing.
How do we get people to see psychiatry as not being "science based" in what they do, but rather see it as a historically white male institution resorting to torture to harm people they see as as being different from themselves? How do you get nursing students to question what they learn in school so that they do not want to enable these activities? How do you get people ANGRY at the attrocities that are being committed?
As long as people believe in the "science" myth, thinking that science is somehow divinely pure and etched in stone, you are not going to shake the foundations of psychiatry. You are not going to get people to care because somehow, somewhere, "science" makes these attrocities all legitimate.
Another myth is that if something better comes along, it will get incorporated into the mainstream. How many psychiatrists today want to admit that they are experts on nothing? Will they really admit that what they learned in university is bogus crap? And, if they admitted that what they learned is garbage, think of all the lawsuits? Psychiatry will NEVER admit that they made a mistake. No branch of mainstream medicine will ever admit that they made a mistake.
They would rather fry peoples' brains, cause irreversable neurological damage, chemically lobotomize people who challenge societal norms, anything but admit the brutal and heinous truth.
How do you get people angry? How do you get people to care?
There should be a special circle of hell for people who sell expensive, ineffective remedies to desperate people.
I agree totally with this statement. I have been convinced for sometime that if I had gone to school now instead of in the 1950's someone would have tried to drug me. As it was instead of being turned into a zombie I got the best marks in class while pissing off teachers for being disruptive because I was bored.
Figures compiled for The Globe and Mail by IMS Health, an independent firm that tracks pharmaceutical sales, show prescriptions for Ritalin and other amphetamine-like drugs for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder shot up to 2.9 million in 2009, a jump of more than 55 per cent in four years.
More than two million were written specifically for children under 17 - a leap of 43 per cent since 2005 - and at least 75 per cent of them were for young males - a ratio some see as evidence that society is making a malady of boyhood itself.
"What if we were drugging girls at the same rate?" asks Jon Bradley, education professor at McGill University. "What if [the majority]of these prescriptions were being written for girls? There'd be a march."
The figures seem to suggest a spike of epidemic proportions. But an analyst with IMS Brogan, a division of IMS Health, says the four-year snapshot is emblematic of a drug category that for more than a decade has surged annually in Canada by 10 to 13 per cent. While total prescriptions, worth $249-million, do not represent the number of people taking the drugs, a per capita breakdown of daily doses shows a similar escalation.
"It certainly suggests the drugs are being abused," says Gordon Floyd, president and CEO of Children's Mental Health Ontario. "There's a desire for the quick fix … the idea that - 'oh, we'll fix this with a pill' - rather than spend a few months in counselling, is pretty appealing."
http://m.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/time-to-lead/failing-boys/par...
Glad to see this thread is back on track. Thanks for speaking out.
Oh for fuck sakes.They even have ritual satanic abuse.
Right... next time someone I know goes for a cupping treatment I'll tell them to make sure they don't get set on fire.
Where's the page for people getting bandages and instruments left inside themselves while in surgery? Or getting the wrong kidney taken out? Or being given the wrong medication, or not being told about side effects. After all, isn't forgetting stuff like that a lack of critical thinking as well?
And if we want to get back to psychiatry, then there's the things that some medical doctors actually thought (and think) work like wholesale lobotomies, castration, hysteria treatments and drugging people into submission.
one of those harmed by the non-application of the scientific process? one of those not helped by following evidence based treatment?
I would like people to carefully comb through what I have posted on this thread. I have delved into vitamins for arthritis, but I have not made this into a vitamin thread. In fact, exactly the opposite. I mentioned how Dr. Hoffer said that our existing healthcare system is sick. I have highlighted the lack of experience that psychiatrists have in womens' lives but that they claim expertise and have the power and influence to be experts on womens lives in a court of law. I have highlighted the non-science behind the psychiatric drugs that psychiatrists give to people.
And despite all these people who are somehow 'experts' on vitamins but who don't take them, and have never read anything about Hoffer or anything orthomolecular, they still feel free to dismiss the work Hoffer did as being non-science, and alternative. They are still insisting on and redefining my life as being an 'extraordinary claim' implying that my recovery did not happen, and that the one success story of a boy who starved himself to the point where his nervous system completetly shut down and the doctors who were going to leave him paralyzed and I told his mother to bring the vitamins in to the hospital and that got his nervous system up and running again after six weeks, that this is a broad statement that 'VITAMINS CAN CURE ALL PARALYSIS' is absolute rubbish.
The casual 'know it alls' who have never bothered to take the time to actually research anything orthomolecular and the expert 'skeptics' who have read even less are usurping this thread with the hopes of shutting it down again.
Someone earlier on mentioned that vitamin treatments is just feeding the capitalist system. I would like to add that when a person goes to a grocery store and buys milk, bread, meat, vegetables, and other groceries, that they are feeding the capitalist system. The purchase and sale of goods is exactly what the capitalist system is about.
I mentioned vitamins simply because they worked for me ON A TOTALLY DIFFERENT THREAD, I might add. What I find most offensive is that people who are on toxic drugs, drugs which are causing extensive long-term damage, and drugs which do not have a valid scientific basis to their use except that they chemically lobotomize people are given these treatments as the only option available. Safer and more effective alternatives , the ones consistently being shot down by the 'experts' and 'expert skeptics' on this thread and on one other thread previously, and the medical doctors who have not had any real training in them (I hour in fact) can call themselves experts on vitamins (just like psychiatrists who have had two pages of reading on the emotional lives of women are regarded as 'experts' on womens lives) can and will sabotage people wanting to try these alternatives for themselves.
There is also no accountability for psychiatrists. They are free and justified by the establishment for using these torture treatments, treatments which have no proper science to justify their use, and the general public is totally indifferent.
Jas included all kinds of information that highlights the cultural bias in diagnosing and treating mental illness. If any of this was scientifically 'pure' there would not be any cultural differences at all. Lynn Payer wrote a book called, Disease Mongers. Her book is about medicine in general. She shows cultural biases in many different areas of medicine and how the 'science' reference to medicine is really a myth. Dr. Michael Rachlis, author of Strong Medicine and Second Opinion has said that medicine is more of an art than it is a science.
I think these armchair big shots had better start to show threads like this a little more respect, if not for themselves, then for those who are seriously concerned about these issues, the ones who have to live with the horrors of existing treatments, and let people work out solutions for themselves without the same ones sabotaging the discussions.
There is nothing spurious about orthomolecular medicine. People who agree with this premise are ones who have never taken the time to research it, and do not speak from knowledge nor experience. To make such a broad claim makes me out to be a liar and everyone else who has benefitted from it a fraud and a liar. It is also shamefully disrespectful to highly esteemed scientists, and the leaders in their fields of study.
There have been wild accusations shot around aggressively that Dr. Hoffer was a quack, and anyone who supported nutritional based medicine is a quack. Dr. Linus Pauling was a Nobel Prize winner for his contributions to medical science. He is the holder of 28 Honourary Degrees from some of the most respected academic institutions in the world. When he found out about Orthomolecular medicine, he put his name behind it because the science DOES add up and all the numbers DO add up.Dr. Hoffer is the first person ever to conduct controlled studies in psychiatry, he is the only doctor known who has an undergraduate degree in nutritional sciences, he practiced successfully for over 50 years without discipline, and he had a two and one half year waiting list just to be able to get in to see him. Yet, people with admitted no backgrounds in science can insult the credibility of these scientists by making wild and fallacious claims that somehow their numbers do not add up.
There have been repeated wild allegations on this thread and on the anti-psychiatry thread that vitamins are toxic and dangerous. The real numbers, the real facts that I supplied repeatedly have proven that the exact opposite is the case.
Then I had to watch in horror that LD50 testing was actually discussed as to whether it is a real scientific test or quackery. The leaders in medical research from around the world conducted these studies and raced for the presteige for actually isolating these vitamins, and people today can glibly, without any knowledge of the history, question their scientific integrity.
Then there were the wild accusations that repeat studies have debunked all of Hoffer's claims. When I pointed out that all the repeat studies had totally different methodology than the original studies and were set up to fail, this somehow went over everybody's head. These repeat studies with radically altered methodology were somehow valid, but Hoffer's claims were quackery. No one ever bothered to research this for themselves. They just bludgeoned along with the same wild accusations as if truth and integrity is somehow not relevant in medical research.
Then there were the wild accusations that Dr. Hoffer did not do any controlled studies. Then I had to supply the truth that Dr. Hoffer in fact conducted the very first controlled studies in psychiatry anywhere.
Then came the wild accusations that anyone who claims to have benefitted from nutritional medicine is a liar. Some of the people making these accusations provided anecdotes that members of their family were depressed, and we are expected to accept their word as fact, but anything which comes out in support of nutritional medicine has to be spurious.
Then came the wild allegations that vitamin doctors are a money racket. The reality is that none of them endorse any product line and have not gained through the distribution of vitamins. Dr. Hoffer said that the cheapest vitamins are the best ones to buy. Other doctors get kick backs from the pharmaceutical companies for prescribing their drugs. Orthomolecular doctors do not get any such endorsements, but the orthomolecular doctors are the "racketeers".
Then came the wild allegations that vitamins are of no health benefit, but are a waste of money. I laid out all the resources which show that yes, they do have therapeutic benefit, and that high dosages are required but this information is somehow less relevant than peoples' own knee jerk uneducated feelings about vitamins. The research that these men conducted and the results they received are somehow to be dismissed as inconsequential. The living testimony of at least 10,000 people who have used them successfully means absolutely nothing to people. This level of denial tries to make liars out of very many people.
Maintream doctors, on the other hand, are the "experts" on vitamins. They have had 1 hour of formal training in nutrition in medical school. That qualifies them to speak so authoritively. People listen intently on every word they have to say.
Some antidepressants are simply toxic remodifications of vitamin molecular formulas. These are valid to consume, but vitamins are not.
Chlorpromazine was designed as an antihistamine but was too toxic for general use. In order for the company to make money, they then sold the product to the psychiatrists who lobbied governments to enact laws which gives them full jurisdiction over prescribing them because of their dangerous chemical lobotomizing properties. The drug company financed this lobbying. This is not science, but people are conspicuously silent on this issue.
Psychiatrists had a study which proved that incest occurred in 1 in 1 million families and this was taught in psychiatry textbooks. Psychiatry students studied at most two pages on the emotional lives of women, but psychiatrists are recognized as the supreme experts on womens' lives and will testify in court whether a woman is lying or telling the truth. This is somehow recognized as valid science.
Dr. Hoffer and his team of medical doctors found the root cause of schizophrenia and mental illness. He can explain in great detail the chemical reactions which take place in the body to produce those effects. Mainstream psychiatrists today say that it is a "chemical imbalance". After 60 years of their own supposed research, they cannot explain to you what really does take place to cause mental illness. Yet, no one questions why with all their research money that they have no answers to show for their science at play.
This IS an anti-psychiatry thread. It IS for people who have suffered at the hands of psychiatry. It is NOT a thread for people who may work in psychiatry, nor is it a thread to throw wild accusations at anything they see as being different. These same wild arguments keep coming up from thread to thread. The points of the dissenters has been made, and they keep rehashing repeatedly.
I would like to nicely ask that people who have not suffered from psychiatry to please show a little more discretion and respect for the views they see as being different from their own.
Steve Jobs died of cancer when perhaps he didnty have to but he delayed treatment for a year using homeopathic rememdies instead
Tb isnt wrong in that
No matter who a person is, or what status they have in life, there are a few things people do which are common to all...
People eat, they drink water, they sleep, they poo, and they go through stress in life. We take in nutrients, and we use these materials to build and repair. We were designed since the very beginning to be self healing and self correcting when given the proper materials to do so. When we are hot, we drink more because our body requires more fluids. When we are under stress or are sick, our nutritional requirements grows. When the bodys' nutritional needs exceeds the level of nutrients being brought in, that is when problems arise. That is when we get ill.
Vitamins are "vital" "amines". They are amines that are what??? VITAL to the maintenance of good health. Supplying the body with VITAL AMINES and a change in diet which improves nutrition is VITAL for repairing the body to normal health.
Some people are sicker than others. Some need some amines while others need others. Everyone has different needs based on health, age, stresses in life, and length of illness. Some will recover fast, while others can take years to fully recover. Some require very high dosages of vitamins to get well while others require very little. Each person is UNIQUE.
You cannot have 1 hour of formal training and be an expert in this. The very idea is totally ludicrous. There is NO one stamp fits all methodology. It takes years of training to learn, and those who do use this method DO get well, and the numbers DO add up.
People do not get depressed because they have a deficiency in anti-depressant. Then why do we expect them to workÉ
In order to get well mentally, you have to get at the root cause. If doctors don`t even know what the root cause is, how can we expect them to get us well. All they can do is partially mask symptoms.
We eat, we drink, we poo, we sleep, we go through stress. Vitamins are vital amines. They have a molecular structure that our body understands how to utilize them, and they are safe. In the proper high doses,, and if used for the proper length of time, they work along with a change in diet. Nothing else does. Diet alone does not work.
Homeopathy was never addressed in this thread by me. Cancer has a very high mortality rate. Mainstream treatments like chemotherapy and radiation have excessively high mortality rates, so your point is what...so it is OK if Steve Jobs died of cancer using conventional therapies...and the alternative is what...what is the point...people die of cancer period.
I think everyone wishes that there were better stats out there for cancer. I do not know anything at all about homeopathy. It is SW that has added that subject to this thread.
I think that the major criticisms of mainstream cancer treatments are that they are all dangerous and that they do not have successful survival rates themselves. Radiation is a carcinogen all by itself. Chemotherapy uses toxic chemicals and poisons to kill the cancer, but it has disasterous consequences for the patient as well who is sick to begin with. Cancer needs air to spread, and surgeries expose the flesh to open air, and some have argued that this is what causes cancer to metasticize so quickly.
With the billions of dollars flooding into the Canadian and US Cancer Societies for cancer research annually, why after all these years, can they not provide better outcomes?
I believe that this is more important than Steve Jobs using homeopathy. Maybe Steve did not want all the pain from existing treatments and all the toxic side effects which come with mainstream treatments. There is something to be said about quality of life vs quantity of life.
Only his family will really know.
Bacchus,
I am sorry if I came across as being snarky in post #107. My question mark blew up, and I was making do without. I had to restart my computer to get it back.
Suzanne Sommers wrote a book called Knockout: Interviews with Doctors who are Curing Cancer and How to Prevent Getting it in the First Place. In this book she writes the following:
The same can be true for mental illness. It is lacking in science, and too many people are making too much money by hurting people.
I do like the quirkiness of Sir Ian McKellen's decision not to have his particular prostate cancer treated
because the cure would give him incontinence and erectile dysfunction, and the threat of death be damned that's a deal breaker
theres a certain kinship mental health consumers might feel for those that recieve knee-jerk chemotherapy, where the cancer is gone but they now have no immune system and each subsequent infection is a nail in their coffin. I like that cancer treatments have improved so much in the last 30 years, pity the advanced technological scans have done little to answer questions in the mind.
Yes and thank goodness there are only 180 some-odd countries with lower rates of cancer than Canada and USA. We won`t be owning the podium in that category soon, either. One Canadian dies of cancer every few minutes in this country.
The capitalist system is not only broken since decades ago, the toxic to humans economic system kills millions of people around the world every day by poisoning the air we breathe, the water we drink and food we eat. This is the real conspiracy. The toxic economic system prioritizes profit before people always. And there is little short term profit in doing basic research.
ECT is Barbaric Cruelty.
Here is a webpage I found which details how ECT, Electro Convulsive Therapy, which is used in alarming numbers as a so called valid treatment for depression causes permanent brain damage...
Electro Convulsive Therapy, A Crime Against Humanity~!
Here is a quote from this article:
It certainly seems like a barbaric practice, but I've heard conflicting reports. G. Pie/G. Muffin, who used to post here, said although she hated the treatment, it worked for her.
A friend's brother had it done during an acute pscyhotic phase and, although she was horrified at the idea, she claims it worked for him. I guess he consented to the treatment, as he did it a few more times. That was at least a decade ago.
Speaking of which... I came across these quotes yesterday in a search for stats regarding chemotherapy vs. no treatment. Admittedly, these have been spammed across every natural and alternative health site on the internet, but presumably the quotes are real:
PS: reposting this here, where it's a little more on topic.
Actually, the only reason I brought it up in post #91 was to point out that I could sympathise with someone wanting to simply let others know about their experiences and about alternative therapies without hearing the same dismissals we are familiar with, and have all heard countless times.
Thank you for including your personal testimony of homeopathic treatments. I am someone who is totally ignorant of homeopathic medicine. So when I hear about someone who has had a positive experience from it when they were not able to get satisfaction from mainstream doctors, it makes me happy to learn how things worked out so well, especially for a little girl.
Yes, I do find it frustrating to read about these ongoing dismissals. Some people merely voice their opinions, but others have made it a point to to be very adament and to make the very same arguments repeatedly. I was expecting some kind of discourse, but nothing to the extent I have experienced on these two threads.
What I find most frustrating is that I have not been able to connect with people about the importance of vitamins. Some have made statements that they believe that diet and proper nutrition have a very important role in physical and mental health, but vitamins somehow are not included in that formula.
Nutritionists have been able to flourish as a legitimate science for many years, but they have had to cowtow to the dictates of the Canadian Medical Association to have any validity. Everything they learn in school has been carefully supervised by the CMA, and it has to conform to their objectives. For Instance, nutritionists follow Canada's Food Rules, where people must consume food from each of the food groups to get their proper RDA's or (required dietary allowances). They believe that a proper diet gives people their proper nutritional needs, and that vitamins are a waste of money.
Nutritionists and nursing students who take classes in nutrition believe what they learn in school. They believe in the purity of science and that these scientific principles have been meticulously and thoroughly researched , otherwise they would not be included in the textbooks. They somehow cannot get their heads around the reality that factoids and non-science has crept into their textbooks in places and that not all of it is based on pure scientific principles, and that these factoids are causing people real harm. For instance, most people believe that vitamin C causes kidney stones. There has been no research anywhere to show this to be true but it can be found in many textbooks, and people will blank face quote this from their textbooks as though it is divine fact. Vitamin C actually helps to dissolve kidney stones because it is an antioxident, and people who have kidney stones and need to be taking it are not because of this factoid.
Orthomolecular Medicine is different from what nutritionists do. They feel that there are foods which make people feel unwell. These foods should be avoided. Orthomolecular psychiatrists do not overgeneralize, but they have found sugar, grains, and dairy to be the worst culprits. Eggs, chicken, apples, oranges, red meat, and rice have also causes problems for some people. Everyone is unique, and some people can eat grains and dairy while others cannot. Grains and dairy are two essential food groups in Canada's Food Rules, and this runs contrary to what nutritionists value as being essential.
The second difference is that orthomolecular doctors know that nutritional deficiencies have a direct link to ill health, and that when someone is ill, food alone will not fill the void. Vitamins are essential for achieving and maintaining proper health. The more serious the illness the more essential vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and essential fatty acids become to restoring health, and the higher the dosage levels need to be prescribed. These dosage levels far exceed the RDA's. Vitamins are the key ingredients missing.
The third difference is that orthomolecular medicine does not recognize RDA's. Nutritional needs are not set in RDA levels but are defined by the health and uniqueness of every individual person. These needs are arbitrary and will vary from person to person.
Both nutritionists (dietitians) and orthomolecular doctors believe that junk food is bad and that people need to change their diets to turn around their health. Nutritionists believe that diet alone is all that is required, whereas orthomolecular doctors supplement diets with the proper levels of vitamins as well. Nutritionists like all the food groups. Orthomolecular doctors support people eating foods which are nutritious and healthy and foods which do not make people sick, and that could include eliminating entire food group categories.
So when people make these blanket statements that vitamins are a waste of money, they are merely reciting mainstream medicines' orthodoxy, and quite possibly what they learned themselves in college or university.
I just wish that people would be able to take a step backwards for a minute and try to think outside the box. The mainstream orthodoxy did not get it all right, and they do not base everything on pure science either. If every medical doctor, nurse, or nutritionist started questioning everything they learned in textbooks as they were learning, first of all, they would not be able to graduate. They would not have time to actually absorb the material they paid good money to learn because they would be too busy digging into primary source referencing looking for the proof of every scientific conclusion.
Secondly, their brains would explode. All this contradictory information would boggle the mind because there is so much controvery behind so many medical positions that the brain simply could not sort through all the chaos.
Very little in medical science is all black and white, and we have to stop acting like it is.
There are many legitimate critiques to be made of medicine. I'm currently reading a book called, Bad Pharma by the English doctor and writer Ben Goldacre, that explains how medical research has been, and continues to be, badly done in the service of the profits of the pharmaceutical industry.
But the sins of the pharmaceutical industry - and they are legion - is a separate issue from science. For instance, for homeopathy to work, physics, chemistry, and human physiology would all have to be completely different from what they are. Many homeopathic products are so dilute, it is a statistical improbability that a single molecule of the purported active medicine is left in the homeopathic product. If homeopaths were correct in their assertion that "water has memory," we would be poisoned every time we took a drink.
And yes; orthomolecular medicine has also been discredited.
If one believes that fraudulent methodology is valid, then and only then can one make that claim.
If an original study shows that taking 1000 mg of vitamin C a day for 6 months can reduce colds by 50%, and the repeat study uses instead only 60 mg of vitamin C a day for three weeks and then claim that the orginal finding was invalid, then one cannot in good conscience make any such claim, yet people do. The repeat study amounts to a 94% reduction in the daily dosage for an 87.5% reduction in the duration the study was carried out.
Repeat studies debunking orthomolecular claims are set up to fail.
Orthomolecular medicine has never been legitamately discredited. Sorry~!
Sineed,
SW explained how his daughter was helped by homeopathic treatments. SW says himself that the science behind it is lacking or is still in progress, but that it works.
Why do we have to hear from you again about the lack of science behind homeopathy?
To me, and to most people, the important issue is that his daughter got well.
I also believe SW when he mentions that his daughter got well. That is automatic, and nothing else would even entertain my mind. But this is not the case with some of you. Some have had the outright gaul to claim that positive experiences are false, and not once but many times over and over again.
Are you implying that because there is no science to back it up that his daughter did not get well?
Are you implying that when mainstream medical procedures do not work that a person should simply suffer and not look for alternative options?
Why?
(edit)
We had a medical doctor from England at the clinic I go to. She also took training in homeopathy and used it from time to time in her practice. Do you think that even though she is a qualified medical doctor that she is less of a scientist for taking courses in homeopathy?
I looked up on Dr. Abram Hoffer's son, and he is a professor of Internal Medicine at McGill University. His bio is included below...
John L. Hoffer
Here is a website showing Dr. L. Hoffer receiving an award for his contributions to nutritional medical research...
(edit)
It is so comforting to know that McGill University, the Jewish General Hospital, Brandeis University, MIT, and Harvard University have all lowered their academic requirements and scientific standards to allow such a medical infidel to study at their schools of medicine, to teach university medical students and to perform advanced medical research on nutrition.
(edit)
Oh yes, this award was given by the Canadian Nutrition Society.
CODEX ALIMENTARIUS: International Laws Making Vitamins and Nutritional Supplements Illegal The Canadian government has signed laws designed to put Canada under Codex Alimentarius laws. CODEX ALIMENTARIUS Based on this website, this law will put in place the following:
Chief doctor claims that nutrition has no role in health?
Another Website on Codex Alimentarius:
This is what happens when you let giant cartels: big agra like herbicide and pesticide producers, genetically modified food producers, and big pharma tell you how to think.
It has never been the publics' interest to refer to vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and essential fatty acids as toxic and poisonous. These are molecular structures that were created by the universe before people ever walked the earth and were deemed good and essential for life. Now, they are legally labelled as toxic poisons.
The real toxic poisons on the other hand, the herbicides, the pesticides, the genetically modified food, the animal growth hormones, and the prescription drugs like thalidomide, voix, chlorpromazine, haldol, prozac, zoloft are deemed to be healthy and essential for good health.
Orthomolecular medicine has always claimed that vitamins are cheaper, safer, and more effective than patented pharmaceutical drugs. I believe that this is why the major cartels are using these international laws to ban the products because they pose a massive threat to their profits.
The third website on the previous post stated that the Codex Alimentarius Laws are going to permanently destroy ancient ways of healing from other cultures.
Garlic is going to be classified as a toxic drug. Bad breath is going to be illegal from now on. No more peppermint either. That too is toxic, unless it is found in a patented pharmaceutical product with a heavily marked up price.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/medical/vitamins.asp
they make a point at the bottom to say "the Council" has no specific power or mandate to regulate vitamins et al.
but when you go to the Council's page they have no problem saying "if you want to know what to do, you come and see us."
The critical work of developing health strategy is taking shape under
the direction of the Council. - "everything" is pretty non specific I guess
Effective interventions are anticipated to fall into five major categories: (1) policy,
(2) systems change, (3) environment, (4) communications and media, and (5) program
and service delivery. Federal agencies have many tools and assets in each category at
their disposal.
there is an Advisory body connected to the Council comprised of non-pharma indentured health care professionals who's advice the council will summarily ignore. maybe there the ones with "no specific power or mandate"