Dr. Arturo M. Volpe

I don’t know about you, but when I hear all this talk about a bird flu pandemic right at the beginning of the regular flu season, I become suspicious it’s just another ploy to sell more flu shots!

Not only that, but who ever heard of Tamiflu before all this? I guess many people will ask for the drug for the first time this season and apparently some have already started stockpiling it. Another “benefit” of this commercial campaign for Tamiflu is that side effects didnít even need to be mentioned, nor the fact that it – and other, similar medications – have a very poor record of effectiveness. They have also not been proven to help with the bird flu, but I guess that in an emergency who needs proof?

I am not saying that bird flu concerns are entirely fabricated, and certainly measures being taken to limit its spread are appropriate, but we need to realize that this virus was first identified in 1997 and to date itís still nothing more than a bird epidemic with sporadic human contagion.

Of course this could change and if we look at the history books it is a fact that some of the worst flu pandemics originated in birds. But then there have been many more bird epidemics that never spread to humans. In the past 30 years alone we have had half a dozen predicted pandemics without a single one materializing, a fact that no one seems to remember right now.

Let’s try to separate fact from fiction! The best site I have found for balanced information on this issue with regular updates is http://www.birdfluhype.com/index.html.

An interesting fact I learned from this site is that as of last month there were a total of 121 people confirmed to have been infected with the illness, and 62 died. 121 people since 1997 worldwide sounds like nothing, but the death rate makes it look like the worst flu on record, a real cause for concern. But are these numbers even correct?

According to a little-publicized study from the World Health Organization (WHO) there are thousands of unrecorded human cases of bird flu, possibly as many as 10,000. These were not recorded simply because they were mild cases, sort of like a regular flu, and no fancy tests were done to identify the viral strain. On the other hand there is certainty on the total number of deaths, but while 62 deaths in 121 is very frightening, 62 in 10,000 – or a 0.62% death rate – seems far more routine.

So what should we do about flu shots? As I always say everyone needs to make this decision for him or herself, but I personally never chose to have one. What’s the need? I must admit that the last time I got the flu (I had not been taking my usual dose of Vitamin C) I was not too happy, but then two days later I was enjoying life again!

If you are thinking about getting a flu shot, consider the following:

• It is ineffective against bird flu

• It is laced with a variety of toxins, including mercury, aluminum, MSG and many more

• Its effectiveness against the regular flu is estimated at no more than 60% or so, but this number drops dramatically among the immune-compromised individuals who supposedly need it the most. A recent study showed that, while the number of individuals over 65 taking the flu shot has increased dramatically, the death rate from the flu among the same population has not budged! Read more at http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/influenza/general/news/feb1605elderly.html

For my part, the following are the supplements I use and recommend. With them, I rarely get the flu and when I do I generally recover in a couple of days:

• Vitamin C: the fact that vitamin C can increase our resistance to viruses has been shown in so many studies dating back decades, itís not even worth it for me to quote any. I find that when I take about 1 to 2 grams of vitamin C every day I am not normally vulnerable to the flu. In the rare cases when I have caught it, I increase my intake of vitamin C to several grams every hour and this helps reduce the duration of the illness. Too much vitamin C causes diarrhea, and when I am ill I will take as much as I can handle until I experience this problem. This is called taking vitamin C to “bowel tolerance,” but if you decide to try this be sure to use properly buffered vitamin C.

• Antiviral herbs: I don’t normally take these but I recommend them for people who are especially vulnerable to the flu even with vitamin C. The product I recommend is called ViraCon, which is available only through healthcare professionals. Antiviral herbs work best when taken every day throughout the season.

• Colloidal silver: I recently started recommending a product called Argentyn 23. This product contains less silver than the one I used to recommend and is therefore safer, even for toddlers and small children. You can read about it here http://www.sovereignsilver.info/index.php. Colloidal silver has a long history of use in fighting viruses, bacteria and yeast. It can be very helpful not only to shorten the duration of the flu but also to prevent complications in susceptible individuals. Articles warning of the dangers of colloidal silver that are found all over the Internet refer to products, often homemade, that contain silver particles much larger than the ones found in the Argentyn 23.

• Lauricidin: this is a natural antiviral, antifungal and antibacterial substance first isolated in human breast milk. It is now extracted from coconut oil for commercial use. It is non-toxic and safe for all ages. It can be taken as a preventative or after the onset of symptoms. Read about it at http://www.lauricidin.com/default.asp.

Tags: Viruses
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(summarized by Janice Welch from the article “Healthy Alternative to Conventional Infant Formula” by Marie Bishop, Sally Fallon and Mary G. Enig, PhD in the magazine “Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts,” published quarterly by the Weston A. Price Foundation, Volume 6, Number 2, Pages 18-28)

While government officials and orthodox pediatricians are often appalled at the thought of a parent mixing up baby formula, especially one based on raw milk, the feedback we have received from parents has been extremely positive. Make no mistake though, the best food for baby is breast milk from a healthy mother.

If that is not possible, there should be healthy alternatives to conventional store-bought baby formulas. The following milk-based formula takes into account the fact that human milk is richer in whey, lactose, vitamin C, niacin, and long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids compared to cow’s milk but leaner in casein (milk protein).

The addition of gelatin to this cow’s milk formula will make it more digestible for infants. Use only true expeller-expressed oils in the formula recipe, otherwise it may lack vitamin E.

The ideal milk for baby, if he cannot be breastfed, is clean, whole raw milk from old-fashioned cows, certified free of disease that feed on green pasture. For sources of good-quality milk, see www.realmilk.com or contact a local chapter of the Weston A. Price Foundation.

If the only choice available to you is commercial milk, choose whole milk, preferably organic and unhomogenized, and culture it with a piima or kefir culture to restore enzymes (available from G.E.M. Cultures 707-964-2922).

Tags: Baby Foods, Recipes
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from Janice Welch

Homemade whey is easy to make from good-quality plain yogurt.

First, line a strainer with a clean linen kitchen towel or several layers of cheesecloth. Place 2 quarts of yogurt in the strainer. Cover with a plate and leave at room temperature overnight. The whey will drip into the bowl. Place the whey in clean glass jars and store in the refrigerator. Makes about 5 cups.

To read frequently asked questions and other homemade formula variations visit:
www.westonaprice.org/children/formula-faqs.html

Tags: Baby Foods, Recipes
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from Janice Welch

2 cups whole milk, preferably unprocessed milk from pasture-fed cows

º cup homemade liquid whey (See recipe for whey, below)

4 tablespoons lactose*

1 teaspoon bifidobacterium infantis*

2 or more tablespoons good quality cream (not ultrapasteurized), more if you are using milk from Holstein cows

1 teaspoon regular dose cod liver oil or 1 teaspoon high-vitamin cod liver oil*

1 teaspoon expeller-expressed sunflower oil*

1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil*

2 teaspoons coconut oil*

2 teaspoons Frontier brand nutritional yeast flakes*

2 teaspoons gelatin*

1-7/8 cups filtered water

º teaspoon acerola powder*

Add gelatin to water and heat gently until gelatin is dissolved. Place all ingredients in a very clean glass or stainless steel container and mix well. To serve, pour 6 to 8 ounces into a very clean glass bottle*, attach nipple and set in a pan of simmering water.

Heat until warm but not hot to the touch, shake bottle well and feed baby (never, never heat formula in a microwave oven!). Makes 36 ounces.

* Available from Radiant Life 888.593.8333

Tags: Baby Foods, Recipes
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Anyone who has been following this newsletter for a while will recognize that I am back to one of my favorite topics, vitamin D. The truth is that studies on the benefits of vitamin D never cease to amaze me.

Here I’ll cover two interesting studies. The first one (Nutr Cancer 2005; 51: 32-6) looked at 15 men previously treated for prostate cancer who experienced a recurrence. They were each given 2,000 IU of vitamin D a day for 10 months with no other treatment. Three of these patients experienced a drop in PSA – the blood marker used to monitor prostate cancer progression – while the others experienced an average 75% slowdown in its rate of growth. Quite an impressive finding!

While this is a small study and definitive conclusions cannot be drawn from it, to me it’s enough of an indication to include vitamin D, a completely non-toxic substance, in any type of
treatment strategy for prostate cancer. Not only will it not interfere with other treatments but with vitamin D you only get added benefits!

Considering all that we are learning about this vitamin and its health-enhancing and anticancer effects, I feel that maintaining an adequate status of vitamin D and correcting any possible deficiency is an essential step in maintaining health for everyone.

In the second study (Brain Res Bull. 2005 Mar 15; 65 (2): 141-8) Australian researchers discovered that maternal vitamin D deficiency permanently damages the brains of baby rats.

Unfortunately, supplementing vitamin D to the babies does not reverse the damage.

Although this is a rat study, its conclusions are very likely to apply to humans as well and the authors noted that vitamin D deficiency is very common in young women – an unfortunate consequence of modern society’s sun phobia. In addition, prenatal vitamins do not contain nearly enough vitamin D to correct possible deficiencies.

According to the authors, appropriate sun exposure or supplementation at effective doses could help prevent an as-yet-undetermined percentage of neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders in children.

If you wish to learn more on vitamin D and its benefits, you can search my website for articles I have written in the past about it. You can also go to http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/ for extensive information on vitamin D and regular research updates. The fact is that, while excessive exposure to the sun has its dangers, it only takes a few minutes of daily sun exposure (without sun block) to provide all the vitamin D we need.

Diet is simply not an adequate source of this important vitamin, and most over-the-counter supplements have been designed with insufficient vitamin D because of old misconceptions concerning potential vitamin D toxicity. It seems now that supplementation in the range of 1,000 to 2,000 IU per day is a good starting point but several times this amount may be needed to correct a deficiency.

Tags: Cancer, Vitamin D
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If there is one thing Iíve learned, itís that when it comes to diet and nutrition, what we’ve been told all along is often wrong. One such thing is that to protect our bones we need more
calcium. It makes sense, right? Donít bones contain calcium? But maybe itís not so simple!

What always struck me as odd is that Americans already drink more milk and take more calcium supplements than just about anyone else and yet also have record rates of
osteoporosis and old age fractures. Could we be missing something?

An article recently published in the journal Medical Hypotheses provides a shocking new theory. According to the authors, a number of studies prove definitively that a lower lifetime
intake of calcium is associated with fewer – not more – fractures in old age and that this is not the result of genetic differences!

The authors then theorize that taking too much calcium somehow inhibits the innate ability of bones to heal tiny fractures that happen inevitably with aging. Once the bones lose the ability to repair these minor traumas, more severe ones ensue. (1)

Of course it is important to realize that if the intake of calcium fell below a certain threshold the number of fractures would increase again, so as for everything else in nature, there is
an optimal balance and more is not better. In my opinion this optimal balance not only relates to the total amount of calcium but, maybe even more importantly, to the ratio of calcium
with magnesium and other minerals.

But this is not all. A second article, also recently published in the same journal, points out that there is enough evidence from numerous published studies to recommend a dairy- and
calcium-restricted diet for people who suffer with atherosclerosis, or clogging of the arteries. (2)

Of course, atherosclesoris is calcification – or calcium buildup – that blocks the arteries, and I have always thought it strange that conventional medicine decided to only focus on cholesterol and never even consider that calcium could also be a culprit.

Aside from these articles, researchers are seeing atherosclerosis increasingly as the end result of a chronic inflammatory process in the artery walls. This process eventually leads to
abrasion and damage of the artery itself, which the body patches up by laying down calcium with cholesterol acting as glue.

Osteoporosis itself has been described as the result of chronic inflammation, since the inflammatory process needs calcium to perpetuate itself and ends up leaching it out of the
bones. A classic example of this is gingivitis, or inflammation of the gums, which is known to eventually lead to osteoporosis in the jawbone and loss of teeth.

In this context, calcium is at least a two-edged sword. The calcium you might take to protect your bones could be instead fueling an inflammatory process that will eventually result in
both heart disease and osteoporosis!

My advice is not quite to throw all calcium out of the window, but to take moderate amounts of it with enough magnesium and other minerals as well as trace minerals that actually
have counter-balancing effects and help reduce inflammatory processes in the body.

1. “Lifetime high calcium intake increases osteoporotic fracture risk in old age.” Med Hypotheses, 2005; 65 (3): 552-8

2. “The case for dietary calcium restriction in patients with atherosclerosis” Med Hypotheses, 2005; 65 (3): 521-4

Tags: Calcium, Osteoporosis
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I have often written about the harmful effects of chemicals on health and the importance of detoxification. A recent article provides a thought-provoking account of how pervasive
chemicals have become in our environment and how challenging it can be for authorities to conclusively prove cause and effect and take action in the face of huge commercial
interests. The article can be read in its entirety (although registration is required) at
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20051105/PLASTIC05/TPScience/

It discusses bisphenol-A (BPA), possibly the most ubiquitous chemical in our environment. BPA is classified as a “plasticizer.” It is used to make polycarbonates (clear shatter-resistant plastics), as well as coatings that line food containers, dental sealants and so on. We come in contact with it every day in baby bottles, tin can linings, CD’s, car interiors and the list goes on.

Industry sources continue to hold that BPA is safe. However, many of the studies they quote are more than 15 years old and are the same ones that led to the approval of this
chemical in the first place. These studies found no evidence that BPA leaches in the body only because they were performed before the technology to spot tiny amounts of chemicals was developed.

However, newer studies are not only finding BPA in people, they actually found it in as many as 95% of Americans. New studies are also showing conclusively that BPA crosses the placenta where it is capable of affecting fetal development.

To get an idea of how complicated this research can be, consider that the amount of BPA found in humans is so tiny it is measured in parts-per-billion. However, unlike even the worst of natural poisons, scientists are finding that BPA can have harmful effects even at smaller concentrations than that. In fact, animal studies show that concentrations in the parts-per-trillion range are sufficient to cause harm.

In rat studies, BPA causes an increase in both prostate and breast cancer rates – two cancers that are reaching epidemic levels in our society. In addition, when rats are exposed to BPA early in life they tend to become overweight. Could it be that the dramatic growth of obesity rates is not just a result of more food being available? Finally, rats exposed to BPA during gestation tend to become hyperactive and slow to learn.

When it comes to news like this, it is very difficult to draw any practical conclusions. We simply can’t insulate ourselves from a chemical like BPA, and even if we could there are thousands more everywhere in our lives. There are a few things we can do to help protect ourselves, such as eating well, avoiding chemicals when possible, and being sure we are not deficient in vitamin D.

Tags: Chemicals & Environmental Issues
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by Janice Welch

As we head into the holiday season you can’t help but be bombarded with fragrances in every store or home you enter. The rooms are filled with artificially scented cinnamon,
pumpkin, apple, etc. I don’t wish my home to smell like these places, yet I do yearn for a different smell in my home besides steamed broccoli and cauliflower (my son’s favorite
vegetables). Essence of Cabbage is not my idea of a Holiday Scent.

So in my quest for a delicious natural-smelling house, I have opted for the scents of essential oils. There are many great little oil heaters and ceramic rings for the oils, but none of these fit in well with my personal taste. I love candles. The warmth they add to a room at the holidays is unparalleled in my opinion.

The problem with candles is that 99% of what you find in stores is made from paraffin. Paraffin is the leftover by-product from the petroleum refining process. This petroleum by-product releases harmful carcinogens into the atmosphere when burned. It produces toxic black, sticky petrol-carbon soot, which I am sure you have noticed when a candle is burned next to a white wall. This same soot is also inhaled into your lungs. Couple this with the fact that many wicks are made with lead or zinc, neither of which should be inhaled, and you have your own health hazard.

Now if you find yourself fretting that you will never have the ambiance of a candlelit dinner, don’t despair. There are alternatives. Although I have not found many at stores (Whole Foods has a few), the Internet is full of healthy candle makers. I have ordered 100% soy, palm and beeswax candles and been very pleased with all of them. They all have either 100% cotton or hemp wicks, and they are very clean-burning with no oily soot emissions.

Many of these candles are sold already scented. Steer clear of artificial fragrances; inhaling these chemicals is not good for you either. If you truly want a scented candle try one scented with 100% essential oils. The only problem I have found with these is that they are not good at holding their essential oil fragrance and therefore are not very effective at scenting a room.

So my favorite way to scent a room naturally and enjoy my candles for the holiday season is to create my own scented candle. Simply purchase an unscented, undyed soy candle (or other vegetable wax candle) with a cotton or hemp wick. Burn the candle for at least five minutes or until there is a pool of wax at the wick and snuff out the candle. Add some drops of your favorite essential oils into the melted wax and carefully relight the candle with a match (not one of those powerful handheld lighters; they can ignite the oil). It is very important to add the oil to the melted wax, because the oils are very flammable and will burn immediately if added directly to the flame.

This process lets you control the scent and the strength of the scent every time you light the candle. My favorite combination this time of year for my living area is equal drops of
cinnamon, clove, and peppermint oils.

Citrus oils are the easiest to burn, so you may want to stick to only the spicy and minty scents for candles. But feel free to use citrus or any of the essential oils in other simple
ways. For instance, add some drops to a cotton ball and drop in the bottom of the wastebasket, or in your dresser drawers, or add some drops to an old (but clean) washcloth and put it in the dryer with your clothes. Happy Scenting!

Tags: Chemicals & Environmental Issues, Recipes
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I know that most people think cataracts are just a normal part of aging and can only be corrected by surgery, but this is another myth that should be dispelled. In fact, studies have long correlated excessive intake of sugar and other carbohydrates with cataracts, especially when these happen early in life. For more detailed information on this, I suggest you go to www.nancyappleton.com and also consider reading her book “Lick the Sugar Habit.”

A recent study analyzed data collected in connection with the Nurses’ Health Study and also concluded that there is a direct correlation between the development of cataracts and the amount of carbohydrates in the diet. Interestingly, this study did not find that sugar was any worse or better than other carbohydrates and the only correlation was with total carbohydrate consumption – another good reason to consider limiting carbs in a sensible way! (1)
Read More »

Tags: Cataracts
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I have been preaching this for years but, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. So if you have a few minutes and the topic interests you, click on this link and watch a video of a child and his parents taped at his school: http://www.childrenscornerschool.com/video/jonathandiet2.wmv

Tags: ADD/ADHD, Diet
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