Great Health In Tough Times

Big Pharma vs Compounding and You, Part 2

Otis J — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 20:48:49 -0400

Mike. Belcher, RPh, continues his discussion of Big Pharma's attack on compounding pharmacy, which I consider to also be an attack on our health and our freedom.

When news of Wyeth’s Citizens Complaint was made public, political action organizations began popping up like wild fire. Consumers, physicians and pharmacists deluged the FDA with over 70,000 comments against Wyeth’s actions. Resolutions were introduced in Congress admonishing the FDA for its role in restricting the use of bio-identical hormones. In spite of the negative publicity, in January 2008, the FDA ruled that estriol (one of the primary estrogens used in BHRT) was “a serious threat to the public health”; and because the FDA had never approved a product containing estriol, the agency designated estriol as a new investigational drug. This action required that physicians who wish to prescribe estriol obtain an investigational new drug application before a pharmacy could compound with the drug. The implementation of this cumbersome and expensive process has in effect banned the use of estriol as an unapproved drug. The FDA made this ruling despite decades of use of estriol without a single reported adverse event. An official monograph in the United States Pharmacopeia recognizes estriol, which is a recognized publication by the US Congress and by the profession of pharmacy. Estriol is an approved product in Europe and in fact, Wyeth, at the time the petition was filed, was marketing a product called Cyclo-Menerette in Europe that contained estriol. Estriol is one of the naturally occurring hormones in females and is at it highest levels in the body during pregnancy. Logically how can something that is produced by a properly functioning healthy human body be “a serious threat to the public health?”

Consequences of this action: It sets precedents for the future regulation of compounding by Big Pharma in collaboration with the FDA. One can speculate that anytime Big Pharma feels that the market share of one of their products is threatened by a compounded product, Big Pharma can petition the FDA to regulate the product as it did with estriol. Historically, the FDA has fought for years unsuccessfully to gain the right to regulate compounding pharmacy through legislation and through the court system. Pharmacy has maintained that the practice of compounding pharmacy is regulated through the individual state boards of pharmacy and both the courts and Congress have supported this view with pharmacy. The FDA welcomes a new ally in their fight to control compounding pharmacy. Also, the FDA gets a major portion of their operating budget from the fees paid by Big Pharma to get new drugs approved for market. Thus, the FDA may feel pressure to comply with the demands of Big Pharma if they seek to have compounding pharmacy regulated. If Big Pharma and the FDA continue on this path, physicians and patients will have fewer treatment options available to them. Essentially the new rule could be if Big Pharma does not make it, it will not be available. When the FDA moves a drug to an unapproved status or investigational new drug, many insurance companies will no longer pay for the product; and, as a result, the consumer will pay more for the product if they are able to receive the product at all. Also, any physician who continues to prescribe an unapproved product without going through the paper work process of the FDA will be subject to sanctions by the FDA as will any pharmacist that compounds the prescription for the patient and physician. As physicians have fewer treatment options available to their patients due to the more invasive and restrictive regulations of the government and health care industry, the biggest loser ultimately is the patient.

In my next post Mike and I will offer some suggestions about how you can respond using to this challenge in a way that will support your health and your freedom.

Big Pharma vs. Compounding and You

Otis J — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 15:58:54 -0400

Now, after a long pause, we will address what I consider one of Big Pharma's most dangerous threats to our health and our ability to take charge of it. To help us understand and respond to this serious challenge, I have asked Mike Belcher, RPh, a good friend and valued colleague for the past 25 years, to describe this evolving situation and make suggestions about what we can to about it

Here’s Mike:

Is Big Pharma A Threat To Your Compounded Prescription?

Big Pharma is at the heart of corporate America. The individual companies within Big Pharma are in heated competition with each other to gain market share for each of their individual products and in the bigger picture are in competition with all of corporate America for investment dollars from potential stockholders. With only 1% to 10% of all prescriptions dispensed being compounded according to testimony given before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions in 2003, one would assume that a compounded prescription would be no threat to Big Pharma.

A compounded prescription is a prescription that has been ordered by a physician for a product that is not commercially available from a pharmaceutical manufacturer. The compound prescription must be prepared by a compounding pharmacist who formulates the prescription from bulk chemicals into a dosage that is customized to suit the needs of the individual patient. So if between 99 and 90 percent of all prescriptions dispensed are filled with products from Big Pharma, are compounded prescriptions for us a threat to Big Pharma? The logical short answer should be NO! But occasionally the perfect storm is created and the consequences and precedents that were set in the following scenario could be devastating to compounding pharmacies, physicians who utilize compounded products, and the health of their patients who depend on compounded products if similar situations arise in the future. This is it and 22 are we are fired at night if you in the end it tells me that I get this point and in inappropriate amount of resources to open my medical practice and developing my diet of practice have gotten three so far today helmet

This perfect storm began brewing in 2002 and culminated in 2008. In 2002, a study for the long-term use of hormone replacement therapy, which had been conducted by the National Health Institute as a part of the Women’s Health Initiative, was abruptly terminated due to the increase risks of strokes, heart attacks, blood clots and breast cancer experienced by study participants. The drugs that were used in the study were Premarin and Prempro made by Wyeth Pharmaceuticals. Sales of these two products fell from over 2 billion dollars per year in 2002 to about 800 million in 2008 according to Drugs.com – a significant loss of revenue for Wyeth. About this same time period, Suzanne Somers through her book and the publicity she received through the Oprah Winfrey Show sparked tremendous interest in bio-identical hormones. As women began discontinuing their Premarin/Prempro due to the health risks associated with these drugs, they sought out physicians to replace their Premarin with bio-identical hormones (BHRT). In 2005, Wyeth filed a Citizens Complaint with the Food and Drug Administration requesting that the FDA take actions against pharmacies that were engaged in the compounding of bio-identical hormone replacement therapy. Wyeth asserted that the efficacy and safety of the drugs being compounded were not subjected to the same FDA scrutiny as manufacturers were required to comply with and that pharmacies were making false claims regarding the products and mislabeling the products. One can speculate that Wyeth did this in order to protect the dwindling market share of its products. If the competition could be crushed by government intervention, then the sales of their products would return to previous levels.

Mike will continue this discussion in the next post.

Pandemic Update: Cortisol, Part 5

Otis J — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 21:31:00 -0400

Suppose I go to all this trouble to get to cortisol for Dr. Jeffries’ protocol and then don't get the flu? Don't worry, all is not lost! Dr. Jeffries found that physiologic doses of cortisol were useful in treating infectious mononucleosis, shingles, post viral syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome, and pneumonia.

From my personal experience I think it's likely that physiologic doses of cortisol are likely to stop most viral infections if taken early enough. It seems likely that if you go to the trouble to get the cortisol, you will find a use for it even if you never get flu.

Suppose you've done your best to point at this point you still don't have cortisol. What else can you do? In earlier posts to this blog I have written about using vitamin D and vitamin C to stop infections. These will often work and are more likely to work if used together. Some people will feel a need for something more. I am one of them.

Now I'm going to get into the area of sweat equity, an unpopular subject for a lot of people. Big Pharma has conditioned us to believe that in order to be healthy and happy we shouldn't have to do anything more difficult than swallowing one or two or 10 or 20 of their pills. Although Big Pharma has done a good job selling this disinformation, more and more people are getting it that this is a false concept that can have disastrous consequences for many people. So while sweat equity (doing whatever it takes to improve health even though doing so may not be fun) is not yet popular in this country, it is gaining favor all the time. I know so because I see it in more and more of my patients.

Two interventions that some of my patients and I have found to be powerfully effective are in essence testing and the Medical Assistance Program (MAP.). If you can’t get cortisol and want protection beyond what you can get with vitamins C and D, I recommend that you consider learning and using MAP. I have twice stopped infections that way. Essence testing is much less challenging to learn and use than MAP and I believe it can reduce the probability of your getting sick, and if you do get sick, accelerate your recovery.

I intend to discuss these in some detail later on this blog, but those who can't wait can get the information right away by clicking the above links.

And now, at last, at last, we come to some posts from one of my guests, Mike Belcher, registered pharmacist and esteemed colleague, who will give you a heads up on an initiative by the FDA that I consider a major threat to your health and mine. So Mike is up next with some vitally important information about the threat and what you can do to protect yourself.

Pandemic Update: Cortisol, Part 4

Otis J — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 21:00:06 -0400

Getting cortisol can be a challenge, unless you are a patient of mine or have had a consultation with me within the past year. In that case, your biggest challenge will be picking up the phone, calling me, and asking me to prescribe cortisol for you. I will be glad to do so. I might even do it if I haven't seen you within the past year: that would depend on the circumstances of your situation.

Everything I write in this blog is in the educational model and not the medical model. I do not and cannot prescribe for or take medical responsibility for people I have not examined, except in extremely unusual circumstances. In the medical model I do take medical responsibility for my patient. In the educational model I tell you what in my experience works best in response to various health challenges. It is in your responsibility to decide whether you will try the intervention or not. It is certainly best to do this in consultation with a physician who is knowledgeable about the intervention, or at least open to consulting with you if you try it. In the past, such physicians have been extremely scarce, but in the last year I've been hearing about more and more who are willing to work with patients using natural healing approaches. If you don't know such a physician, the best place to look is the doctor finder page on the American College for the Advancement of Medicine website, http://www.acam.org/.

I can't guarantee you will find a physician willing to work with you and prescribe cortisol for you so that you can use Dr. Jeffries' protocol if you need to, but I do believe this is the best place to start. If you don't find what you're looking for, I suggest that you set and hold the intent to find the right physician for you. Intent firmly set and tenaciously held has the most remarkable power to open doors in what appeared to be blank walls. Just be sure you follow every lead that comes up. There is an ancient saying that I have seen proven true time after time: "When the student is ready the teacher will appear."

An important part of Dr. Jefferies' protocol is to take a high potency multiple vitamin and mineral supplement when using the protocol. Of course I recommend that most people take a high potency multiple item and mineral supplement all the time. Please review my recommendations, which you can reach by clicking the multiple vitamin and mineral supplement section on the navigation bar of this blog.

It is important to start the Protocol as soon as you are sure you are getting sick. Once you start, if you get worse or are not nearly symptom-free in 48 hours, you should seek immediate medical attention if you are not already under medical care. If you have a bacterial infection, you'll probably need an antibiotic in addition to the cortisol.

But wait, there's more! Next blog: using Dr. Jeffries' protocol for other infections and what to do if you really can't get cortisol.

Pandemic Update: Cortisol, Part 3

Otis J — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 13:14:00 -0400

We have considered how to use cortisol to stop flu. We will now consider preparations and precautions for using Dr. Jefferies' protocol and how to get the cortisol. Most people will have to overcome two challenges: political and supply.

The political challenge will probably be that most conventional physicians will be concerned, and some will be horrified, to learn that you are taking cortisol. This situation is usually created from the following factors:

What doctors are not up on they are down on. Very few doctors are up on Dr. Jefferies’ protocol or have even heard of it.
What most doctors are up on is the pharmacologic doses of cortisol and unnatural drugs, such as Prednisone, that resemble cortisol. The pharmacologic doses, larger than the normal output of healthy adrenals, can have horrendous side effects and are to be used only in desperate situations. So if a conventional doctor hears that you are taking cortisol, he or she will assume pharmacologic dosing and exposure to risk to devastating side effects.
To most doctors it will not matter that you are taking physiologic doses of cortisol, which have none of the dangerous side effects of the pharmacologic doses and are safe to take indefinitely if needed. Off course, With Dr. Jefferies' protocol you will not need to take the cortisol more than a few days.

Under eustress conditions (the amount of stress that is conducive to health because it stimulates you without overstressing you) healthy adrenals will produce about 35 mg of cortisol per 24 hours. In overstress situations, such as having flu, healthy adrenals may put out up to 80 mg per day. Many people cannot produce these levels because their adrenals have been injured by such things as infection, environmental pollution, autoimmune disease, and chronic overstress. These people are said to have a low adrenal reserve and they are at risk for anxiety, brain fog, fatigue, chronic pain, and impaired resistance to infections, from which it may be difficult or impossible to recover.

Some people find the political challenge daunting. You may want to be prepared with the facts in case you encounter a conventional physician who warns that you will die if you take the doses of cortisol prescribed in Dr. Jefferies' protocol. The facts are readily available in Dr. Jefferies' book, The Safe Uses of Cortisol. If you want to use Dr. Jefferies’ protocol for stopping flu or his protocol for relieving symptoms of low adrenal reserve, I recommend that you read his book, which is available from the bookstore on this blog.

Read enough of the book, particularly the section on treating infections, to believe you will feel secure when confronting a medical authority who doesn't know as much you do about this aspect of adrenal function and the safe use of cortisol in treating infections. You will have prepared yourself for meeting the political challenge associated with using Dr. Jefferies' protocol.

You now need to know how to get the cortisol. I intend to address this in my next blog.

Pandemic Update: Cortisol, Part 2

Otis J — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 22:05:00 -0400

In my most recent post I presented Dr. William McK. Jefferies' protocol for stopping flu. Dr. Jefferies used this protocol successfully with seasonal flu. It has never been tested on the novel H1N1 virus but it seems probable that cortisol would work on it as well.

In describing his patients' response to this treatment, Dr. Jefferies said that clinical responses were striking. Within 24 hours all patients felt much better. Within 48 hours symptoms such as fever, malaise and generalized aching had completely stopped and the patients felt quite well. The initial dose of cortisol was decreased after 48 hours and discontinued after six days. No relapses or complications occurred.

You might think that once Dr. Jefferies published his findings, most doctors would start using his protocol. This has not happened. I have thought a lot about this and it seems to me that two factors may be in play here: the New Golden Rule and that medicine is practiced more like a religion than a science. How does the New Golden Rule operate here? As you probably know, the Rule is, "Who has the gold makes the rules." In this case, Big Pharma has the gold so big Pharma gets to make the rules about what is taught in medical school. They have seem to have purchased this power by giving sufficient sums of money to the heads of departments in medical schools and to medical school professors for traveling around the country lecturing to doctors and saying nice things about Big Pharma’s products.(Sometimes I think my voice recognition program is smarter than I am. It occasionally prints something different from what I said that is better than what I said. Just then, when I dictated "Big Pharma," my voice recognition program printed "Big Harm us." LOL. I needed that.)

You probably will not be astonished to hear that much of what is taught in most medical schools exaggerates, sometimes grotesquely, the benefits of Big Pharma's drugs and understates, sometimes disastrously, the dangers and side effects. To connect a few more dots, no pharmaceutical company can make the billion dollar profits to which they have become accustomed by selling cortisol, which is a natural substance that cannot be patented.

The other factor appears to me to be the science/religion issue. The practice of medicine claims to be a science, but some people observing the system from the inside see it acting more like a religion, in which the medical school professors are the priests and the medical schools are the temples. In most religions, the priests tell the people what God wants them to do and what's going to happen to them if they don't do it. These consequences never sound very attractive. The true believers accept the priests' word as God's word, ask no questions, do as they are told, and all is well, at least for the priests, at least for a while. Skeptics and nonbelievers are likely to be dealt with harshly, particularly if they get results better than those of the true believer.

I hadn't intended to carry on this long about the issue but I think it is this important to your ability to vigilantly watch your back. I will hasten to get on with the process of telling you how you may be able to get cortisol and what precautions you need to take before using it.

Pandemic Update: Cortisol

Otis J — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 11:51:41 -0400

I keep getting overtaken by events. It must have something to do with the accelerating rate of change in the world and the accelerating expansion of awareness in some people. Whatever the cause, I have observed that I must change my short range plans more frequently than I ever have before. In this case, I had planned to begin a series of guest posts from the compounding pharmacist with whom I have worked closely for the past 25 years. Now, because of some information released by the World Health Organization, I believe the pandemic situation is more serious than it appeared and I am about to post the most powerful and accessible response I know. I may decide to post about another response, at least equally powerful, but not nearly so easy to use. Once I get these attended to, I look forward with pleasure to posting the important and interesting information contributed by my guest writer.

According to Yahoo News, information from the World Health Organization is that the H1N1 virus has begun to directly attack the lungs. This direct lung attack is what made the 1918 pandemic so deadly that it killed 600,000 people in this country. Virologists and public health officials had been watching for evidence of this change. Even before WHO reported the direct lung attack, it was predicting a significant probability that the pandemic will explode in September and October. No one knows whether this will actually happen; but the potential for a devastating pandemic is sufficient that I am going to tell you about the simplest, quickest, most powerful intervention I know of that I believe has a high probability of stopping flu within a few days.

I learned this from Dr. William McK. Jefferies through his book The Safe Uses of Cortisol. For 25 years, I have been using Dr. Jefferies protocol for treating Low Adrenal Reserve, a.k.a. Adrenal Fatigue Syndrome. As a result, hundreds of people have gotten their lives back after years or decades of debilitating symptoms including chronic fatigue, severe anxiety, brain fog, hypothyroid symptoms unresponsive to appropriate doses of the correct thyroid hormones, and generalized body pain, particularly low back pain.

Dr. Jefferies learned how to treat flu with appropriate doses of cortisol during a flu epidemic in the 1950s. Here is his protocol.

Cortisol 20 mg four times daily before meals and at bedtime starting at the first sign of infection. Continue this dose until you feel well.
Decrease the dose to 10 mg four times daily for two days
Decrease the dose to 5 mg four times daily for two days, and then stop.

In my next post I intend to tell you what response Dr. Jeffries observed in his patients, precautions you need to take before starting the protocol, and most important of all, how to get the cortisol.

Muscle Testing, Part 4

Otis J — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 11:50:13 -0400

Before we finish this four-part series on muscle testing (applied kinesiology) let's look at one of its uses in responding to in the swine flu pandemic. I decided to do this after reading that the World Health Organization has issued a prediction of an explosion in the pandemic in the next two months.

What I am about to describe to you is a recommendation from Machaelle Wright, Director of the Perelandra Center for Nature Research. She is writing about strengthening the healing process and accelerating recovery from infections by improving the balance in the body's electrical system. In this case, the balance is improved through the use of the electrical patterns of different flower blossoms. The electrical patterns are infused into water, stabilized with brandy alcohol, and the solution is taken as drops on the tongue. There are a number of different solutions, each made from a different variety of flower blossom. Each solution has the ability to repair damage in a particular circuit in the body's electrical system. You discover through muscle testing which circuits need repair and which solutions you need to take to repair them.

Machaelle reports her experience with accelerating healing when she had flu and used the flower essence protocol. I have not had the opportunity to use this treatment for an infection. Both times I have started getting sick in the past two years I have stopped it with the interventions I have already posted to this blog (optimum dose vitamins C. and D.) and two other interventions (the Medical Assistance Program and optimum dose cortisol) which I intend to post about soon. I have used the flower essences and experienced as well as observed good results for other health challenges. I plan to hold the flower essences in reserve in case my first four lines of defense are insufficient for protecting me against flu.

If you wish to have the flower essences option as part of your response plan if you get flu, either swine or seasonal, you will need the book Flower Essences and at least the Basic Essence Set. You may wish to get the Complete Essence Set. It is also very useful to have the DVD, The Human Electrical System and Flower Essences. You may already have it from my recommendation in Part 3. The Essences are useful in a wide variety of health challenges, physical emotional, and mental. If you dodge the flu bullet you will still find many important uses for the Essences. This brings us to the conclusion of our discussion on muscle testing, one of the most effective tools you can use for taking control of your own health.

Calling all applied kinesiologists! I know several people who read this blog are already using muscle testing. I would greatly appreciate your commenting on your experiences, some of which are quite interesting, useful, and would probably be encouraging to others.

Next, I'm happy to bring you a guest blog by a registered pharmacist who will be discussing one of Big Pharma's most dangerous stabs at your back. Of course, there will be suggestions about how you can constructively and effectively respond to this threat.

Muscle Testing, Part 3

Otis J — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 22:49:00 -0400

Changing or discontinuing a drug without appropriate medical consultation can have painful, dangerous, and sometimes disastrous consequences. Always consult a physician and preferably the prescribing physician first. That being said, it is also important to understand that once you have developed your proficiency in muscle testing, using the information you gain can protect you against painful, dangerous, and disastrous consequences of taking a prescription drug that is not right for you or a dose that is inappropriate. 106,000 people die every year in hospitals as a result of taking drugs correctly prescribed and administered. Once you develop your skill at muscle testing, your chances of being among that number in the future are drastically reduced.

Now, let's get on with how to learn how to do it. First of all, learn from a pro, who is also a master teacher and has superb audiovisual materials. This happens to be Machaelle Wright, director of Perelandra. The best introduction to muscle testing is a DVD by Machaelle. It is in an album called The Human Electrical System and Flower Essences. The album contains the muscle testing DVD. The other DVDs in the album contain information about the human electrical system and how to balance it in order to gain the most effective control over one's own health. Even if you never look at the electrical system DVDs, the muscle testing instructions are worth the price of the album many times over. Once you have viewed and understood the instructions on this DVD it would be easier to miss the ground with a stamp of your foot than to be unable to learn and use muscle testing

If you want to get into muscle testing the economy way, and this is really economy because it costs you zip, click here for thousands of dollars worth of information free of charge. If you like what you see and experience using these directions, you'll probably want to get the DVD anyway.

Once you learn the muscle testing skill you'll be amazed at how many ways you can use it. The mother of a child who has gluten sensitivity muscle tests the child in the supermarket to see which foods are safe for him. A patient of mine at a pharmacy tested drugs that I was considering prescribing for her until she found the drug and the dose that would be most beneficial to her. At several hundred dollars per prescription the payback on the $28 cost of the album can be breathtakingly fast.

If you're watching your back because Big Pharma is, muscle testing gives you the eyes in the back of your head, which saves a lot of wear and tear on your neck. It may just save your neck, also.

In my next post I'll talk about how to use muscle testing as part of your preparation to deal with the H1N1 pandemic, which the World Health Organization is expecting to explode in the next two months.

Muscle Testing, Part 2

Otis J — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 21:29:20 -0400

Back again, after a long, unexpected delay. Several things happened: the Phoenix Mission Yahoo Group is showing so much promise for extraordinary healing and generating so much energy that I chose to work on it instead of posting to this blog, my medical practice got unexpectedly and unusually busy and my patients get first call on my time and energy, and I am in an unusually challenging passage on my journey to expanding my own awareness. Through all of this I certainly have not forgotten the Great Health Blog. It kept his calling to me every day for the past three weeks. Now I am happy now to be back to work on it.

I have continued to watch the development of the health-care reform crisis with a mixture of fascination and horror. It is clear to me that the present disease treatment system is unsustainable and increasingly counterproductive. I read a post from Bob Edgar, director of Common Cause, a citizens’ group tracking who in Congress gets paid how much from which special interest groups to do what. The Common Cause report was that since January 1 of this year the health-care industry (Big Pharma, health insurance, and medical device manufacturers) has spent $1 million a day to block any meaningful change in a system that is working really well for a massive transfer of wealth from the American people to the health-care industry, actually the disease treatment industry. When I saw that figure I wondered how much Big Lie could be sold to how many people for $1 million a day. Now I have an answer: quite a lot to quite a few. It may be enough to block any meaningful reform. Even if there is some meaningful reform it's not clear that the result will be an improvement over what we have now, although it is hard to see how it could be worse for the American people or the United States Government.

In the light of what I have seen in the past three weeks I feel that what I am about to tell you about muscle testing is more important than it was three weeks ago. This is because I believe taking charge of your own health is more important than I realized three weeks ago. I continue to believe that your ability to accurately muscle test to see what drugs, supplements, foods, and chemical products are beneficial to your health and which are harmful is one of the most powerful skills for taking charge of your own health.

I intend to post in two or three days the continuation of my instructions for learning to do your own muscle testing.