The June, 2014 edition of Southern Living has just arrived, and it did not disappoint.
Grist for the mill wheels began to turn as I skimmed through the slick glossy pictures. The word “methylation” kept coming to mind. Let’s put our mind to minding it, but first, some requisite spin.
If you do not want to read the following lengthy and informative editorial on some of my perceived concerns about the medical industry and the dangerous overuse of pharmaceuticals, please just skip over to the next Journal entry, Part II, to get right into the presentation on methylation genetics, biochemistry, pathology, and treatment ideas.
Once again, as was seen in last month’s Journal review of the May edition of Southern Living, there are the usual 150 pages, half of which are advertisements. The boss CEO and the Editor need to keep this monthly paper trail going, after all. A casual inspection of the advertisement categories reveals that some of these ads include ones for a few noteworthy pharmaceuticals: 1) Linzess for Irritable Bowel Syndrome, 2) Pristiq (a serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor) for depression, and 3) Humalog KwikPen (a fast acting insulin) for diabetes.
Each drug ad is a full 2 page spread which includes a listing of the numerous serious side effects of each drug; the most notable of which is suicidal ideation for the anti-depressant Pristiq which increases “the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior in children, teens, and young adults.”
Suicidal ideation and behavior in users of this and other classes of antidepressants is not rare. Sociopathic behavior also occurs in users of antidepressants and other psychotropic pharmaceuticals as has been documented in all perpetrators of every mass shooting event since the Columbine High School shootings in 1999.
We are enabling and assisting a horrific trend of violent behaviors with the widespread use of such drugs.
This advertisement goes on to state, “If depression is affecting the way you feel about yourself, treating it may help. Ask your doctor if Pristiq may be right for you.”
Crestone and Beyond wants to offer the consciously conscious reader an alternative viewpoint as to who one may inquire of regarding one’s perceived need for this highly addictive and distorting class of drugs…
…In consideration of the numerous factors which have converged to besiege your conventional medical doctor in today’s extraordinary medical environment, the chances are greater than low to middling that your doctor is also depressed. If your doctor is depressed (you should be able to see the very clues in your doctor which you have also discovered in yourself), then you might consider consulting via alternative healing paradigms of life study and find a more creative rehabilitation plan for the unresolved and suppressed traumas in your life. In finding a practitioner who practices from in-depth approaches to the issues of body-mind-emotion-spirit, you will be led in the right direction of discovery and therapy.
Crestone and Beyond holds forth with one of its favorite health axioms: If you can feel it, you can heal it. Related to this axiom of self healing is another: Disease is the beginning of the healing process. This second axiom carries an important corollary of consideration: one should not dumb down their disease and their healing and their ability to perceive such with so much pharmaceutical tampering that one cannot feel what it is that one must heal. In the well motivated and accountable client all healing is possible.
Going over Fool’s Hill
The usage of pharmaceutically derived neurotransmitter mimics, agonists, and antagonists is a dicey rabbit hole to negotiate without consideration and application of biochemical healing and exploration of suppressed psychic inventory. The ad for Pristiq recommends a simple evaluation by your doctor using the Sheehan Disability Scale (SDS). If your SDS score is such-and-such, you qualify for a Rx.
It’s that simple…just answer these questions and your score will allow your doctor to write your Rx!
Such a simple standard-of-care documentation by your doctor in their impersonal scribing into your electronic medical records suffices to mitigate any malpractice concerns for your doctor should you become suicidal and attempt to kill what hurts you…your precious life. Furthermore, it is most likely that your doctor is far too distracted to offer you any analysis more imaginative than a numerical SDS score.
Most of the doctors prescribing these types of drugs are marginally trained, equipped, and practiced to even superficially discuss the mental and emotional and spiritual dimensions of their patients’ lives. An SDS inventory has been thoughtfully provided to your doctor to assist their busy practices and their shallow capabilities in the treatment of their patient’s buried shadow problems.
This is appalling, and is a very sad statement about the health of our medical industry and those who flock to it for their quick fix needs. Our society is close to losing all resiliency and self reliance. Doctors arrogantly think that they can reactively outsmart the Divine Healing Intelligence which is always present and operative in our lives. Patients arrogantly think they are entitled to anything which is a faster fix than the life-long proactive practice of self accountability.
The anchoring bias of the physician corps and the complacency bias of the consumer corps meet at the point of high chance and gamble.
Perhaps your doctor should take the SDS inventory, at least on an annual basis, and be required to undergo personal therapy as well as advanced training in such. If such a growth oriented mind set were to take hold in the medical industry, we would probably be seeing fewer pharmaceutical ads, and fewer pharmaceutical complications, fewer medical industry related mortalities, and less mass shootings.
On the other hand, the use of natural neurotransmitter precursors for serotonin, dopamine, acetylcholine, and GABA are safe and efficacious, particularly when combined with further epigenetic considerations of one’s lifestyle concerns, expanded natural biochemical support (one important example is to be covered in the presentation on methylation), and the all important psychotherapeutic discoveries and long term resolution of what it is that hurts so bad in one’s life.
It is worth noting that the word “drug” is etymologically derived from the Danish word “drogge” which means herb. Yes, it is true…until the remarkable upswing of pharmaceutical aggression in the 1950’s most drugs were actually derived from plants. In these modern and post modern days most of them now are totally synthetic.
Furthermore, most patients in today’s American medical system are on a concoction of polypharmacy, which is the use of multiple drugs at once; some of which may be given by different physicians in different physician boxes to treat the side effects of the drugs prescribed by some other doc-in-the-box.
This pervasive trend is quite common, and has gone far over Fool’s Hill.
Just how foolish are physicians, and just how dumb and gullible are patients? The American society has fallen sway to a profound brain washing and propaganda campaign created by numerous industry efforts who take advantage of consumerist trends of entitlement for the fast fix and fast pleasures…which, alas, only serve to deteriorate and break things down even further. Just take a stroll through the pages of Southern Living, or any other slick glossy magazine for that matter, and you will see the trends of mainstream America on full display.
Polypharmacy is more common than not in medicated patients above age 50. This practice leads to drug-drug interactions, enhanced drug-nutrient depletions, and drug related morbidities and mortalities. The complications of drug usage are now commonly lethal. By commonly lethal I mean to say that it has been reported in a number of prominent medical (JAMA and others) as well as consumer journals and magazines that it is believed that pharmaceutical complications may indeed be the leading cause of death in our society. You can peruse a summary of some of these publications here.
From my prior study of various states’ Bureau of Vital Statistics, the iatrogenic (doctor related) and nosocomial (hospital or health care facility related) mortalities are never reported. A variety of health advocate experts point to their own analyses that such mortalities are on even par with mortality rates from cardiovascular, cancer, and cerebrovascular diseases, which usually rank at numbers 1, 2, and 3 respectively in any state’s Bureau of Vital Statistics mortality rankings.
You may need some further validation about the dangers which are lurking in the medical system. Please read through this article about the nurse’s worst nightmare. Please, at the very least, take notice of the reported statistics.
The Good Aspect of Conventional Medicine, and More Spin
As the curator of hard hitting editorial on aspects of our social chaos and health concerns, the author of Crestone and Beyond must now dutifully hold forth and close this section of the writing with the requisite Disclaimer which, in this case, is actually related to the goodness and marvels of conventional medicine’s capability in times of urgent and emergent life threatening health problems. The system excels at life saving interventions of the invasive and pharmaceutical varieties. If you need a fast fix for a life or limb threatening condition, you want to go into the medical system quickly and make your presence and problem known. The industry usually does a pretty good job of helping with such.
For all other chronic conditions and for most non threatening acute conditions you should be educating yourself on how to maintain and enhance your health such that you never fall sway to the perceived need for any pharmaceutical tampering with your Divine Healing Intelligence. If you like depersonalized acronyms of the alphabet type, let’s just call this parameter of your human nature your own DHI.
The ongoing life study and evolution of one’s DHI usually solves all problems, and mitigates the rest.
If you are severely depressed, it may be necessary to help you arrest this downturn in your life with the judicious and short term use of pharmaceutical antidepressant therapies. But…simultaneous to this approach, biochemical considerations and creative psychological approaches should hold sway. The antidepressant should be weaned out as soon as possible as more natural therapies and life growth orientations are explored and developed.
This same approach should be applied when considering any type of pharmaceutical use for any type of disease. Even insulin dependence can be reduced in most cases if life style adjustments can be made. Please keep in mind that insulin is a significant pro-inflammatory molecule.
Some of the useless and pointless curricula currently being offered in all of our of institutions of learning should be thrown out and supplanted with course works which highlight how to develop and maintain human health and happiness from a holistic perspective. This is a much needed and vitally important kind of education which should be enjoined at institutional levels of learning. The true “alternative medicine” can then become the conventional medical industry, should we then need it.
Here is a 4 minute video published by USA Today just 4 days ago which encapsulates all of the above in some real life stories. This short documentary is indeed a tough pill to swallow. It is happening everyday…everywhere…in American society.
A proactive practice of self accountability will assist your life and society with more resilience and self reliance. We need this in these times. You can be a part of the change you wish to see in the world. You’ll also get to know yourself better. Imagine that…if you will. You are no longer becoming what you see in magazines and movies and in the corrupted mainstream media. You are becoming you.
Before you ascribe to an SDS inventory of your woes, seek out reputable holistic practitioners who can help safely guide you into how to feel what it is and how to heal what it is. Interestingly, in addition to our psychogenic based problems, research is growing which supports the intriguing and documented connection of depression to deranged gut microbiome chemistry, the resulting inflammatory cytokine mediators, and the downstream biochemistry of altered brain microglia activity. It’s all the talk in the neuroscience circles these days, and rightly so. Depression requires brain inflammation to be present, just like osteoporosis requires bone inflammation to be present, just as breast cancer requires its own inflammatory processes to engender breast chaotic cell growth dynamics.
You can look up some of those illusive words in the last paragraph. It’s time to move on and consider that blueberry pie on the front cover of Southern Living.
Back to Southern Living
A quick perusal of the contents of the June edition of Southern Living leads the curious reader to an understanding of why these 3 particular pharmaceuticals are on display. The front page of June’s edition pictures “The Perfect Blueberry Pie,” which is alluringly shown with a latticed crust, and also depicts other invitations to consider: “The Ultimate BBQ Tour, The Best Tomato Sandwich, and The Easiest Sides.”
From the front page subtitle, entitled “Secrets of Southern Cooking,” one wonders if pharmaceuticals for IBS, depression, and diabetes are some of the real secrets of Southern cooking which are to be experienced by its avid readers and disciples. The current body of nutritional and biochemical research would definitely support such a hypothesis.
On turning to page 99, we get to see the nuts and bolts of that yummy looking blueberry pie. The recipe calls for “6 Tbsp. cold vegetable shortening, sliced.”
That’s amazing! This recipe is asking you to throw in 6 tablespoons of trans fatty acids! You can slice it and dice it all you want, but please know that this is one of the most toxic anti-foods one can consume and not just keel over on the spot. As if slicing it will make it better…I swear…
Trans fats had their start up in the 1930’s when refrigeration practices were not yet so common, and some busy bodies determined that food shelf life could be enhanced by adding altered vegetable oil which had been heated and had hydrogen bubbled through it. This changed the carbon bonding of the long chain fatty acid to render it into a more stable form…like a hard animal fat…which is a naturally fully saturated fat; all carbon binding points being saturated with hydrogen.
The problem with trans fats is that they are very toxic to all living cellular architectural membrane structures and function as well as biochemical pathways. As trans fat usage went up in the 1930’s and 1940’s, butter use went down. The food and medical industry then pulled one of the grandest propaganda campaigns of its existence and began to demonize saturated animal fats as the cause of cardiovascular disease. New pharmaceutical and interventional treatment paradigms were built around this misinformation.
Just put some margarine or Crisco on your kitchen window sill in the summer and come back in a month. It will still be there. Even the flies and the bugs won’t get on it, and if they are dumb enough to do so, you will notice their little corpses collecting below.
The truth is now emerging that it is actually the trans fats and the biscuit poisoning concerns mentioned in the last Journal entry which are major contributors to the bloated rates of cardiovascular disease in American society. Indigenous or “primitive” cultures do not suffer so like we do.
So, Crestone and Beyond concludes that Southern Living magazine is assisting in the development of some of the common diseases of American society, that it is being paid to advertise quick fix drugs to try to mitigate some of these disorders, and it is leading its readers down some spurious rabbit holes where only more pills and concoctions await them.
The magazine could easily have the subtitle on its front page of “Your Alice in Wonderland Guide to Living the Southern Way.”
Nonetheless, I want to thank the people over at Southern Living for bringing so many timely and interesting and vital concerns to their readers’ attention, even though their readers do not read this magazine quite like I do.
I’m done with this magazine for now, even as it has allowed me to introduce the 2 chemical pathways in human biochemistry which are #1 (mitochondrial chemistry) and #2 (methylation chemistry) in the total number of chemical reactions in our lives which are dependent on the 2 pathways.
Please visit the next entry, “Minding your Methylation, Part II” for the important information on methylation genomics, biochemistry, pathology, and some preliminary treatment options.
I now believe that most of the patients who visit with me are doing so because of methylation mutation defects. Everyone who has the problems you will see in the list of diseases in the next Journal should be tested for methylation mutation defects.
It is a very simple testing…and very vital.
Signing off from Crestone and Beyond
Associated Reading
- An Editorial for Health Consumers…an earlier editorial which was stimulated by the prior issue of Southern Living.