No Shot, No School? No Way!

Posted on | August 15, 2011 | No Comments

Many parents in California are confused by warnings from schools and public health authorities about new whooping cough vaccination requirements for students entering grades seven through twelve this year. Is this a new vaccine? Isn’t my child already up to date? Does my child need a new booster shot? Can my child be exempted from the whooping cough vaccine for health or other reasons? Read more

Split Up The FDA

Posted on | April 7, 2011 | No Comments

“One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating.” Luciano Pavarotti

Will it ever be safe to eat salad greens again? From where I stood in the produce section of the supermarket I could see the headlines screaming from the news rack by the checkout counter. CONTAMINATED PRODUCE. PEOPLE SICK. I glanced suspiciously at the onions on my left. Were they tainted? I leaned over and cautiously sniffed the spinach. Had rogue pigs gotten loose and run rampant through the patch, spreading E. coli in every direction just moments before the greens were picked, packed and shipped? Read more

Coughing Up the Facts on Whooping Cough

Posted on | March 29, 2011 | No Comments

A whooping cough epidemic was declared in California on June 24, 2010. Every three to five years whooping cough, or pertussis, cases spike upward. The most recent epidemic of whooping cough in California was declared in 2005.

Just as regularly as whooping cough outbreaks come around, reports appear in the media blaming the outbreak on parents who choose to not vaccinate their children. What is whooping cough? Are the unvaccinated causing the epidemic? What do public health authorities recommend we do to protect our babies? What options do we have? Read more

The Germ Theory of Life

Posted on | March 22, 2011 | No Comments

I received some startling news the other day that left me totally bugged. “You’re going to just stand there and tell me that 90 percent of the total cells I carry around in my body are microbes?” I gasped.

“Get over yourself,” my friend the microbe expert said offhandedly, surprised I didn’t know this already. “We humans are only 10 percent human cells and the rest teeming, thriving microorganisms along for the ride.”

She pulled out a 2004 report from the American Academy of Microbiology and read to me, “Microbes enable efficient digestion in our guts, synthesize essential nutrients, and maintain benign or even beneficial relationships with the body’s organs. The presence of these organisms influences our physical and mental health.” Read more

Pre-Medicine for Pre-Problems

Posted on | March 9, 2011 | No Comments

“Houston, we’ve got a pre-problem.”

The pharmaceutical companies have done it again, they have proven the depth of their genuine concern for the health of our entire citizenry. They are so concerned, they are “pre-concerned.” And what does this mean? It means that scientists working for the pharmaceutical companies believe they have discovered a key concept about our health. Hundreds of millions of us – probably every last one – have been walking around thinking we were doing pretty good health-wise, but actually we are all in the early stages of chronic pre-sickness. That’s right, it turns out that the human condition is really just a temporary pre-condition of debilitating disease. Read more

Miracles of Magnesium

Posted on | February 19, 2011 | 2 Comments

Everybody gets a headache occasionally, but for chronic migraine sufferers, the headaches can occur frequently and be totally disabling. Drugs for migraines simply do not work very well, leaving people with chronic migraines ready to try just about anything. Including botulism. Read more