Taking Tea Partiers Seriously

My recent comments to the editors of The Progressive:

Thank you for "Taking Tea Partiers Seriously." As a progressive who for the first time worked in a political campaign, I went door to door for Obama. I've also given some support to Sen. Sherrod Brown and Rep Dennis Kucinich here in Ohio. But right now I'm very disappointed with what is going on in Washington, because I see so many ways in which government is getting in the way of what I hold dear - living an eco-friendly, sustainable, life that is fair to all. I see the heavy influence of big business on Pres. Obama and Democrats, as well as Republicans, as they try to protect their profits.

The drug/insurance/conventional medical industries don't want to see real health care reform as it would cut their profits, so the monstrous health care bill protects these industries, while harassing and marginalizing the very medical professionals who are using natural means to guide their patients to healing and true health, and who would actually contribute to reducing health care costs in this country. Health Care Reform will never succeed in reducing costs until these very capable alternative health professionals can practice freely and our health insurance premiums stop subsidizing the doctors who just push drugs. Check the history of medical school accreditation to see why our conventional doctors are taught drug therapy (under the heavy influence of the drug industry), but very little about nutrition.

The conventional agriculture and food industries don't want to see real change so they can continue to produce processed profitable foods that contribute to our health problems while supporting legislation and regulation that undermines the small ethical farmers who are farming sustainable, such as

• Efforts to shut down raw milk producers because of an unreasonable fear of raw milk,
• Ridiculous regulations for growing greens,
• NAIS (which, thank goodness, has been cast aside)
• Unreasonable regulations for small butcheries and food processors
• Huge subsidies for the grains that are making us fat and unhealthy, with minimal support for pasture-based and organic farming
• The FDA acts as a drug protection agency, while tying down the supplement and herb businesses with ridiculous regulations that prevent them from even giving factual information about their products.
• Harassment, in the name of misguided food safety notions, of small farmers who sell directly to consumers

As well-known eco-farmer, Joel Salatin, says "Everything I want to do is illegal!"

Add in the military/industrial complex that General Eisenhower warned against, that seems to protect their profits by pushing us into picking fights all over the world. Is it any wonder that insurgents around the world use ever more sophisticated methods to get the USA off their backs. Or that tea party rhetoric appeals, even to some liberals!

We got into this horrendous recession because of too much debt, high flying financial shenanigans, and overspending on cars and houses that are too big, junk we don't need, sophisticated drugs and medical procedures that don't bring real health, too much junky food, while producing less and less of things of true value. We won't pull out of this slump until we learn again to be

• producers of things of real value,
  
• including real food, produced in a sustainable way and
• consumers only of things we really need and we and the planet can truly afford.

I invite you all to share in this vision. Get acquainted with your local farmers, invest in the very best food, and be rewarded with vibrant health.

Medical Miscue or excessive drug industry influence?

A February 3 article on the vaccine-autism link in the Toledo Blade prompted a related editorial on Feb. 6 that reflected the excessive influence of the drug industry on our health care system. My letter to the Editor in response was published yesterday. Elaborating on my letter, which got cut somewhat...

The research in Lancet by Dr. Andrew Wakefield was not flawed, but with the imminent publication of his new research on the long term health of monkeys given vaccines, which shows stark differences between those were and were not vaccinated, there has been an insidious effort to discredit this scientist who is publishing such embarrassing research. Imagine the fallout from this study for vaccine makers and public health officials! Is it any wonder there is a "Tea Party" movement in this country as more and more people understand that government seems more interested in protecting the profits of big corporations than in the health and welfare of its citizens. This effort to discredit happens over and over again to those health professionals who call the bluff on the drug industry by using low cost natural means to guide their patients to healing and genuine health.

For those who would like to understand this issue further go to http://generationrescue.org/wakefield_statement2.html. The increase in measles has more to do with the poor nutritional status of our children than the lack of vaccination. For an effective alternative to questionable vaccinations check out "Curing the Incurable" by Thomas E. Levy, MD, JD (tomlevymd.com). Dr. Levy's effective high dose IV vitamin C treatment is just one example of nutritional therapies that would put an end to the morbidity and mortality of a wide range of infectious and chronic diseases that burden our society.

Many health professionals will cry 'foul,' but with health care costs in our country escalating, while our health deteriorates, they need to start listening to the rebels!

Controlling Health Care Costs

This is a letter I wrote to Public Citizen recently. Public Citizen has been pushing for a single payer system as a far more efficient way to take care of our health care needs:



Dear Public Citizen,

I agree that a single payer health care system makes a great deal more sense than preserving the profits of the health insurance and drug industries, but whatever the system, we will never get health care costs under control until we break the control that the drug industry has on our medical education system. The teaching of nutrition as a healing art has been deliberately removed from the education of our health professionals, thanks to an accreditation system that focuses on diagnosis and drug treatment. Yet a truly well nourished body that is free of toxins has a remarkable ability to heal itself.

There are a growing number of doctors who are learning to guide their patients toward healing with nutrition, herbs and supplements and detoxification (see list below), freeing them of the poor health and financial burden of chronic disease, though they must pay for these therapies, which are rarely covered by insurance. Unfortunately these doctors are often attacked by medical boards and blackballed by their fellow professionals because health professionals are taught to view these therapies with great skepticism (Trust Us, We're Experts!).

I reviewed my nutrition textbooks and found that each has a section on 'food fallacies.' I was appalled at the mis-information in those chapters - so even dietitians have been brainwashed in these matters. Even worse, some of the common dietary advice given is based on poor and misinterpreted science, such as the advice to avoid saturated fats and cholesterol, which the food industry has exploited to convince the public to use unsaturated vegetable oils that we now realize contribute to inflammation, an underlying cause of many health problems (The Oiling of America).

These problems are complex, as they involve not only the drug industry, but also the food and agriculture industries that supply us with poor quality, over-processed foods that contribute to poor health (and damage the environment in the process). But we will never solve these problems if we do not understand them. I urge Public Citizen to become acquainted with these issues, as they are all intertwined - health care reform, organic farmers producing quality food and carbon sequestration, advertising of unhealthy products, even Wall Street money-makers. There are many links to useful information and commentary on my website.


Kris Johnson, retired dietitian



American Holistic Medical Association http://www.holisticmedicine.org/

International College of Integrative Medicine http://www.icimed.com/

The Institute for Functional Medicine http://www.functionalmedicine.org/

Fat be not proud

It seems like there are item daily in the newspaper that I'd like to respond to. Here's a recent letter to The Blade responding to a Blade editorial called 'Fat be not proud' http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091206/OPINION03/912060316 (4th letter down the page)

While it's true that obesity is a major and growing health problem in our country, Congress and industry certainly need to share the blame. Agricultural subsidies support the growing of far too much wheat, corn and soybeans than we need, while our food industry turns them into the heavily advertised processed foods that line our grocery store shelves, foods that are stripped of essential vitamins and mineral that contribute to good health and laced with processed vegetable oils that undermine our health. Then our health authorities have provoked fat phobia, telling us to eat less fat and cholesterol, more fiber, and exercise more - none of which has proved particularly effective for successful weight loss. In Good Calorie, Bad Calories, Gary Taubes traces the research showing that the carb foods we're advised to eat are the very foods that contribute to weight gain, diabetes, and all the associated health problems. Cutting calories by trying to eat a low fat diet while avoiding high carb foods leaves you hungry and unhappy. My advice - avoid processed foods, limit carbs, overcome your fat phobia, eat natural whole foods, including meat, butter and eggs from pasture raised animals - the foods our ancestors ate without being plagued by diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Let's put our unemployed back to work doing the wonderfully satisfying job of raising high quality fruits, vegetables, grains and pastured animals on well managed organic farms that can be very bit as productive as our present commercial agriculture, while supporting, rather than undermining our health, our communities and the environment.

Kris Johnson, retired dietitian

There's more on my Website if you want to pursue these issues:

Carb Issues

Planning Healthy Meals

Justice and Agriculture Issues

The Vegetarian Myth

I recently read the book, The Vegetarian Myth, and found it fascinating. http://www.lierrekeith.com/work.htm
"In The Vegetarian Myth, Lierre Keith argues that a vegetarian diet isn’t the way to save the planet. Part memoir, part nutritional primer, and part political manifesto, The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice and Sustainability challenges everything we know about food politics." From Pegasus Bookstore

And from Blogtalkradio:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/undergroundwellness/2009/10/08/the-vegetarian-myth-with-lierre-keith
The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith, a former vegan, pokes gaping holes in the moral, political, and nutritional reasons for a vegan/vegetarian lifestyle. * Learn how agriculture and its monocrops are eroding our precious topsoil, destroying ecosystems, and yes, killing animals. * Find out how our basic nutritional needs cannot be met by a meatless diet. * Listen in as Lierre details how the "vegetarians live longer" mantra is simply not true.

I like what Susan Schenck has to say about the book on Basil & Spice:
http://www.basilandspice.com/nutrition/book-review-the-vegetarian-myth-by-lierre-keith.html

Of course this is controversial, as there are some persons on a vegan diet who claim to be perfectly healthy - so there are comments on Amazon that take issue with some of her points. I was immediately reminded of lectures I attended last weekend at the Wise Traditions Conference by Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez, MD, who uses proteolytic enzymes against cancer. His second lecture was about the autonomic nervous system and its relationship to nutrition. He related the story of a dentist named Dr. Kelley, who cured himself of pancreatic cancer using a vegetarian diet, but then nearly killed his wife with the same diet, reviving her only by adding meat to her diet. The point being that people vary greatly in their dietary needs - one diet does not fit all! If you are strongly sympathetic dominant and you take certain vitamins & minerals they will make you feel worse, but will make a parasypathic dominant person feel better.
More in this interview on Dr. Gonzalez' website:
http://www.dr-gonzalez.com/crayhon.htm
And also here where he talks about his treatment protocol:
http://www.dr-gonzalez.com/clinical_pearls.htm

Dr. Mercola also talks about knowing your metabolic type
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2003/02/26/metabolic-typing-part-three.aspx
If you have persistent health problems it would be good to learn more about this.

And don't pay any attention to Quackwatch - a front for the medical industry. If you don't understand why there is so much misinformation out there you should read Trust Us, We're Experts How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future
by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber

A word to the wise!
Kris

The Arts as Business

Monday night I went to an event called The Magic of Tanzania, a glorious celebration of the artwork of a group of women artists from Tanzania, all eager to sell some of their wares. It was an outstanding evening, highlighted by an incredible style show of creations by fashion designer, Fatma Amor. See http://www.artistsoftanzania.org/ for details of this exchange program.

This article from the New York Times reports the problems artists and crafts people in Vietnam are having as the market for their craft work has plummeted thanks to the worldwide recession:

FOREIGN DESK September 29, 2009
Rural Ventures in Vietnam Suffer in the Global Crisis By SETH MYDANS
"Looking out across his green rice fields, Nguyen Van Truong can take pride in hedging his bets when he joined the global marketplace more than a decade ago and began to make money. When Vietnam began a tentative engagement with the world economy in the mid-1990s, Mr. Truong was one of the first people to see profit in his local craft, embroidery, and he joined with other villagers in marketing it for export and domestic sales."

The point is that arts and crafts can be good business in prosperous times, but they are the subject of highly discretionary spending, so you can't always count on such sources of income.

Another thought - from Organic Consumers Association:

World Food Day - Organic Is the Answer to Food Security
"Organic agriculture puts the needs of rural people and the sustainable use of natural resources at the centre of the farming system. Locally adapted technologies create employment opportunities and income. Low external inputs minimize risk of indebtedness and intoxication of the environment. It increases harvests through practices that favor the optimization of biological processes and local resources over expensive, toxic and climate damaging agro-chemicals...in response to a frequently asked question: Yes, the world can be fed by the worldwide adoption of Organic agriculture. The slightly lower yields of Organic agriculture in favorable, temperate zones are compensated with approximately 10-20% higher yields in difficult environments such as arid areas."
-International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements World Food Day, October 12, 2009 LEARN MORE

What is the connection here? If you have an arts and crafts business you need a back up plan. In Vietnam, those who retained land on which to grow their food survived, because they were self-sufficient and could feed themselves. When I was visiting in Dodoma, Tanzania, a few years ago, I was struck by how often people raised some of their own food - a vegetable garden, banana & papaya trees, and a few animals - goats, chickens. Those folks knew they couldn't rely on their meager salaries or small businesses for all their needs. The article from OCA emphasizes how essential these small farming operations are to relieving poverty and hunger around the world. Items of beauty add richness and depth to our lives, and can be a source of wealth for producers, but we dare not forget that the foundation of prosperous communities are the gifts of the earth that feed and clothe and house us. When people are pushed off their land by big corporations and the purported "efficiencies" of commercial agriculture and the "Green Revolution," poverty and hunger invariably increase for many, while untold riches accrue to some. Justice is not served.

For more on this on this theme I recommend this book, "Food Rebellions! Crisis and the Hunger for Justice" found here: http://www.foodfirst.org/.

Footnote: Agricultural yields with sophisticated eco-farming methods can be just as productive as conventional agriculture, while protecting the environment, supplying more nutritious foods, and avoiding the need for pesticides. Check with these agricultural consultants, and especially http://www.highbrixgardens.com/.

Response to "Call To Action" by Sen Baucus

Response to REFORMING AMERICA’S HEALTH CARE SYSTEM: A CALL TO ACTION
By Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.)

As a dietitian I am concerned that one crucial element is missing in all the discussion about reforming our health care system. The Baucus Call to Action calls for "a "RightChoices" card that guarantees access to recommended preventive care, including services like a health risk assessment, physical exam, immunizations, and age and gender appropriate cancer screenings recommended by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force." Unfortunately this type of 'preventive' care is a path into the pharmaceutical-based care that medical doctors are trained in, which is the path we are presently on - more obesity and chronic disease treated with drugs, not the lifestyle changes that are needed. Medical doctors are not taught how excellent nutrition with careful supplementation and detoxification can heal the ailing body and prevent more serious problems, unless they go out of their way to get special training later in their career when they realize the problems that relying on drugs causes. In fact medical doctors, and even conventional dietitians, are taught to consider many effective nutritional therapies as "food fallacies," and doctors who use nutritional therapies (sometime called Complementary and Alternative Medicine or CAM) are attacked by their medical boards, and some even have their licenses removed because they did not follow 'accepted protocols,' in spite of the healing and vibrant health they have brought to their patients.

An example is John Dommisse, M.D. www.johndommissemd.com , who had his license revoked by the Arizona medical board, in spite of his accomplishments. The medical board acted outrageously to squash a doctor using innovative nutritional approaches, as his efforts to appeal have been rejected on trivial grounds. As he says on his website "nutritional medicine is much more successful and effective in chronic diseases than standard/conventional medicine is."

Something similar is happening in the state of Washington, as related by Dr. Jonathan Wright, M.D. in his newsletter http://tinyurl.com/jonWright, quoting: "Unfortunately, holistic physicians in Washington state are under political attack by the Medical Quality Assurance Commission (MQAC). Several physicians are being persecuted by MQAC because they offer their patients holistic healthcare. These doctors are being dragged through hearings and are under investigation because the MQAC believe that these doctors should have their medical licenses revoked for not practicing "traditional" mainstream [drug-based] medicine." (Please understand that drugs are crutches that cover up symptoms, but rarely correct the underlying cause, and often cause side effects that lead to the use of another drug, and another, and another.)

These are the very doctors who will bring down the cost of health care by leading their patients toward healthier lives at relatively modest cost! We must break the monopoly that pharmaceutical therapeutics has on our medical care system. CAM must become a standard of care taught in our medical schools, and supported by the medical establishment. CAM practitioners, including naturopaths and well trained nutritionists must be recognized as effective sources of guidance for patients seeking holistic health care. When insurance companies see the dollars saved by these alternative therapies, they will begin to insist that all doctors become skilled in the use of these therapies. They might even push for reform of our food system, as noted by Michael Pollan in a recent New York Times opinion piece, called Big Food vs Big Insurance

I see nothing in the current health care reform proposals that would give an incentive to citizens to lead a healthier lifestyle, for example, by avoiding the processed foods that are so detrimental to health but fill our grocery store shelves. If every visit to the doctor is covered by insurance, where is the incentive to lead a healthy life so visits to the doctor are rarely needed, since it is easier to take a pill than to reform kitchen activities? Health Savings Accounts, accompanied by catastrophic health insurance, should be an option for those who want to pursue alternative paths to good health, allowing us to spend our health care dollars on herbs and supplements (and real food) rather than drugs and surgery, and who, as a result, rarely get sick.

Reforming our health care system is a monstrous job, considering all the vested interests involved, who stand to lose money if we have true reform. We spend an enormous amount of money on health care now, with mediocre results. I pray that Congress will understand what is needed for true reform, resist the blandishments of the vested interests, and enact reforms that cuts costs not only by cutting waste and fraud, but also by enabling true health and effective healing through holistic health care.

Carolyn 'Kris' Johnson
Williston, Ohio