Monday, May 30, 2011

AIDS Victim Tells of Healing Virtues of Coconut Oil


At least one HIV victim will be grateful forever for the healing potency found in coconut oil. Tony speaks around the country about his former hopeless battle with HIV and his ravaged self image and how it all changed when he began ingesting coconut oil. Not an herb, supplement and certainly not an expensive drug: an oil people use for cooking and body care.
Despite conventional and expensive drug measures, doctors normally expect their HIV/AIDS to progressively become worse. Imagine the doctors’ astonishment when Tony’s subsequent blood tests kept coming back with diminished viral traces until finally reaching normal. All because of six tablespoons of coconut oil per day along with three skin applications.
Read his powerful testimony below – it’s hard not to choke up when reading such a miraculous triumph among so many sad tales of HIV/AIDS victims. There are some other healing items that help reduce HIV/AIDS to barely detectable levels or banish completely. Coconut oil is a rising star in the world of super healing foods. Thankfully such products and books guiding the cures are available in health stores everywhere at low, low costs.
~Health Freedoms
In coming out of the closet to tell his story, Tony, 38, lends hope to thousands of AIDS sufferers worldwide. “You don’t know how hard it is for one to have an illness that others find repulsive…I had wanted to shut myself inside my room and just wait for my time to die,” Tony told symposium participants.
Tony was a guest speaker at a symposium titled “Why Coconut Cures”, held in Manila, Philippines, May 14, 2005. The symposium was headed by Dr. Bruce Fife, who was also the keynote speaker. Other participants included cardiologist Conrado Dayrit, dermatologist Vermen Verallo-Rowell, biochemist Fabian Dayrit, and Senator Jamby Madrigal.
Tony’s testimony, along with those of others who had experienced dramatic recoveries from various ailments, provided first-hand accounts of the use of coconut oil in healing chronic health problems described by symposium participants.
Beneath the sunglasses that he wore, his eyes were moist, not in self-pity but in triumph. A cap and long sleeves hid a body scarred by a disease Tony contracted while working in the Middle East in the 1990s. Coming home in 2002, Tony was devastated to learn that he was infected by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). As the disease progressed, the pain he endured came not only from the infections ravaging his body but from the shame the disease had brought him. He felt like giving up.
Drugs, which he could barely afford, could not deliver him from the dreaded virus and the other infections that were slowly draining away his life. His body was covered with fungal infections and oozing sores accompanied by a chronic pneumonia infection that caused a persistent cough. He knew he was losing the battle as each day symptoms grew worse; he found it increasingly more difficult to function and was completely incapable of working.
Unable to afford medication, he sought help from the Department of Health. He was referred to Dr. Conrado Dayrit, the author of the first clinical study on the healing effects of coconut oil on HIV-infected patients, which was conducted at the San Lazaro hospital in the Philippines. By this time Tony was diagnosed with full-blown AIDS and had little hope for recovery.
Dr. Dayrit secured a steady supply of coconut oil for Tony’s use, free of charge. He was instructed to apply the oil to his skin two to three times a day and consume six tablespoonfuls daily without fail.
The program worked miracles. Each time Tony went to the hospital for his periodic blood tests, his viral load decreased. Tony said that when he told hospital doctors what he was taking, they could not believe that a simple dietary oil was killing the virus better than all the modern drugs of medical science.
Just nine months after his initial visit with Dr. Dayrit, Tony appeared before the audience at the symposium for all to witness his remarkable recovery. The infections that once racked his body were gone. Even HIV was no longer detectable. What used to be skin sores all over his body were now just fading scars. His life energy had been restored enough for him to give an eloquent testimony of how something as simple and natural as coconut oil could halt this deadly disease.
Evidence for coconut oil’s effect on HIV was first discovered back in the 1980s when researchers learned that medium chain fatty acids—the kind found in coconut oil—possessed powerful antiviral properties capable of destroying the AIDS virus. Since then, numerous anecdotal accounts of HIV patients using coconut and coconut oil to overcome their condition circulated in the AIDS community. Even basketball legend Magic Johnson, who retired from the NBA because he was HIV positive, is reportedly credited with using coconut on his road to recovery.
The first clinical study using coconut on HIV patients was reported by Conrado Dayrit in 1999. In this study HIV-infected individuals were given 3.5 tablespoons of coconut oil daily. No other treatment was used. Six months later 60% of the participants showed noticeable improvement.
This was the first study to demonstrate that coconut oil does have an antiviral effect in vivo and could be used to treat HIV-infected individuals. Dr. Dayrit is now heading a larger study in Africa using coconut oil in the treatment of HIV.
The symposium “Why Coconut Cures” was based on Dr. Bruce Fife’s recently published book Coconut Cures. Philippine president Macapagal-Arroyo recognized Dr. Fife’s relentless advocacy  in educating people about the healing properties of coconut.
Coconut Cures is currently available at most health food stores in the US. It is also available directly from the publisher at www.piccadillybooks.com or from www.amazon.com.
Bruce Fife, N.D.
Sources:
http://www.healthtruthrevealed.com/articles/15372013205/article
http://www.coconutresearchcenter.com/index.htm

Friday, May 20, 2011

The Chemicals in Disposable Diapers

By Noreen Kassem


Disposable diapers seem to be a necessity in today's lifestyle of convenience and temporary items. Though they are commonly used, synthetic, single-use diapers often contain chemicals linked to long-term health conditions. A study published in the Archives of Environmental Health (1999) states that disposable diapers should be considered to be a factor that may cause or worsen childhood asthma and respiratory problems. The soft, sensitive skin of babies is also prone to rashes and allergic reactions due to the chemicals in disposable diapers.

Dioxins

Most disposable diapers are bleached white with chlorine, resulting in a byproduct called dioxins that leach into the environment and the diapers. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), dioxins are among the most toxic chemicals known to science and are listed by the EPA as highly carcinogenic chemicals. According to the World Health Organization, exposure to dioxins may cause skin reactions and altered liver function, as well as impairments to the immune system, nervous system, endocrine system and reproductive functions.

Sodium Polyacrylate

Sodium polycarbonate is a super absorbent chemical compound that is used in the fillers of many disposable diapers. It is composed of cellulose processed from trees that is mixed with crystals of polyacrylate. This chemical absorbs fluids and creates surface tension in the lining of the diaper to bind fluids and prevent leakage. Sodium polyacrylate is often visible as small gel-like crystals on the skin of babies and is thought to be linked to skin irritations and respiratory problems. This chemical was removed from tampons due to toxic shock syndrome concerns. As it has only been used in diapers for the last two decades, there is not yet research on the long-term health effects of sodium polyacrylate on babies.

Tributyl-tin (TBT)

Many disposable diapers contain a chemical called tributyl-tin (TBT). According to the EPA, this toxic pollutant is extremely harmful to aquatic (water) life and causes endocrine (hormonal) disruptions in aquatic organisms. TBT is a polluting chemical that does not degrade but remains in the environment and in our food chain. TBT is also an ingredient used in biocides to kill infecting organisms. Additionally, according to research published by the American Institute of Biological Sciences, tributyl-tin can trigger genes that promote the growth of fat cells, causing obesity in humans.

Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs)

Disposable diapers frequently contain chemicals called volatile organic compounds (VOCs). These include chemicals such as ethylbenzene, toluene, xylene and dipentene. According to the EPA, VOCs can cause eye, nose and throat irritation, headaches, damage to the liver, kidney and central nervous system as well as cancers.

Other Chemicals

Other chemicals often used in disposable diapers include dyes, fragrances, plastics and petrolatums. Adhesive chemicals are used in the sticky tabs to close the diapers and dyes are used to color and make the patterns and labels that mark diapers. Perfumes and fragrances are used in some disposable diapers to help mask odors.

Pregnancy Diet - For Mom

Water Birth

Thursday, May 19, 2011

What To Know Before You Go: Your hospital care probably won’t be evidence-based

by Birth Sense

What does “evidence-based” mean, anyway?  A popular term in health care circles these days, it refers to making sure that the procedures and protocols we follow are based on strong scientific evidence, rather than personal opinion or experience alone.  Yet many health care providers do not take time or make the effort to ensure that they are aware of and incorporate evidence-based medicine into their practices.  Why not?
  • They are busy, and it takes time to read and learn about new evidence and practices
  • They’ve always done something a certain way, and see no reason to change
  • They find their way of doing things more convenient than the evidence-based way
  • The evidence-based practice would take more time than the way they practice now
As the health-care consumer, you may think “So what?  What difference does it really make if my doctor breaks my water artificially, or wants me to be continuously monitored, or induces my labor?  Chances are that there will be no complications.”
I can certainly understand this line of thought, having struggled with it myself as a midwife.  For example, even though I know there is no evidence which supports artificial rupture of the membranes to accelerate normal labor, I am human.  I get tired and want to go home and be with my kids, just like anyone else.  The temptation is there, when we have those weak moments, to rationalize that everything will be OK, we’ve done it lots of times before without apparent ill effect, etc.  This way of thinking has a name:  the normalization of deviance.  It is a term coined after the 1986 space shuttle explosion.  NASA employees had been warned about potential problems with the O-rings when temperatures dropped too low, but because they had operated the shuttle in cold temperatures before, without apparent ill effects, they normalized in their mind the deviation from the evidence.
Here is a sample of commonly used childbirth procedures for which the evidence shows lack of benefit in normal labors, or even potential for harm:
  • artificially breaking the bag of water
  • inducing labor unless there is clear medical indication
  • repeat c-section because of prior c-section
  • automatic c-section for breech position of baby
  • administering pitocin to speed up labor
  • continual fetal monitoring
  • delivery in the supine position
  • immediate cord clamping
  • separation of mom and baby “just to get the baby dried off”
Consumers of health care can normalize deviations as well.  Take, for example, Reba.  She is pregnant for the first time.  She has read about induction of labor, and she knows that the evidence shows that her chances of a c-section rise to about 50% if she decides to agree to an induction of labor.  But Reba’s doctor seems so experienced, and he tells her that in his experience, everything turns out fine, and if it doesn’t, she would have had to have a c-section anyhow.  Reba decides to ignore the evidence and agree to her doctor’s suggestion of induction.
Or consider Sandy.  The doctor thinks her baby is big.  An ultrasound shows that the baby is about 9 lbs.  The doctor recommends a planned c-section.  Sandy doesn’t want a c-section, and she knows that ultrasounds can be a pound or more wrong.  Sandy also knows that other women in her family have had babies on the bigger side without any difficulty.  She knows the evidence does not support induction or elective c-section for a suspected big baby.  But she allows her doctor to persuade her to agree to surgery.
Situations like this happen every day, in hospitals all over the country.  What you have to decide is whether you are going to educate yourself on the best childbirth practices–or whether you are going to buy into the normalization of deviance, and do whatever your care provider suggests.  Even if the chance of a complication occurring is small, if it happens to your baby, your risk is 100%.  Don’t put yourself in a position of having to look back with regret at the choices you made.  I hope you will be strong, and hold firm for what you know is best for your baby.

Monday, May 16, 2011

Doctors Need Midwives: Ina May Gaskin on the U.S. Maternity-Care Crisis

by Ina May Gaskin
Midwives in this country may be rare, but they hold the key to improving maternal health, says Ina May Gaskin. In honor ofInternational Day of the Midwife, the “godmother of modern midwifery”shares her vision for how to treat pregnant women.
Ask your average American what a midwife is and you'll probably get a puzzled stare in return. Midwife? Isn't that a kind of witch doctor, discarded by society with the dawn of modern medicine? Do midwives still exist today?
They do, of course—and I am living proof. Midwives have attended women in pregnancy and childbirth for thousands of years, across cultures. Yet midwives are far too rare in this country, particularly compared with nearly every other country in the world. The fact that they seem outmoded here illustrates a deeper problem: not only is the profession of midwifery at risk of dying out, but also the very process of giving birth the way nature intended seems on the brink of extinction. These are just a few of the disturbing trends women will be fighting when they take to the streets today, in honor of the International Day of the Midwife.
In the U.S., one in three babies is now born surgically, despite the World Health Organization’s recommendation that rates not exceed 10 percent in hospitals serving the general population, or 15 percent in hospitals serving high-risk cases. When C-section rates are too low, women and babies will pay with their lives, but the same result occurs when C-section rates climb too high. This is a lesson we have yet to learn in the U.S.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, a woman giving birth today is more than twice as likely to die in childbirth as her mother was. The recent leading cause of maternal death in New York was pulmonary embolism, a complication whose incidence rises significantly after C-section. Equally concerning, far more babies than ever are born after a host of technological interventions such as induction and the use of pitocin to speed up labor, which bring along their own risks. Statistics like these compelled Amnesty International to publish a damning report in 2010 titled Deadly Delivery: The Maternal Health Care Crisis in the USA, which outlined various failures in the way our health-care system treats pregnancy and birth.
How has it come to this? A century ago, when the specialty of obstetrics was in its infancy in the U.S., its founders decided that they could only succeed in promoting their profession by demonizing midwifery. Using racist and anti-immigrant slogans and caricatures, they organized a campaign to make midwifery illegal in every state possible and to frighten women away from choosing midwives by portraying them as dirty, ignorant, and evil.
As a result, when birth moved into hospitals, there were no midwives around to counter the tendency for ignorant, frightened young doctors to try to hurry a birth that would have proceeded without problems if they had just allowed a laboring mother to relax or to assume a more effective position. Only in the U.S. did obstetricians become convinced that birth was so potentially dangerous to mother and baby that they could accept the doctrine that two thirds of all babies should be pulled out of their mothers with forceps—our forceps rate in the mid-'60s, when I gave birth the first time. Because midwives remained an integral part of maternity-care staff in every other wealthy country, obstetrics in those countries never took on the fear of natural processes that has afflicted maternity care here in the U.S. for the last century.
A century ago, the founders of obstetrics decided that they could only succeed in promoting their profession by demonizing midwifery.
Article - Gaskin MidwifeA registered nurse and midwife feels the baby from the stomach of a woman who is 33 weeks pregnant with her first child on Sep. 23, 2009 in Washington. (Photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta / AP Photo)
At medical schools around the country, the time-tested skills that are central in the education of midwives are no longer valued. In November 2007, in Cape Fear, N.C., a news report from a local television station caught my attention: a woman was subjected to a C-section during which the obstetrician, who cut into her abdomen, discovered that she wasn’t even pregnant. According to that obstetrician, “several doctors had examined and attempted to induce labor on the patient for several days before the C-section incident.” Not one of them seems to have manually checked the accuracy of the diagnosis of pregnancy; the intern who looked at the woman’s ultrasound and found no heart beat had assumed that “the baby” had died—failing to take into account that sometimes there is no baby inside a woman who thinks she’s pregnant and has some superficial signs of pregnancy.
Electronic discussion of this bizarre group mistake guessed that the intern who “diagnosed” the pregnancy had probably mistaken retained fecal material for a baby. I found that comment amusing, since I’ve never once felt an accumulation of poop in the shape of a baby. However, I have diagnosed two false pregnancies, one of them during my first few months of caring for pregnant women. Hands are still useful—even in the era of ultrasound.
With this radical shift, more and more doctors and nurses finish their training without ever observing an undisturbed vaginal birth—a situation that tends to send C-section rates even higher. And one that could be improved if more hospitals relied on midwives to balance medical leaders’ tendency to treat every labor as a disaster about to happen.
Many U.S. obstetricians themselves lament our collective history as much as I do, and they are rightly embarrassed by the loss of traditional skills in their profession. I know this, because I am getting more invitations to lecture obstetrics faculty and residents at teaching hospitals than ever before. They know that we midwives recognize the necessity for obstetrics, but at the same time, they know that obstetrics also needs midwifery if it wants to stop pathologizing every pregnancy and birth. More and more doctors themselves are voting with their feet by choosing midwife-attended births. In fact, the last birth I attended was for an obstetrician who chose not to give birth where she worked.
Instead of creating safer births and healthier moms and babies, our overuse of technology has caused a host of problems. My friend, Dr. Tadashi Yoshimura, a Japanese obstetrician, talks about how he suddenly became aware of how terrifying standard hospital routines can be to women in labor when he looked at a television monitor showing the face of a laboring woman who was hooked up to various devices and left alone. As he began to substitute routine use of technology with a caring and observant midwife for each woman, he got to see what he termed "the mystic beauty" of a laboring woman who is not frightened and is thus powerful in bringing forth life.
I know exactly what he is talking about because I saw that on the face of the first woman I ever observed giving birth. He learned what I learned: that for the most part, nature gets it right in birth. Women's bodies are not lemons. The creator is not a careless mechanic. The same process that has brought hundreds of thousands of years of human beings to earth can continue to do so today. The human species is no more unsuited to give birth than any other of the 5,000 or so species of mammals on the planet. We are merely the most confused.
What makes midwives special and indispensable is their respect for women, for women’s choices, and their awe at the beauty of birth. Today, on the International Day of the Midwife, I would like to recognize all the midwives and other birth professionals who have put themselves on the line to provide the best possible care for women and babies. I hope that, through their guidance, we can make birth in the U.S. safer and more empowering.
Ina May Gaskin, called the “midwife of modern midwifery” by Salon, has practiced for nearly 40 years at the internationally lauded Farm Midwifery Center. She is the only midwife for whom an obstetric maneuver has been named (Gaskin maneuver). She is the author, most recently, of the new book Birth Matters: A Midwife’s Manifesta.