Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby's Total Health Newsletter #2. Week ending May 31st 2009
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1. How Hidden Chronic Infections Cause Many Surprise Diseases
2. Problems, part 2. A special insight into problems and their nature.
3. Ladies I salute You! More moving testimony about the "souls of lost children"
4. Nutrition Is Not Vitamin Accountancy
5. Do you Twitter? Social health is part of wellness!
6. What's this? An optical illusion?
7. What's in a word?
8. This week's quote

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1. How Hidden Chronic Infections Cause Many Surprise Diseases

These days we know that aging is as much about inflammation as anything else. Infections and inflammation are never very far apart.

It has become clear that many chronic, under-the-radar infections that linger in the body produce the steady, destructive, decay processes that marks aging. That's bad news.

For instance, we know now that atherosclerosis (heart disease, strokes) is caused by chronic infections, NOT cholesterol and bad fats. Fatty deposits are the result, not the cause, of arterial damage. The feared "plaques" are Nature's own doing, designed to wall off inflammatory patches caused by hidden bacterial attacks [this was written up in Scientific American a few years back, can't remember exactly when].

Oxidation of fats in these plaques are the real problem but fats are not the cause of the problem. Inflammation, and hence oxidation (rancidity), are the real killers.

The two chief suspects for this smoldering inflammation are bacteria called Chlamydia pneumoniae (thought to cause pneumonia) and Porphyromonas gingivalis (a cause of gum disease). Other culprits likely include viruses such as Herpes, CMV and maybe Epstein-Barr.

Despite the medical profession's obsession with smoking, blood fats and personality factors (such as type A personality), it's probable that these two pathogens and their malign effects are the main cause of arterial disease.

It would explain why some smokers live beyond 100 and hyper-stressed driver personalities DON'T all keel over with coronary insufficiency!

You've heard the cholesterol, smoking and stress story hundreds of times, I'm sure. Today, let's look at the evidence for the other picture (well, some of it; there's a LOT).

Consider a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2000. Researchers investigated selected men between 39 and 45 years old and tested their levels of coronary artery calcification, one of the best markers for heart disease and likely fatality. They found NO correlation with stress whatever.

The only thing they unearthed was that hypochondriacs were less likely to have coronary artery calcification. Biologist Paul Ewald suggest this might be because hypochondriacs are more likely to receive antibiotics! That would reduce hidden infections.

It's plausible. Another study could back this up: in 1999 in The Journal Of The American Medical Association published a study in which greater use of tetracycline was associated with fewer heart attacks.

This bacterial inflammation hypothesis would also neatly explain why second-hand smoke is dangerous: it lays open the body to chemical irritation and subsquent invasion by pathogens, even though present in only very small quantities. As Paul Ewald comments, it may be more a case of second-hand infections!

Of course I'm not saying that diet, lifestyle and smoking etc are not issues. I am saying you can do everything right and still drop dead 20 years before your time, because of these d***ed bugs!

C. pneumoniae may also turn out to be a cause or contributive factor to multiple sclerosis (MS) and Alzheimer's disease. Researchers at Vanderbilt University found a definite correlation between MS and C. pneumoniae. The whole topic is hotly debated because many laboratories cannot replicate the association in tests of their own.

But it turns out that this is because laboratories are not doing it right. A blinded experiment run by Multiple Sclerosis Institute of the Carolinas Medical center, in which samples of patient's blood disguised with different names was sent to different laboratories, came back showing that Vanderbilt University had a much more sensitive detection test.

The same argument broke out over the association with Alzheimer's. Again it was laboratory technique that was lacking. James Mahoney at Massachussetts University failed to confirm the association but he had the sense to call Alan Hudson, one of the senior editors in the original study. Mahoney was told by Hudson that testing each brain sample needed to be repeated several times before correlating the results.

He did and Mahoney then found what Hudson's team had found.

check out this PDF file for more information

Which all amounts to the following very intersting conclusion: if you want to be truly healthy and live long, you had better start worrying about having an industrial strength immune system that can at least compress this phenomenon and handicap so-called stealth pathogens.

We'll talk about how to do that next week!

2. Special Insight Into Problems And Their Nature. Part 2.

I promised you more on problems. Here’s some amazing, novel ways of dealing with problems, from my good friend in the UK, Susan Flood.

Susan's technique is to use small objects to demonstrate or represent the solid realities of a mental concept being worked with. We talk here of the "substance", the solidity or actuality, and the "meaning" or thought behind it [this comes from Alfred Korzybski and what he called “extentional” and “intentional” meanings].

Thus a car is substance, so is a block of wood representing a car, but the IDEA of a car and the freedom concept it holds for most of us would be the meaning. But we can depict abstract words in the same way: “honesty, “sexual attraction” and “can’t communicate” can all work, once you get the hang of this.

By depicting events and people in this way - and how we react to them - laid out on a table top, we can gain immeasurably greater insights into the mechanics of our problems and so help them vanish.

Show-Me Kits

Any collection of objects will do for this. We can use elastic bands, paper clips, bottle tops, sugar lumps and so forth. I call this a “show-me!” kit.

This is my kit, the one I use at home. I've had it for donkey's years:

A woman's handbag, incidentally, makes a wonderful portable show-me kit. It usually contains lipstick, nail file, comb, eye-brow pencil, brushes and the like, all of which can be pressed into service to represent "husband", "boyfriend", "the boss", a hobby, time frame, how we FEEL about the boss and so on.

Break Problems Down Into Simpler Forms

Each part of life's situation or aspect of the problem that is being worked on is laid out separately. So, for example, it is not sufficient merely to lay down a comb and say "That's the problem". What parts does the problem have? Who are the people involved? What is UNKNOWN about this situation? What communication is missing? and so on. Set all these out, using a different mass for each significance.

Susan points out that a romantic relationship may have as many as six different games running in it. These need to be teased apart and viewed separately.

You will find that merely examining the problem in detail is therapeutic. Often, the real difficulty surfaces quite early and resolves rapidly. Generally, of course, the individual will have to work at this for some hours or days.

Guiding and Counselling

If you are doing this with someone as a counsellor, you may need to prompt a little and keep the client focused on what matters, especially in regard to the next section. Mostly we leave the person to work it out.

It's best to avoid trying to give your idea of what the solution might be, no matter how tempting to do so. It is having the individual LOOK at the problem which produces the beneficial effect. That's why putting down the "stuff" in solid form is so effective. Then it can't remain hidden and in denial (single biggest reason for stuck problems).

It is interesting that later on the person remembers most vividly what the resolution was, in terms of the show-me kit objects. The meaning is remembered as the substance. It's a sort of aide memoire. The client might even begin to think "This is a lipstick situation again!"

For those of you who found it interesting this far, you can download a PDF, with examples, and learn more here:

Creative Problem Solutions

[Note: this PDF comes from a new, developing project of resources called The Renegade Guru].

3. Ladies I Salute You!

The stories, testimonies and comments about "lost children" keep coming in. I haven't the heart to just read and remove the eMails. I wanted to share as many as possible. They are very moving (no more angry reaction).

For that reason I have kept adding and adding letters to the page I gave you last week. Even if you already read some of them, there are new ones since that time. Scroll further down the page and you'll see what I mean, here:

Souls Of The Lost Children letters

4. Nutrition Is Not Vitamin Accountancy

One of my pet bitches (is that a sexist remark?) is the idea that nutrition comes down to: so-many milligrams and this and so many units of that and so many teaspoonsful of the other...

This mistake is found across the board, from certified nutritionists and dieticians, through MDs, to alternative health writers who ought to know better.

I fought back with a lecture I gave in Malaysia some time ago. I still have the powerpoint; I called it "Nutrition Bullets". It's probably time to serve it up for the Web. I'll do that as soon as I get some spare time.

There were several key points-- in other words bullet points-- that have little or nothing to do with measured quantities. They have everything to do with dynamics, function and biochemical individuality. I'd like to share them with you here. It's especially for young Hoe Bing Lo, my webmaster helper and a great young man, who just qualified in medicine and is already deeply into alternative healing. I teach him nutrition; he fixes my websites. Neat, ha?

My main point is that losing focus by concentrating on isolated technical information and spurious quantitative measurements does not lead to a workable science of nutrition. We need a bigger picture; the Interstate freeways map, not the hikers' side paths and byways!

I don't believe that the creation, repair and maintenance of healthy body tissues can be reduced to itemized lists of figures, like a supermarket shopping list. This kind of “nutrient accountancy” shows deplorable lack of understanding of the way Nature works and the meaning of holistic integration of health.

The picture today is very complex, with traditional foods all but gone and, as farming methods change, the value of foods changes. You'd never think that to read the nonsense published as official "nutrition". In fact Pandit Professor Dr. Med Sir Anton Jayasuriya and I were trying to debate a suitable word for this bigger view of things, just before he passed away. The best we could come up with was nutritionology, which is obviously not going to fly!

Any suggestions, anybody?

The adding numbers view violates all the laws of accountancy, in that there is no balance to the balance sheet!

So what are the key issues? These are 10 basic simple rules:

This is not just the first, but my #1 nutrition rule (the only one that matters):

No-one will cure anything to last, no matter how brilliant you are, or what healing paradigm, and what belief system, if the patient is in a negative nutritional balance.

Think about this: Nothing in the body is fixed. It ALL changes over, every few months. Therefore nutrition is a vital renewal, healing and construction factor. Without it you can't repair joints, even if the guru laid his hand on you and the pain went away!

This is my rule #2 and another biggie: What you are eating that you shouldn’t is of far more importance than what you not eating that you should. I learned this in decades of pioneeer work in the food allergy field. Almost ANYTHING was curable, from cancer to muscular dystrophy, from schizophrenia to arthritis, if you took away negative hurtful foods. And the bandit foods were different for everybody. Adding things in (supplements) is trivial at the side of expert food elimination.

Rule #3 (so far, they are in order of priority): Every individual is different and varies in nutritional requirements from time to time and different individuals have highly disparate nutritional requirements at any one time. Isn't that obvious; we are all different? Well, not according to the textbooks!

Rule #4. RDAs (daily values) take no account of different rates of absorption, individual biological variation, stress demands, or that the minimum requirement to avoid fatal avitaminosis is a totally different concept than the amount required for optimum health. Yet resaerch shows that our requirements for B vitamins go up over a hundred-fold when we are under severe stress!

Rule #5. Natural foods in their natural state manifest energetic properties that bear no relation to their biochemical composition. The whole is more than the part! This makes a nonsense out ORAC values, "active ingredients" and all the other humbug surrounding the supplement industry. You only have to look at Kirlian photographs of "live" foods and cornflakes from a packet to tell the two are universes apart.

Rule #6. Another HUGELY important factor that changes EVERYTHING, as soon as you incorporate it into your thinking: What is swallowed does not equate to nutrition. Malabsorption and dysbiosis are rampant. Digestive unwellness is the norm.

So much of what is swallowed never enters the metabolic stream! Stories abound of portable toilets having tablets and capsules that as so undigested you can still read the manufacturer's name on them!

Rule #7. No nutrients act alone, they are all interdependent. All studies which purport to examine the effects of certain vitamins and minerals in isolation are likely to be misleading. Duh! Why don't scientific trials and studies use this obvious fact?

Rule #8. Nutrition for detoxication is a life-saving factor in the modern world. We cannot have functioning enzymes to keep our bodies healthy and poison-free if essential nutrients are lacking. Enzymes are the life force driving an organism's metabolism. Now we need a whole new science of keeping our body mechanisms working, in the face of server oxidative stress that simply did not exist when we were hunter-gatherers. The whole topic goes way beyond the avoidance of "deficiency diseases", like scurvy and beri-beri. [Incidentally, beri-beri is a local Sri Lankan word, see section 6]

Rule #9. Foodstuffs, notably plants, contain pharmacologically active substances. The effect of these drugs can rightly be seen as a sub-function of nutrition (complex, vast subject!). Caffeine isn't just a brain stimulant; it affects your blood pressure, heart rate, kidney function and numerous other less investigated functions. Some plants, as you know, have hormone-like and anti-hormone effects. Isn't this part of nutrition too, if we eat them? I think so.

Rule #10. This is an odd ball- but you need it! What goes in doesn’t necessarily come out! (nutritional implosion?) You can see evidence from colonics of food residues from many years earlier. Ignore the pseudo-science of most colonics people. They claim the bentonite residues are bowel content; they are not (just bentoniye strings).

But I have confirmed stories with my patients on many occasioans, of the individual seeing a detox stool which contained some identifiable food eaten years before. The record known to me was a patient of mine who had some showers of green cake decorations in her stool which she had not eaten for over 40 years. They were still green for heaven's sake! (we used to call these "hundreds and thousands"; I don't know what the Americans call them).

As I write, it is clear there is so much to this topic, I must write a book (no snitching, this is copyright!) But for now I will spread these ideas ,and other very revolutionary ones too, over a few issues of "Letter From Serendipity".

5. Do You Twitter? Social Interaction Is Part Of Wellness!

Only people living on planet Zod (far side of the galaxy) have not heard of "social networking". Facebook and MySpace now have more daily visitors than Google! (a lot more!) One fast up and coming network is Twitter. It's growing phenomenally

I'm becoming a Twitter expert and those of you who want to learn how to connect with the rest of Planet Earth using this interactive device, listen up! I'll offer some success solutions in my pages.

There is Facebook and MySpace and many others. But the one that seems to have emerged as the fastest and cutest is Twitter.

One of the reason it's so popular is that you are only allowed 140 characters (a "tweet") to say what you want to say. In this day and age of tiny sound and thought bites, that's right to the point. I was with Mark Victor Hansen listening to Joel Comm when I first heard the power of Twitter. Joel sent out a "tweet" from the stage in a seminar and in less than a minute somebody answered him from across the ocean. She spoke to us all on the mobile speaker phone.

That's connected!

So although I have a Facebook account (join if you want), I find it a bit of a chore keep up with Facebook.

But Twitter is something else. It's electric and zingy. Every day there are thousands of tweets from my followers. I tweet too.

It's awesome to think just how fast technology has moved, even in the lifetime of my little granddaughter Emily (9 years), never mind my 63 years!

Join me on Twitter: I'm "TheNakedDoctor"

What's This? An optical illusion?

If you stare at this illustration long enough, you'll see a giraffe.

Sorry! Couldn't resist!

6. What's in a word?

Let's take serendipity itself! Sounds like a root drink (sarsaparilla). The reason I called this weekly "Letter From Serendipity" goes back to the time when I started it, 6 years ago. I was living in Colombo at the time, professor at the Open International University For Complementary Medicines (OIUCM). Sri Lanka's old Arab name was Serendib; it's that kind of place. Greenness, abundace and beauty, rocked by the ever-present ocean.

Talk about lucky chance? When it rains heavily semi-precious stones spill out in the mud! It is rumored that this was the isle where King Solomon's Mines were found in ancient times. Could be!

Now serendipity has entered our langauge meaning happy chance and lucky circumstance; an unforseen good thing. Merriam-Webster's dictionary is a bit academic: the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for; also: an instance of this.

This picture is of one sunset in Sri Lanka that I took personally. It's not re-touched in Photoshop in any way! These are the actual colors (after a storm, taken from my hotel, on my honeymoon with Vivien!)

7. The quote:

"I was at one time a great lover of the medical profession. . . . I no longer hold that opinion. . . . Doctors have almost unhinged us. . . . I regard the present system as black magic. . . . Hospitals are institutions for propagating sin. Men take less care of their bodies and immorality increases. . . . ignoring the soul, the profession puts men at its mercy and contributes to the diminution of human dignity and self control.. . . I have endeavoured to show that there is no real service of humanity in the profession, and that it is injurious to mankind. . . . I believe that a multiplicity of hospitals is not test of civilization. It is rather a symptom of decay."

--Mahatma Gandhi, saviour of India. He defeated the world's greatest and most powerful Empire, the British, without ever firing a shot! (although there was much bloodshed after the British left, after the partitiion of Pakistan. The hostilities continue to this day)

So, that's all for this week!

Be well; find the sacred in all you do, otherwise don't do it!

Prof.

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