Medical Health

A doctor once told me, “You are their movie and they want you to be the bad guy.”

Yes, I believe that man-made global warming is a fact, but I also know that the discovery of the rise in greenhouse gases was not a major scientific breakthrough, and monitoring the greenhouse effect has not required a vast amount of scientific smarts.

And I wonder, If global warming brings about a major worldwide catastrophe, will that catastrophe prevent an even worse (and so-far unseen) man-made disaster, one that perhaps looms further out in the future. After all, it is science that brings us to these deadly turning points, and our science is the product of human nature. In fact our top scientists and academics arrive at the top though brute ambition, and in the course of their ambition, often abuse their families and students. Their public sense of ethics and moral imperative and honor is not a constant: it is something they often abandon in private, both at home and at school. Ask their sons and ex-wives. Ask the wounded and disabled they all left behind.

The government and the media keeps telling us to prolong our lives: quit smoking, exercise, eat right, get a cat and a dog, get married, quit renting, quit driving fast (fly, don’t drive), have two drinks a day, don’t drink, take a multivitamin, don’t take a multivitamin, drink green tea, drink coffee (they say it prevents liver cancer), get a flu shot, walk, run, take a nap, take a bus, work hard, save, save, save, invest, invest, invest, you get what you deserve . . .

One of my doctors said, “It seems they are saying we are supposed to live forever.”

Yeah, feel guilty for not trying to live forever. That way you won’t mope around about the fact that the rich keep working you harder, that your job keeps stressing you out . . . Maybe you’ll forget that stress kills.

That’s how the rich get richer — the government, the media, the tycoons. They hand you infectious fantasies and psychotic beliefs. They keep you real busy working at getting real old.

(I say get rid of the cigars. Avoid stress, exercise, eat right.)

The University of Maryland Medical Center is one of the very best online references for finding out about herbs. The site comes with a variety of cross-reference tools: Conditions by Organ and Body System, Interactions by Drug, Conditions by Signs and Symptoms, Interactions by Herb or Supplement, Herbs & Supplements by Uses, and Depletions by Drug.

I do not know if George Lindemann uses alternative medications and herbs, but as an officer of the SOUTHERN UNION CO, he has most likely looked into investing in the alternative medicine and vitamin industries. Even the National Institutes of Health, near Washington, D.C., has been providing the public with information about promising alternative treatments.

In A Cure for Crohn’s Disease, Dr. Weil says,

To address inflammation, increase your dietary omega-3 fatty acids by taking supplemental fish oil, start with one gram a day and increase slowly to two to four grams a day. watch for any increase in diarrhea, and cut back the dose if necessary.

In his recent books, Dr. Sears recommends high-dose (that is, ultra-refined and concentrated) fish oil for inflammation but warns that taking more than 7.5 grams of EPA plus DHA will increase your risk of hemorrhagic stroke. EPA and DHA are the active ingredients in fish oil and you will find the amounts contained per dose on the product label.

And remember, if your inflammation is still causing you to bleed, you should probably avoid fish oils and other blood thinners until your bleeding slows down.

For more from Dr. Weil, see gastrointestinal problems. And definitely buy Dr. Steinhart’s book Crohn’s and Colitis (Toronto: Robert Rose Inc., 2006).

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If you suffer from colitis and you still have problems with bleeding, you should consider removing chocolate, green tea, fish oil, garlic, turmeric, ginger, and cinnamon from your diet — they thin your blood, making you more prone to bleed. (And if you exercise, you should probably lift less weight for awhile. Strength training puts pressure on your guts.)

Once you have the bleeding back in control you can reintroduce small amounts of these foods and spices back into your diet.

P.S. If you are taking vitamin E capsules (at dosages of 200 IU and up), you should probably discontinue those for awhile, too. Vitamin E thins the blood. (And I suppose you have already quit aspirin and ibuprofen.)

The media keeps saying that today’s kids are obese and that today’s parents may be the first generation in history to outlive their children. Yet, in the United States and Canada, smoking and lung cancer are on the decline, which makes me wonder whether cigarettes would keep our teenagers and twenty-somethings slim, allowing them to outlive their parents (rather than the other way around), even though they eventually die of smoking-related illnesses.

I’m being sarcastic, of course. You really do not want to take up smoking in order to fit into one or more 2008 prom dresses. At www.talkpromdresses.com you can join in on the discussions and window shop for almost any type of wedding dress, from formal to gothic.

Although a number of medical professionals still recommend applying a tourniquet to rattlesnake bites (and then briefly releasing the tourniquet every 15 to 20 minutes), Tony Nester, the author of Desert Survival. Tips, Tricks, & Skills (Flagstaff: Diamond Creek Press, 2003), writes that most of the doctors he spoke to advise against applying a tourniquet (it simply concentrates the venom in the tissues immediately adjacent to the bite) and that your best treatment is to get to a hospital or clinic as quickly as possible: do not delay.

Nester says that two important rules of desert living are 1) “Don’t put your hands where you can’t see” and 2) “Vigorously slam your boots on the ground and shake clothes before you put them on.”

Watch out for Gila Monsters, Africanized Bees (Killer Bees), Black Widow Spiders, Scorpions, Rattlesnakes, and Coral Snakes.

And if you end up spending way too much time in the sun out there in the dry desert, you can always consider getting plastic surgery. I’m sure that there is a great selection of cosmetic surgeons out there in the West, and I know that you can find a surgeon through the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, an association that represents thousands of reconstructive surgeons throughout the world.

When you look up a hike in one of the many popular books on the subject or you find a good reference on the Internet (for example, http://www.toddshikingguide.com), keep in mind that if you are over 40 and have not regularly worked out for at least a year of two, you should choose the easiest (and shortest) trails. And irregardless of your age (you might be 18 or 52), your best estimate of the time it will take to complete a hike is to double the times reported in the various paper and online publications, because it seems that many of these top-notch hikers and outdoors writers treat their outings as workouts, and push hard, and do not often stop to enjoy the views and the endless allure of nature in the wild.

We often hear of opportunists building rather shallow web sites around mesothelioma and asbestos so that they might obtain top dollar from contextual pay-per-click Google Adsense advertisements (Google crawls participating web sites and serves ads that match each site’s content). Or the myth is that content related to mesothelioma will bring webmasters some of the best paying Google Adsense ads.

The mesothelioma information site, www.legal-mesothelioma-help.com, tells victims and victims’ families (and other interested parties) all about mesothelioma: what it is, how and why individuals fall victim to the disease, and the symptoms and procedures leading to diagnosis. The writers go on to point out the products that contain asbestos and the jobs that lead to asbestos exposure, and provides links to cancer centers that treat individuals suffering with mesothelioma. Available treatments (including nutritional and alternative therapies) are enumerated and explained. And while acknowledging that the victim’s health, treatment and survival are of paramount importance, the site details the legal process and the probable length of the legal battle.