Lydia was afraid to go out for a walk, because even if she made it down the stairs of the building to the front door, the outside steps had no railing, and then the sidewalk into town was downhill and very uneven. Her bone density was so low (45 percent lower in her spine than what you’d expect for her age) by the time she went to see Dr. John Lee that she knew a simple stumble could be disastrous.

Lydia thought 70 was too young to be limited like this, so when Dr. Lee suggested natural progesterone cream, she was ready to try it. She carefully selected a brand with an adequate level of active hormone, and saw immediate improvement. In just six months, she gained 8 percentage points. So she continued with the cream, and diet and exercise strategies similar to those in this book. She got periodic bone scans to monitor her progress, and despite a drop in density after another doctor gave her cortisone injections, over four years her spine was 38 percent denser than before she began using progesterone cream. She’s now just 22 percent lower than expected, a gain of 23 percentage points.

*143\228\2*

A few urgent and essential final instructions.

1. Weigh yourself every day, and write it all down in the weight section included in the diet. Then tell your weight to someone—the same person—each day. Acknowledge and confront your weight, and let go of it. You confront your weight by weighing yourself. You acknowledge it by writing it down. And you let go of it by telling it to someone. Don’t try to remember it. Let it go. If you don’t have a scale, buy one immediately. You cannot begin this diet until you do. If you don’t weigh yourself, you may not lose weight.

2. Eat the foods only in the order listed. Do not skip around. Food follows food and one day’s program follows another for very specific reasons. Once you have changed foods, don’t return to the previous one.

3. If the diet specifies that you should eat a certain amount of a food, eat all that’s indicated, even if it means stopping for a while and going back to it. Don’t move on to the next food until you do.

4. If an amount is not specified, eat unlimited amounts—as much as you want. Eat until you’re full. The more you eat, the more you lose. You are losing weight by feeding your body, not by starving it. Do not let yourself go hungry. Remember, you have permission to really get full.

5. Buy enough, more than you think you’ll need. Five pounds of grapes on a grape day is not excessive. Better to freeze leftovers than set yourself up for failure by not having enough.

6. Eat slowly. It isn’t how much you eat in how short a time-it’s how long you can make the pleasure last

7. Use frozen food only when fresh food is not available. Do not eat canned foods because of the high sodium content.

8. Don’t substitute fresh fruit for dried fruit. Dried fruit may be substituted for fresh fruit only when fresh or frozen fruits are not available.

9. Eat only the foods listed. If something else flies into your mouth, spit it out—quick!

10. Wait two hours between eating different kinds of fruits.

11. Wait three hours between eating all other kinds of foods— that is, fruit to carb, fruit to protein, carb to carb, carb to protein, protein to protein.

12. All dried fruit must be unsulfured (no sulfur dioxide or preservatives or honey dipped). Soak all dried fruits, except raisins and dates for one hour and then discard the water.

13. All nuts and seeds must be raw and unsalted.

14. Oil must be cold pressed or expeller pressed.

15. Use unsalted butter only. Use raw butter, if it’s available. Raw butter is made from milk that has not been pasteurized or homogenized.

16. Drink water, coffee, and tea only. No diet soda. Noncar-bonated mineral waters are preferable to carbonated.

17. No salt, salt substitutes, or powdered seasonings.

18. No artificial sweeteners. Real sweeteners only if specified.

19. No nondairy creamer. Milk or cream only if specified.

20. No gum, sugarless or otherwise. Why just chew if you can eat?

21. Fowl must be eaten with the skin. Everything contains essential nutrients.

22. Don’t throw anything away. Eat everything, especially the seeds, and eat as many as you can. They are the storehouse of the enzymes, the focus of the nutrients. If you have never tasted grape, papaya, apple, or watermelon seeds, you’ll be in for a pleasant surprise.

23. No lime or lemon on anything, unless specified. It neutralizes the protein enzyme, pepsin.

24. When alcohol is listed it is optional.

25. The “day” ends when you go to sleep and the new one begins when you wake up—not when the clock strikes midnight. If you wake up in the middle of the night and you will be going back to sleep and you are hungry, continue with the last thing you ate before you went to sleep.

*65\251\8*

This is a powerful anti-5HT agent, as well as antihistamine. After two weeks of taking the standard dose of three tablets a day, about 80 per cent of patients will notice a lessening of the frequency of migraine headaches. There is a mild antidepressant effect and another benefit is that any concomitant allergies are improved.

A 27-year-old casualty doctor found that he began to have severe migraine attacks every week. The headaches used to begin behind his right eye, which became red and watered. Instead of the pain lasting a short time, as in cluster headache, there would then ensue a severe headache lasting many hours which was accompanied by vomiting. This made it extremely difficult to work the long hours expected and he felt guilty when his friends had to ‘cover’ for him during a migraine. Examination revealed no abnormality and he began to take pizotifen. Within two weeks the headaches stopped and he was able to pass a stiff examination shortly afterwards. He suffered from hay fever but reported that, although the pollen count was high, this had also disappeared. After six months the treatment was phased out and the headaches did not return.

Half the patients who are helped by this treatment do not get a recurrence of headaches once treatment has stopped. It is as if the blood vessels ‘unlearn’ their previous pattern of response and no longer go through the variations in caliber associated with the migraine attack.

There are two main unwanted effects with this drug. The first is drowsiness, so that the manufacturers advice care when driving, and suggest that alcohol is not drunk while on treatment, a caution that also applies to other anti-5HT, as well as antihistamine, agents. The other effect is that about one-third of patients put on weight of the order of half a stone, because inhibiting 5HT in the brain (which happens to a slight extent) increases the appetite.

*64/152/5*

In the positive CRAB APPLE State the person realizes that external disharmony is, in the final analysis, only a reflection of one’s own inner imbalance and therefore it is within one’s own power to make the necessary inner change to establish external harmony. He becomes generous and ignores little things. He tries to see the things in their proper perspective. He keeps his eye on the main subject and does not get himself lost in minor details.

Case No. 1 : Mrs. Rajini complained that at night when fast asleep, she suddenly felt that the nerves inside her throat were being stretched. She had got the same sensation in the previous 2 nights, and fell very inconvinced about it. Crab Apple 3 doses stopped the trouble.

Case No. 2 : Harmeet felt the food did not descend his throat and was sticking there – a false sensation.

The very 1st dose of Crab Apple stopped that sensation.

Case No.3 : Dwarka felt his urine was dripping involuntarily and constantly. His underwear was absolutely dry. Again a case of false sensation was cured by Crab Apple.

Case No.4: When Miss. Sonia complained that her foot was heavy like a log and she could scarcely lift it from the ground, we found on inspection that the foot was normal -no swelling, no pain – another false sensation cured by CRAB APPLE.

*99\308\8*

- The goals of conventional treatments for all types of arthritis focus on relieving pain, reducing inflammation, maintaining normal function, and preventing deformities.

- NSAIDs are the mainstay of treatment for osteoarthritis, and they are also used in the early stages of rheumatoid arthritis. However, they cause a high incidence of stomach distress and ulcers.

- There is also worrisome evidence that the NSAIDs may accelerate the progression of osteoarthritis. In contrast, many of the natural treatments described later in this book may actually slow the progression of osteoarthritis, although this is not known for certain.

- The most important drugs for rheumatoid arthritis are the disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs, the DMARDs. These offer the potential of slowing the progression of rheumatoid arthritis. However, most of them cause a high incidence of serious and often dangerous side effects. A new DMARD that has recently become available may be much safer.

*30/306/5*

A group of clinical assessments is defined for optimal diabetes can Specific goals of therapy are linked to these assessments and, in general are based on evidence from randomized collaborative therapeutic trials. These assessments are described below, with brief reviews of the evidence in support of their use.

Glucose

Experiences from the DCCT are examples of the evidence-based background that supports intensive management of type 1 diabetes. This landmark study demonstrated that intensive therapy aimed at achieving glycemic control as close to normal as possible reduced the development and progression of retinopathy, albuminuria, and neuropath compared with conventional therapy. The findings of this randomize trial are extended and supported by epidemiologic studies of the level of glycemic exposure before and during the DCCT with the risk of progression of the primary endpoint, retinopathy.

Total glycemic exposure emerged as the dominant factor defining the risk of development and progression of retinopathy in the DCCT. The shorter the duration of type 1 diabetes at entry into the trial and the low the baseline HbAlc value, the greater the benefits of intensive therapy] Within each treatment group, the mean HbAlc during the trial was th’ dominant predictor of retinopathy progression.

*36\357\8*

The rhythm of the heart is dictated by a fascinating electrical, chemical and muscular timekeeping mechanism. This too can go wrong, producing disorders of rhythm or arrhythmias. The pathways along which the signal from the pacemaker cells is sent must be kept open and clear, since otherwise the message may become garbled. If the route is diseased this is exactly what happens: the muscle cells receive instructions to beat either too quickly (tachycardia) or too slowly (bradycardia). In addition, irregularities such as extra beats and atrial fibrillation can occur. Some can be controlled by a regime of drugs, while others benefit from an artificial pacemaker – still others can be prevented altogether.

If, for some reason, the sino-atrial node fails, any other part of the heart can take over its function and keep the heart contracting – albeit at a slower rate. This is seen dramatically in a condition called atrio-ventricular block where, although the heartbeat originates normally in the right atrium, it cannot be conducted down the Bundle of His and so the ventricles produce their own ‘node’. The condition stabilizes with the atria beating at their usual 60 to 70 beats per minute and the ventricles beating at a much slower rate, say 40 to 50 beats per minute. Since the ventricular contractions produce the pulse which is felt at the wrist or neck, this condition can be detected by a slowing of the pulse-rate. If the slowing is severe enough to cause symptoms such as blackouts, the ventricles will require help to speed them up a little, and a pacemaker will probably be inserted.

*9/353/5*

No doctor could pinpoint the cause of David’s fainting episodes, but his mother was on a mission to find it.

After the mainstream medical caregivers gave up on David, his mom hired a full-time pediatric nurse and turned to alternative medicine. A homeopath suggested keeping a diary of David’s symptoms, and this experience was revelatory.

Every Tuesday David ended up in the hospital. How could that be?

The journal exposed that on Tuesdays, his mom cleaned the house. Thinking that cleaning might contribute to David’s problems, she didn’t clean the house for two weeks and David slept through the night for the first time in his young life. David’s doctor thought the connection to cleaning was a coincidence, so his mom cleaned the house again and David ended up in the emergency room.

Now on the path to some answers, his mom looked up every chemical listed on the bottles of her cleaning products, read every book she could find, and contacted experts on healthy homes. She soon realized her son had all the symptoms of environmental illness due to exposure to toxic chemicals used in all the commercial cleaning products.

His mom began to remove all the poisons from her home to cure her son. In the process, she was stunned to discover that there were very few pure and healthy products to substitute for the toxic chemicals she’d used to “clean” her home. Determined to find substitutes for toxic chemicals, she made her own cleansers. In fact, her investigation and research into

is, lead to the family creating a successful company that now anufactures a line of natural household cleaners for those ho suffer from allergies, asthma, and chemical sensitivities -s well for those who want the safe, biodegradable products.

David is now eight years old and thriving because his fam-y found and removed the chemicals that made him sick.

*30/165/1*

Group therapy has become an increasingly popular form of treatment for a range of problems, including alcohol abuse. (Of course, with AA dating back to 1935, alcoholics have been recovering in groups, long before group therapy became popular or alcohol treatment was even known.) Why the popularity of group treatment methods? The first response often is: “It’s cheaper,” or “It’s more efficient; more people can be seen.” These statements may be true, but a more fundamental reason exists. Group therapy works. It works very well with alcoholics. Some of the reasons for this can be found in the characteristics of alcoholism, plus normal human nature.

For better or worse, people find themselves part of a group. And whatever being a human being means, it does involve other people. We think in terms of our family, our neighborhood, our school, our club, our town, our church. On the job, at home, on the playground, wherever, it is in group experiences where we feel left out or, conversely, find a sense of belonging. Through our contacts with others, we feel okay or not okay. As we interact, we find ourselves sharing our successes or hiding our supposed failures. Through groups we get strokes on the head or a kick in the pants. There is no avoiding the reality that other people play a big part in our lives. Just as politicians take opinion polls to see how they’re doing with the populace, so do each of us run our surveys. The kinds of questions we ask ourselves about our relationships are: “Do I belong?,” “Do I matter to others?,” “Can I trust them?,” “Am I liked?,” “Do I like them?” To be at ease and comfortable in the world, the answers have to come up more ayes than nays. The practicing alcoholic doesn’t fare so well when taking this poll. For the myriad reasons discussed before, relationships with other people are poor. Isolated and isolating, rejecting and rejected, helpless and refusing aid—with such a warped view of the world, alcoholics are oblivious to the fact that the drinking has been causing the trouble. When one is wed to the bottle, other bonds cannot be formed. Attempts to make it in the world sober will require reestablishing real human contacts. Thus groups, the setting in which life must be lived, become an ideal setting for treatment.

*125\331\2*

Cystitis is an inflammatory process of the bladder that is nearly always due to a bacterial infection. Acute uncomplicated cystitis can be defined as cystitis in a healthy, young, non-pregnant woman. Acute uncomplicated cystitis is caused by bowel flora that colonizes periurethral tissues and ascends through the urethra, infecting the bladder. About 80% of cases of acute uncomplicated cystitis are caused by Escherichia со//and 10% by Staphylococcus saprophyticus. Most of the remaining infections are caused by Proteus mirabilis, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Entero-bacter species, and beta-hemolytic streptococi.

Asymptomatic bacteriuria is a common occurrence among young, sexually active women. In one study, monthly cultures were performed for 6 months in asymptomatic women, and more than 20% of the women in the study had at least one positive culture finding. However, only 8% of these positive cultures were followed by a symptomatic UTI. This finding supports the practice of treating bacteriuria only in symptomatic individuals. Only under special circumstances (e.g., pregnancy, preceding urologic procedures) is it appropriate to treat asymptomatic bacteriuria.

*139/348/5*