Filed under FAQ …
JUNE 2022 TABLEHOPPING
PEMF
Recently , because several different patients have been urging me to investigate it, I have gotten into energy medicine. Unfortunately , there is little information in the conventional medicine world that deals with anything but how to treat problems with pills because ..that’s where the money is. Nonetheless, there is real science there and if it can help patients we should be familiar with the topic. The Hindus around 4000 BC used magnetized stones called lodestones to treat illness. The Chinese around 2000 BC had protocols for using lodestones on acupuncture points. Cleopatra was said to have worn magnetic jewelry (lodestones)to prevent aging. Hippocrates , in Greece, was known to use magnets for pain . More recently, the Russians have been using electric devices for decades to promote healing and health.
One of the earliest scientific accounts of using magnets is found in the book De Magnete,written in 1600 by William Gilbert, the personal physician of the English Queen. This natural philosopher used “lode stones” to treat a variety of health problems of ordinary British citizens and even the Queen of England. Contemporary magnet therapy began in Japan immediately after World War II by introducing both magnetic and electromagnetic fields in clinical practice. This modality quickly moved to Europe, first in Romania and the former Soviet Union. During the period of 1960–1985, nearly all European countries designed and manufactured their own magnetic therapeutic systems which utilized various waveshapes. In fact , the first book on magnet therapy, written by Todorov, was published in Bulgaria in 1982 summarizing the experience of utilizing magnetic fields for treatment of 2,700 patients having 33 different pathologies.
It wasn’t until the late 1970s that Americans Drs. Andrew Bassett and Arthur Pilla created a noninvasive PEMF device that succeeded in healing a non-union fracture..The 1980s also saw the introduction of the first FDA-approved PEMF system, intended for use as a bone stimulator to treat nonunion fractures. The seminal book “Body Electric: Electromagnetism and the Foundation of Life” was published in 1986 by Dr. Robert Becker and Gary Selden. This book is important because it was one of the first descriptions of the body as an electromagnetic apparatus and therefore very susceptible to magnetic field therapies Since then thousands of studies using many different devices have shown that electromagnetic fields can have a profound effect on cellular health and as we and fond of saying cellular and mitochondrial health IS health.
For a long list of scientific articles about the benefits of emf fields you can check out DrPawluk.com. Dr William Pawluk is an American physician who probably has the most experience with emf generators of all kinds. For those of you skeptical about how emf fields can affect the body you need only look at your iphone. Your iphones battery can be recharged by putting it on a mat that emits an emf field. So too can your body’s batteries be recharged by placing it on a mat that emits the appropriate frequencies, intensities and waveform. We know that emf fields in our environment have the potential to harm us. Why would you doubt that emf fields therefore have the potential to heal us.
Need more? Of course you do …let’s get down to basic science. As taken directly from Dr Pawluks website…..All matter is made up of moving particles. Forces exist in space around these moving particles. These forces are magnetic fields. By definition force is an interaction that changes the motion of an object. An electric field is the force field created by the flow of electricity caused by attraction and repulsion of electric charges. A magnetic field is a force field created as a consequence of the flow of electricity. Electric fields and magnetic fields always exist together. One cannot exist without the other. An electromagnetic field, then, is the combination of an electric field and a magnetic field. Our bodies are fundamentally electric. When a person goes into cardiac arrest, for example, a defibrillator is used to apply electric energy to the heart so that they can re-establish a normal rhythm. So, the electricity flowing through our bodies creates electromagnetic fields. External magnetic fields and the bodies native electromagnetic fields interact in proportion to the strength of the fields. Because of these interactions a magnetic field passing through the body will have an effect on the cellular level. Electric and magnetic fields control our chemistry by changing and influencing the motion of charged particles. This movement stimulates a vast array of chemical and electrical actions and tissues helping them rebalance or heal themselves where necessary. Additionally this increased motion of ions and electrolytes help cells increase surveillance energy by as much as 500%.Magnetic fields affect the charge of the cell membranes, rebalancing it so that the membrane channels can open up. These channels are like the doors and windows of a house, by opening them oxygen and nutrients are better able to enter the cell and carbon dioxide and waste are more easily eliminated from the cell. This helps to balance and restore optimum cell function. Electromagnetic fields affect the charge of the cell membrane. This is the basis for a magnetic field therapy, perfecting and improving basic cellular function in order to combat a variety of health conditions and when possible prevent cellular damage from happening in the first place. Still skeptical? Here’s an article about the benefits of emf therapy from our own SUNY Upstate Medical University.
A PULSING ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELD PROMOTES THE DIFFERENTIATION OF OSTEOBLASTS (MC3T3) AT LOW CELL DENSITY IN VITRO. *Button, C; +**Spadaro, JA; **Margulies, B S; **Allen, M J; **Wang, Y; **Damron, T A; *Dept. of Neuroscience and Physiology, **Department of Orthopedic Surgery, SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, NY
Believing in this technology I bought a PEMF machine for my patients to use in the office. My plan is to measure patients phase angle and their arterial flexibility and see if it changes before and after a treatment. I will also be offering it to my patients with acute and chronic pain to see if it helps. It’s not covered by insurance so your doctor will have nothing to do with it. But, there are PEMF machines available in Syracuse to use but you have to do the internet legwork on your own. If I found the guy in Liverpool you can too.
PEMF is not a cure all. But, if you have chronic pain or feel low energy why not give this very safe modality a try? PEMF is not recommended for use in infants under 2 weeks, pregnant women and patients with implantable devices like pacemakers, defibrillators and pain stimulators. This is by no means new technology but it’s new to me and I am eager to check out its potential. Until next month….get well and stay well
JT BARRY MD
MAY 2022 TABLEHOPPING ARTICLE
Dementia may have worked its way up to the third leading cause of death behind heart disease and cancer. I think dementia is particularly devastating because it has such a profound effect on both the patient and their families. The costs of dementia far exceed the cost of heart disease and cancer combined. So, obviously it’s a terribly important personal and public health issue. Unfortunately over 200 drug trials have been done in the last decades with only one oral drug approved (which has very limited benefits) As you recall, the one IV drug approved recently was so controversial that all the independent doctors who recommended the drug not be approved resigned when the FDA approved the drug over their objections. The drug did nothing clinically but made the brain scans look better so that was enough for the FDA.
So, the conventional approach to dementia is for your primary care doctor to possibly run a blood test or two…if they are aggressive you get a brain scan ..if they are not you get a referral to a neurologist and he checks a few labs and gives you a pill that’s been around since 1996 that does nothing to the underlying causes of dementia and whos benefits are no longer measurable after 12 weeks. Most doctors will shake their heads and tell you there is really not much that can be done for you. It’s common, it’s progressive and there is really nothing you can do about it.
Luckily there is a neo conventional approach. Dr Dale Breseden who wrote the book The End Of Alzheimers and who heads the Buck Institute in California understands that dementia is caused by multiple factors therefore one medication is never going to address all the multiple factors and therefore the medication approach alone is never going to be the answer.
Dementia is an epidemic and it increases as populations adopt Western Lifestyles. So if something about our lifestyles is causing dementia ….if we change our lifestyles can we affect dementia. Most doctors will say no but they have never tried a program to change lifestyles so they never see any benefits.
Dementia can be broken down into 5 categories….atrophic, inflammatory, toxin related, vascular and traumatic. Each category obviously has to be handled differently. Dr Breseden has put together a program that other doctors can use that thoroughly evaluates patients for mold, lyme, nutrition, stress, sleep, supplement use etc and develops a detailed care plan for IMPROVING BRAIN FUNCTION AND BRAIN SIZE. There are programs that will take a brain MRI and measure all the different parts of the brain so when you work on a patient you can actually share with them whether the intervention is working or not. . It’s a very holistic approach that I don’t think many health care providers have time or training for.
The RECODE program , as Dr Breseden has developed it, is a step by step evaluation of the different causes of brain deterioration and a step by step treatment approach based on the testing done. I see a lot of records from neurologists and other doctors..;…never have I seen anything close to what Dr Breseden has put together. So here’s the part where I recommend an existing program that you can access locally. Unfortunately, just as there is no Dean Ornish treatment center in Central New York, there is no RECODE program that I know of locally. As an aside , ask your cardiologist if he supported attempts to bring the Dean Ornish program to the area. The Dean Ornish program is a well established , medicare approved approach that uses diet , exercise, and stress management to reverse heart disease without surgery. You would think that with all these local hospitals cranking out the major heart surgeries they would have at least a passing interest in a non surgical approach but nothing doing. Zero point zero interest and I know because I personally tried to bring this program to Syracuse but without support from even one cardiologist ( and I wrote to every cardiologist office and all 4 hospitals ) I don’t have the patient base to hire all the necessary personnel.
So, no Dean Ornish for the heart but yes to the RECODE program for the brain because I can do this without outside help. I have just finished the RECODE course which involved hours and hours of studying nutrition, toxicology, gut health, brain imaging, brain training, supplement use etc. I have my Nurse Practitioner Nancy Popp also getting trained up because it’s a lot of work for the patient and the practitioner but it will be worth it when we make a difference in patients lives. I didn’t sign up for this program to make money….we doctors are doing fine thank you even without a raise from medicare or the insurance companies for years. I took this course and will offer this program because it’s a critical health care issue and no one else in the area is offering the program.
I am still working out the costs and program details. ….some of which will be covered by insurance but whatever the cost is trivial compared with the tremendous cost of nursing home care or even adult home care. My clinic is already full , I don’t need more patients but local patients need this care and I am going to make it happen. I don’t need a certain number of patients to be successful.
Working on memory loss is not going to be easy. It involves making real changes in lifestyle and I think there will be a fair number of people who simply cant make the necessary changes but for those patients and families struggling with dementia we finally have real choices. Don’t call my office ….check out this link for further info and contact info…..by the time this is in print I should be up and running and available through this link. https://www.apollohealthco.com/solution/recode/
You don’t have to change doctors. You do not have to join my concierge program. This is a completely separate program for people who have been told …”there is really nothing to be done” . I don’t think that’s true any longer. You can just watch your loved one slip away into that dark night of dementia or you can try something different.
I was struck recently by a comment made by one of my patients. He ran into a local doctor who was prominent in the community but had retired prematurely due to signs of dementia. My patient, very interested in nutrition, suggested to his wife that they embark on a nutritional approach to treat their illness but the family stated they’re going to stick with the conventional approach. Well, the conventional approach is infective medicines, worsening condition over time until the nursing home. Why would you settle for that approach when something else is available? it could be due to inertia but it shouldn’t be due to ignorance anymore, The RECODE program offers you something previously unavailable to Central New York. You want easy? Let’s talk quantum physics but if you want results….check out the RECODE program. Its your brain, its your family, its your future…..it’s in your hands and it’s up to you !
Until next month….get well and stay well
J BARRY MD
APRIL 2022 TABLEHOPPING ARTICLE
Dr Malcolm Kendrick has just released his latest book….the Clot Thickens and its another must read. His prior books…the Cholesterol Con and Statin Nation both laid out in detail the many failings of the cholesterol causes heart disease hypothesis and the sustained efforts of the pharmaceutical industry to make you believe that statins make a real difference in heart disease. Unfortunately most doctors and health care providers have drunk the kool aid and still believe that cholesterol is a major factor in heart disease and that everyone should be on a statin. I have a very hard time convincing even my own Nurse Practitioners to stop looking at the guidelines and start looking at the data. It’s hard to go right when everyone else is going left.
In this, his latest book, Dr Kendrick reviews these issues but goes into much more depth about the true causes of heart disease inflammation (and its many causes) and the delicate balance between bleeding and clotting. He gets right to the bottom line in reviewing what interactions really change life expectancy. The evidence shows that by sunbathing you can gain up to a 10 years increase in lifespan. Just going outside , spending time in the sunlight which is simple, free, and enjoyable. On the other hand, 40 Years of statins will give you the lifespan expectancy gain of just under a month..that’s right … 3 days extra for every 5 years of taking a statin. So, take a statin for 40 years to gain just under a month of life expectancy or do some sunbathing and gain 10 years ! Does this seem like a hard choice to you?
What about shortening life expectancy? Of course smoking leads the list. Smoking takes at least 10 years off your life expectancy and that’spretty well accepted. What’s not accepted or well known is that taking proton pump inhibitors (prilosec, omeprazole, aciphex etc ) causes on average a reduction of 2 years in life span ! The mechanism of action is that the PPIs have an adverse cardiovascular effect via a reduction in nitrous oxide production. Dr Kendrik points to a data mining exercise examining records from 2.9 million patients who were on proton pump inhibitors were associated with a 1.16 fold risk of having a heart attack and a 2 fold increase risk of cardiovascular mortality. That’s a doubling of cardiovascular mortality by taking a Prilosec or other drug chronically. So one of the most popular drugs in the world has clearly and repeatedly been shown to increase your risk of dying…what did your doctor say about that?
So his suggestions as to how to keep cardiovascular diseases at bay include focusing on the items that have the biggest effects. Data inthe United Kingdom from 3,878,256 patients analyzed over 10 years and machine learning was used to evaluate cardiovascular risk prediction. The top conditions related to CVD risk factors were :
- #1 COPD / smoking
- #2 Steroid prescription
- #3 Age
- #4 Severe mental illness
- #5 South Asian ethnicity
- #6 Prescription of immunosuppressant
- #7 Socioeconomic status quintile number 3
- #8 Socioeconomic status quintile number 4
- #9 Chronic kidney disease
- #10 Socioeconomic status Quintile number 2
Diabetes and hypertension did not make the top 10! Socioeconomic status quintiles refer to a patient’s status economically. This was based on massive computing analysis of many patients but doesn’t prove causation. Lower socioeconomic status equals more stress and Dr Kendrick points to loads of data both clinically and biochemically wherein stress is a major risk factor for heart disease. Is severe mental illness associated with heart disease because most of those patients smoke or is it because most of those patients are chronically stressed out ?
When you look at it, severe mental illness, steroid prescription and immunosuppressant prescription all work in the same function affecting the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis with resultant insulin resistance. Stress does the same thing. It’s not just some new wave mumbo jumbo …there are direct physical, chemical, and hormonal pathways linking stress to health consequences.
Where did LDL (what your cardiologist calls the “bad” cholesterol) fall on the list of associations with heart disease? It ranked 46 out of 48. Yet another proof that LDL cholesterol was not a significant risk factor for heart disease. Ok, this study was done in the United Kingdom but it’s probably more relevant to heart disease in America than one done in China or Chile.
What were Dr Kendricks personal recommendations regarding reducing heart disease risks? Of course he talks about smoking reduction, exercise , sun exposure (which increases nitric oxide production) sleep and stress management but he also talks about supplements…none of which he has any financial interests in. He particularly mentions terms of supplements ; Vitamin D, Vitamin C, Potassium, Magnesium, L-Arginine, and L- Citrulline. These are his recommendations to well people. If you have diagnosed heart disease he adds Chondroitin Sulfate (which acts to protect the glycocalyx ), thiamine, CO Q -10 ( since most of these patients are on statins ) and viagra like drugs (which increase nitric oxide production). He also favors considering aspirin and avoiding nonsteroidal drugs and proton pump inhibitors. If you have diabetes he recommends a low carb diet, short burst exercises, reducing alcohol and consider chelation therapy. This last one will be discussed in future columns.
I don’t know if it’s more important for you or your health care provider to read this book. Well, it may be too difficult for your health care provider to change how they think and how they practice but it’s not too late for you to improve your health. Look at the evidence in this book or his prior books not at the recommendations of the guidelines because these guidelines have been hopelessly corrupted by Big Pharma. Don’t get me wrong…there is a time and place for pharmaceuticals but they must come after the basics of diet, exercise, sleep and stress and not be used as a substitute.
Until next month….get well and stay well.
JT BARRY MD
MARCH 2022 TABLEHOPPING ARTICLE
A big topic amongst many people concerned with longevity and “health gevity” is the use of supplements. I’m not talking about Vitamin D or fish oil. I am talking about more controversial supplements like NR, NMN, and Fisetin. Will these supplements prolong your life and increase your health or will they cause cancer and wreck your metabolism?
We are talking about medications / supplements that affect metabolic pathways of aging including mTOR, but work primarily by affecting the Sirtuin Pathway. This pathway was discovered in the 1970’s and is a major anti-aging force. Aging is not just a date on a calendar …it’s a progressive loss of certain nutrients and an accumulation of certain toxins that ultimately affect basic cellular function including the mitochondria…the powerhouses of your cells.
Let’s start with the basic Niacin or B3. This water soluble vitamin is the backbone of one of the most basic and necessary energy molecules ..NADH that is only second to ATP as an energy store in the body. You can make niacin from the amino acid tryptophan but you can also get it from leafy veggies , liver, most meats, etc. There are several steps in between Niacin and NADH including a compound called Nicotinamide riboside which has been commercially available as a product since 2014. This , in turn, is turned into nicotinamide mononucleotide also called NMN. Two of these NMN molecules make up one unit of NAD which can now act as a hydrogen transporter / energy generator. We know that when we supplement yeast and mice with these agents they are healthier and live longer than unsupplemented animals. What about humans? Well we just don’t have enough answers for me to recommend any of these supplements except Niacin which I recommend people get as a B Complex or B Complete . Dr David Sinclair at Harvard is currently experimenting with all these compounds as well as Resveratrol and other senolytic molecules like ficiden and quercetin which may improve health and extend lifespan..quercetin reduces fatty liver and other markers of poor health/ inflammation. …ficiden is a plant molecule found in grapes, apples and is available as a supplement. Resveratrol also activates the sirtuin pathway but you would need to drink more than a hundred bottles of red wine a day but you can get 250 mg as a daily supplement which should be taken with some olive oil or other fat to improve absorption.
There are clinics in Florida and California where people are going for injections of NAD which they claim helps with depression, addiction and hangovers.
Now there are other classes of drugs that have promise. The drug rapamycin and its analogs have shown benefit of extending life span in every species studied so far it acts to inhibit mTOR it mimics fasting and mimics the effects of a low protein diet.This drug is available as an immunosuppressant for transplant patients so it its commercially available but it’s a stretch I’m not willing to make to take it now for possible health benefits.
Ok, How about spermadin ? These are crystals found in sperm , oddly enough by the inventor of the microscope Antoine Van Leeuwenhoek, and it stimulates autophagy and stabilizes the epigenome…1.2 grams a day improved memory in one trial…you can get it in wheat germ if you like.
What about metformin? This is an AMPK activator drug which is used worldwide for diabetes. Its so safe that in half the world its available over the counter. The drug lowers ATP and produces an increase in mitochondria….its an mTOR inhibitor and raises NAD levels so what’s not to like? Well it’s still artificial and I would like to age as naturally as possible but I am looking forward to better studies and certainly respect people who want to try these compounds.
Which leads us to Berberine which is a plant molecule similar to metformin…it can mimic metformin…it reduces chemical reactions in the body and the body responds by making more energy and mitochondria. You have to use 1-2 grams a day. I plan to try the Berberine for a month and see if it improves any metrics of my health and see how I feel but I will hold off on the others until I see more study results. I am sure there are many more compounds I have left out but that leaves fodder for another column. Until then ….work on the basics of diet and exercise….don’t expect any supplement to be as beneficial as eating health and getting a workout. You know the drill but have to find the motivation to do it. Someone once said change comes from inspiration or desperation ….which will it be for you? Until next month Get Well and Stay Well
JT BARRY MD
FEBRUARY 2022 TABLE HOPPING ARTICLE
FRUIT ISN’T ALL THAT !
This article draws heavily from great work on carbohydrate metabolism by Dr Gary Fettke, a Tazmanian surgeon who drew the ire of the nutritional service at his hospitals when he suggested diabetic patients could prevent further amputations if they lowered their carbohydrate intake. Even though the government guidelines suggest you should get half your calories from fruits and grains, excessive carbohydrate intake is dangerous. For millenium carbohydrate intake was seasonal and fruit based and since we began to bake and use grains our health has deteriorated. Fruit was intended to fatten us up for Winter. We now have endless Summer in our groceries so we are not seasonal anymore and it shows in our waistlines.
All carbohydrates are sugar…There are many different sugars ..glucose, sucrose, fructose for example. The human body goes to great lengths to remove excess sugar from the bloodstream. Any excess sugar in the bloodstream is dealt with aggressively by the body to keep the levels low because too much is toxic. Turns out more than a teaspoon of sugar has a toxic effect
It’s all about energy production and that brings up the Krebs cycle in which acetyl coA is converted by the mitochondria into energy….ATP to be exact. ..Acetyl coA can be produced from fatty acids, sugar and amino acids. There is no absolute need for sugar as an energy source in contrast to fatty acids and amino acids which are absolutely essential. Glucose can be consumed by us or created by gluconeogenesis and from glycogen stores. Excess glucose triggers an elevation of sugar which in turn stimulates insulin. More than one teaspoon calls for a response. A slice of bread contains 5 teaspoons of sugar so that’s a lot of extra sugar that the body has to remove from circulation. .Glucose and fructose are very similar sugars but are handled very differently by the body. Fruits contain both glucose and fructose in roughly even proportions.
Chronic elevation of sugar causes advanced glycogenated end products to build up. This in turns oxidized fats etc to contribute to inflammation. These AGE’s affect the brain, the eyes, the heart, the kidneys, wound healing , infection and cancer. Elevated glucose levels also glycate other tissues and lipids. The glycocalyx is a coating of every endothelial blood vessel….its critical to health and is fragile …this organ of sorts is particularly affected by elevated blood glucose. Damaging the glycocalyx is analogous to damaging the lining of your gut causing leaky blood vessels much as you get a leaky gut.
Excess sugar triggers increased insulin which is generally inflammatory. There is a direct correlation between insulin levels and degree of inflammatory markers in the knee as shown in a study done within the last 5 years and mentioned by Dr Fettke. Insulin reduces vitamin D absorption, Insulin stimulates tumor growth; Insulin lowers magnesium levels which are required in myriad biochemical pathways and insulin increases clotting measures.
Now Fructose in particular is mostly metabolized in the liver… Fructose raises uric acid which is also inflammatory and elevated uric acid negatively affects the production of nitric acid which is a critical component of vascular heath. Uric acid decreases white cell function and adversely affects our response to infection. Fructose actually increases hunger via both the leptin and ghrelin pathways if you want to get technical. Fructose increases the oxidation of ldl…the type of lipid your doctor calls the “ the bad cholesterol “
Just as an aside…why do they give you so much sugar in the hospital? . It’s not just in the food…breakfast pizza and pecan pie are touted as healthy…Sugar is directly toxic to the immune system but how many people are getting a sugar water Intravenous solution.?! One more thing to worry about when you go into the hospital.
One way to manage your sugars is obviously via your diet. Keto diets are low carbohydrate/ low sugar diets that directly address this issue of carbohydrate toxicity. Many physicians are leery of a keto diet but let’s look at the keto diet in the most vulnerable population we have…..unborn babies. We have a long and consistent medical record here. Mothers with morning sickness are often in ketosis…this is something we have seen and measured . The other end of the spectrum is babies whose mothers have gestational diabetes. So. Some babies are exposed to very low sugar and some babies are exposed to high sugar levels and we can track their outcomes. . It’s no surprise that the keto exposed babies are healthier in every metric compared to the gestational diabetes babies….premature births, birth defects etc all worse in the high sugar good.
Scheduled obesity is the process of turning sugar into fat during times of plenty. There were papers published as early as 1948 that connected sugar with illness. By 1992 the food guide suggested 5-9 fruits and vegetables a day but there is no real science behind that recommendation. In 2005 the CDC partnered with the produce industry to continue to promote fruits along with vegetables. The Epic Study in Europe involved over 500,000 people and lasted for over 15 years and did not show a correlation between fruits and veggies and cancer rate.
How much sugar is healthy according to the World Health Organization? ….25 grams which is 6 teaspoons of sugar a day. We have gone from 5 pounds a year of sugar consumption to 152 pounds a year. And that’s an average.
Well, what about all the other nutritional benefits of fruit in terms of minerals, vitamins and micronutrients. ? Fruit nutritional value is overstated. Look at antioxidants….a cup of coffee has much more antioxidants than most fruits/ Look at vitamins …..well green leafy veggies have much more vitamin E, vitamin A etc. Look at minerals….again green leafy veggies ie spinach has more potassium than the banana Fruit also has less phytonutrients and fiber than many vegetables.
So let’s start the New Year off right and keep things in perspective. Fruit may not be the substance you should base your diet on but it’s way healthier than any fast food, fried food , processed food and liquid calories like soda and fruit drinks. Have fruit but seasonally and sporadically like your ancestors experienced and see how you feel. If you want to try to lower your carbohydrates in your diet I would refer you to Keto Syracuse on facebook. Keto Phil knows what he is talking about and has all the references you would ever want and more.
Knowledge is power . Make this the year you become truly powerful.! Until next month….get well and stay well.
JT BARRY MD
JANUARY 2022 TABLEHOPPING ARTICLE
You’re going to have to blame this article on my sister Brenda because, I’ve been warned previously, to avoid vaccine discussions as no one in the health department at the CDC or the FDA at cetera wants to hear any dissenting views on the safety and efficacy of the vaccine. But, when my sister ,a board-certified gynecologist, mentioned that she hoped people like Dr. Mercola would be sanctioned for spreading untruths about the vaccine. I just had to take issue with her. Show me one discrepancy, one untruth the doctor Mercola has said and I will cease bombarding you with article after article about the vaccines and their serious lack of efficacy and even more serious safety. So far the bombardment has continued unabate.
First off, it is TRUE that the very definition of vaccine had to be changed to allow these new modalities to be called vaccines. It’s very important to someone that they be called vaccines rather than experimental delivery systems because the bulk of the public believes in the long and safe history of vaccination. Don’t take my word for it… Compare the 2013 definition of vaccine with the 2021 definition in Marriam Webster.. Is it nitpicking? Do words matter?
Secondly, can we look to the global reality for a moment? Sweden did the least in response to the COVID and has been affected the least. Very low death rates, Very low hospitalization rates, when compared to many many countries with very restrictive rules and very aggressive vaccine mandates. Find out which countries are doing the best in any arena and do what they do… that seems like a reasonable approach which our health agencies completely ignore.
The mantra, the credo, the remonstration from on high is Get the shot or you are not intelligent. Get the shot or you will kill grandma. Get the shot or you are not patriotic. Get the shot to protect others. If it’s so safe and effective why are they bribing people and shaming people into getting the shot. Although they admit they don’t have accurate data…. CDC director Rochelle Walensky ,Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research all testified before Congress admitting that probably 40% of their staff have not been vaccinated. If these vaccines are saving the world why isn’t there 100% compliance from the people who study them? Isn’t that a fair question?
Why didn’t this next story make every headline in every news channel in the world ? In response to a request for a complete copy of the all important Pfizer study ( upon which our entire government response relies) the FDA has petitioned the courts ( we paid for it and have to sue the FDA for access.. really??) to allow them until 2076…thats 55 years from now. If this is the most important vaccine of all time then free and clear and immediate access to the data should be a foregone conclusion. This should all be on a PDF that anyone and everyone can download. We paid for the trials. We paid for the vaccines. There is no rational reason this data needs 55 years to release. As the Attorneys for the researchers trying to get access to the data pointed out….They took 108 days for the FDA to carry out a very thorough and complete analysis of the vaccine trial. . It shouldn’t take longer than that to release the data. Sorry but it Just makes me think they are hiding something. Could it be safety data ? Could it be efficacy data? And just as importantly this story of government agency mismanagement and delay is buried. Don’t believe me..”.type 55 years to release Pfizer data “ on your search bar.
So let’s get to the heart of the matter. Safety and Efficacy.
My training has involved using the Number Needed to Treat as a marker of efficacy. This translates into how many people have to receive treatment for one person to benefit. Usually if the NNT is greater than 50 it’s considered a low benefit intervention. According to the Lancet the number needed to vaccinate is 81 for the Moderna–NIH, 78 for the AstraZeneca–Oxford,, 84 for the J&J, and 119 for the Pfizer–BioNTech vaccines. Those numbers are to prevent one infection. To prevent one serious complication or one death the number needed to vaccinate is between 16,000 and 100,000. That’s a lot of shots to prevent one death but would be worth it as long as there are no safety concerns.
You hear all the time that vaccines have a greater than 90% efficacy. But that’s relative risk which looks impressive…if you use absolute risk it looks quite differently. From an article published in the NIH National Library of Medicine “The absence of reported absolute risk reduction in COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials can lead to outcome reporting bias that affects the interpretation of vaccine efficacy.Unreported absolute risk reduction measures of 0.7% and 1.1% for the Pfzier/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, respectively, are very much lower than the reported relative risk reduction measures. Reporting absolute risk reduction measures is essential to prevent outcome reporting bias in evaluation of COVID-19 vaccine efficacy.” Here is the reference PMID: 33652582. It’s pretty clear from a series of trials that the vaccine can cut down the risk of infection for a few months but it’s also very clear that the protection wanes over just a few months. From a personal standpoint most of the patients I am treating now have been vaccinated. Our health department has the data about the number of vaccinated and unvaccinated in the hospitals or the number of people who have died from covid who have been vaccinated or not vaccinated. They chose not to report them. The National Health Service in Great Britain does release this data and it clearly shows no difference in death rates between the vaccinated and unvaccinated. The Pfizer trial actually had more deaths in the treatment group than the placebo. The extra deaths were primarily due to heart related issues and were not considered related to the vaccine.
As commented on the NNT website “ In the end, we feel it is an embarrassing dereliction that vaccine trials performed in the shadow of the worst pandemic in a century have not produced answers to the world’s most pressing questions. That is a product of trial design and data transparency. These two matters were left, inexplicably, to the discretion of drug makers”. The absolute number of deaths in the Pfizer ;trial attributed to covid were one in the vaccine group and two in the placebo group so there was one less death out of 20,000 people which hardly seems big enough effect to justify mandating this shot to everyone. .
On to safety….the official line is the vaccines are safe but the government controlled and sponsored site that reports on these issues… the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting Site VAERS..has listed over 850,000 adverse events and over 18,000 deaths attributed to the vaccine. Now multiple studies have shown that these events are grossly underreported and that the actual numbers are 10 times to 40 times what’s listed in the VAERS. Toby Rogers put together this list of people who have looked at this issue…”Director David Kessler in an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association stated that “only about 1% of serious events are reported to the FDA.” A report for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services by Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare Inc. confirmed that VAERS undercounts actual vaccine injuries by a factor of 100.
More recently several scholars have attempted to refine these initial estimates.Kirsch, Rose, and Crawford estimate that VAERS undercounts fatal vaccine reactions by a factor of 41.Dr. Jessica Rose, a statistician in Israel, recently calculated an under-reporting factor of 31 for all severe adverse events following vaccination.
So, if 18,000 deaths have been reported, what’s the real number…180,000 or was it 700,000. Either way ….these vaccines are not as safe as they have been touted.
As I write this Dr Gundry of the Plant Paradox fame, a cardiac surgeon who now focuses on holistic medicine and who has a very vested interest in avoiding controversy has submitted an abstract to Circulation documenting his findings that covid vaccines DOUBLE the heart attack markers he measures on all patients. He wasn’t looking for this.. he was just following the same data on all his patients and noticed this obvious change in the inflammatory markers that affect heart attack risk. Maybe those ‘unrelated “ heart attacks in the Pfizer trial were not unrelated at all. https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/circ.144.suppl_1.10712
Since it’s pretty evident that the vaccines don’t prevent infection or transmission but they at least prevent hospitalizations and death so it’s worth it. Unfortunately the most recent data from Europe (where they report vaccinated and unvaccinated data ) does not show ANY real reduction in excess mortality in the vaccinated group. Actually in the age group between 16-49 there has been an uptick in excess mortality (not seen at all during the first year of covid) SINCE the introduction of vaccines for that age group. Hospital admission numbers were not routinely reported in the trials for vaccine efficacy so when they say the vaccine prevents severe disease and death it’s not really based on the trial data.
Speaking of deaths and hospitalizations… in the short, small trial that Pfizer did to get approval of the vaccine in children in the 5-12 age group there was absolutely no difference in the vaccine group or placebo group in terms of serious adverse events. There were ZERO adverse events in either group. So there is no evidence whatsoever that the vaccines prevent serious illness in this group and there is growling evidence that the vaccines can cause serious myocarditis especially in the younger age group. Multiple studies including Dr Toby Rogers have calculated that since children have a very very low risk of serious injury or death, that the vaccines will do more harm than good.
https://tobyrogers.substack.com/p/ten-red-flags-in-the-fdas-risk-benefit. The reference listed is a pretty stunning indictment of the trial.and points out that even though the FDA wants to vaccinate every child regardless of prior infection.. in the study Pfizer excluded children that already had COVID. The CDC has admitted that 40% of children have already had the infection and they want to give all kids the shot even though they have not studied giving the shot to kids that have already had natural immunity.
I have not brought up the infertility issue because we will not have real data here for years. I have not brought up the issue of antibody induced enhancement which was the principal reason prior coronavirus vaccine research had been shut down. The vaccine actually made the animal who received the vaccine much sicker when they were subsequently exposed to the viirus again. That’s right… the vaccine made things worse. Here’s a reference from Nature https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-020-00789-5. If people who have been vaccinated multiple times start getting sicker… what will they think? Will they clamber for yet another booster.thinking that will help? It will be hard to figure out since we have essentially stopped the control groups ill all the trials done so far. Control groups are vital in any study but apparently not important in the biggest and most important vaccine study in the world.
So, efficacy, limited as it is, is waning. Safety concerns are mounting by the day.. High risk patients should certainly be vaccinated. The rest of us should make our own decisions without the bullying, and mandating that our government seems to be so focused on. You can continue to just follow the sound bites and headlines or you can decide, on this important health issue, to do your own research. Any of the references listed above will start you on your own journey of discovery. Dr Faucci says an attack on him is really an attack on science. I’m saying that science is no monolith and that refusing to acknowledge any problems with the vaccine is not scientific. Until next month….do your own research….get well and stay well.
JT BARRY MD
Don’t Shoot the Messenger
Dr.Mercola
You’re going to have to blame this article on my sister Brenda because, I’ve been warned previously, to avoid vaccine discussions as no one in the health department at the CDC or the FDA at cetera wants to hear any dissenting views on the safety and efficacy of the vaccine. But, when my sister, a boardcertified gynecologist, mentioned that she hoped people like Dr. Mercola would be sanctioned for spreading untruths about the vaccine, I just had to take issue with her. Show me one discrepancy, one untruth the doctor Mercola has said and I will cease bombarding you with article after article about the vaccines and their serious lack of efficacy and even more serious safety. So far the bombardment has continued unabated.
First off, it is TRUE that the very definition of vaccine had to be changed to allow these new modalities to be called vaccines. It’s very important to someone that they be called vaccines rather than experimental delivery systems, because the bulk of the public believes in the long and safe history of vaccination. Don’t take my word for it. Compare the 2013 definition of vaccine with the 2021 definition in Marriam Webster. Is it nitpicking? Do words matter? Secondly, can we look to the global reality for a moment? Sweden did the least in response to COVID and has been affected the least. Very low death rates, very low hospitalization rates, when compared to many many countries with very restrictive rules and very aggressive vaccine mandates. Find out which countries are doing the best in any arena and do what they do. That seems like a reasonable approach, which our health agencies completely ignore.
“It is TRUE that the very definition of vaccine had to be changed to allow these new modalities to be called vaccines.”
The mantra, the credo, the remonstration from on high is, Get the shot or you are not intelligent. Get the shot or you will kill grandma. Get the shot or you are not patriotic. Get the shot to protect others. If it’s so safe and effective why are they bribing people and shaming people into getting the shot? Although they admit they don’t have accurate data, CDC director Rochelle Walensky, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research all testified before Congress admitting that probably 40% of their staff have not been vaccinated. If these vaccines are saving the world why isn’t there 100% compliance from the people who study them? Isn’t that a fair question?
Why didn’t this next story make every headline in every news channel in the world? In response to a request for a complete copy of the all important Pfizer study (upon which our entire government response relies) the FDA has petitioned the courts (we paid for it and have to sue the FDA for access, really??) to allow them until 2076…that’s 55 years from now. If this is the most important vaccine of all time then free and clear and immediate access to the data should be a foregone conclusion. This should all be on a PDF that anyone and everyone can download. We paid for the trials. We paid for the vaccines. There is no rational reason this data needs 55 years to release. As the attorneys for the researchers trying to get access to the data pointed out, they took 108 days for the FDA to carry out a very thorough and complete analysis of the vaccine trial. It shouldn’t take longer than that to release the data. Sorry but it just makes me think they are hiding something. Could it be safety data? Could it be efficacy data? And just as importantly this story of government agency mismanagement and delay is buried. Don’t believe me, type “55 years to release Pfizer data,“ on your search bar.
So let’s get to the heart of the matter. Safety and Efficacy. My training has involved using the Number Needed to Treat as a marker of efficacy. This translates into how many people have to receive treatment for one person to benefit. Usually if the NNT is greater than 50 it’s considered a low benefit intervention. According to the Lancet the number needed to vaccinate is 81 for the Moderna–NIH, 78 for the AstraZeneca– Oxford, 84 for the J&J, and 119 for the Pfizer– BioNTech vaccines. Those numbers are to prevent one infection. To prevent one serious complication or one death the number needed to vaccinate is between 16,000 and 100,000. That’s a lot of shots to prevent one death but would be worth it as long as there are no safety concerns.
You hear all the time that vaccines have a greater than 90% efficacy. But that’s relative risk which looks impressive, if you use absolute risk it looks quite differently. From an article published in the NIH National Library of Medicine, “The absence of reported absolute risk reduction in COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials can lead to outcome reporting bias that affects the interpretation of vaccine efficacy. Unreported absolute risk reduction measures of 0.7% and 1.1% for the Pfzier/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, respectively, are very much lower than the reported relative risk reduction measures. Reporting absolute risk reduction measures is essential to prevent outcome reporting bias in evaluation of COVID-19 vaccine efficacy.” Here is the reference PMID: 33652582. It’s pretty clear from a series of trials that the vaccine can cut down the risk of infection for a few months but it’s also very clear that the protection wanes over just a few months. From a personal standpoint most of the patients I am treating now have been vaccinated. Our health department has the data about the number of vaccinated and unvaccinated in the hospitals or the number of people who have died from Covid who have been vaccinated or not vaccinated. They chose not to report them. The National Health Service in Great Britain does release this data and it clearly shows no difference in death rates between the vaccinated and unvaccinated. The Pfizer trial actually had more deaths in the treatment group than the placebo. The extra deaths were primarily due to heart related issues and were not considered related to the vaccine.
“In response to a request for a complete copy of the, all important Pfizer study, the FDA has petitioned the courts (we paid for it and have to sue the FDA for access, really??) to allow them until 2076… that’s 55 years from now.”
As commented on the NNT website, “In the end, we feel it is an embarrassing dereliction that vaccine trials performed in the shadow of the worst pandemic in a century have not produced answers to the world’s most pressing questions. That is a product of trial design and data transparency. These two matters were left, inexplicably, to the discretion of drug makers.”
The absolute number of deaths in the Pfizer trial attributed to Covid were one in the vaccine group and two in the placebo group so there was one less death out of 20,000 people which hardly seems big enough effect to justify mandating this shot to everyone. Onto safety…the official line is the vaccines are safe but the government controlled and sponsored site that reports on these issues, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting Site, VAERS, has listed over 850,000 adverse events and over 18,000 deaths attributed to the vaccine. Now multiple studies have shown that these events are grossly underreported and that the actual numbers are 10 times to 40 times what’s listed in the VAERS. Toby Rogers put together this list of people who have looked at this issue. ”Director David Kessler in an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association stated that “only about 1% of serious events are reported to the FDA.” A report for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services by Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare Inc. confirmed that VAERS undercounts actual vaccine injuries by a factor of 100.
More recently several scholars have attempted to refine these initial estimates. Kirsch, Rose, and Crawford estimate that VAERS undercounts fatal vaccine reactions by a factor of 41. Dr. Jessica Rose, a statistician in Israel, recently calculated an under-reporting factor of 31 for all severe adverse events following vaccination.
So, if 18,000 deaths have been reported, what’s the real number…180,000 or was it 700,000? Either way, these vaccines are not as safe as they have been touted.
As I write this Dr. Gundry of the Plant Paradox fame, a cardiac surgeon who now focuses on holistic medicine and who has a very vested interest in avoiding controversy has submitted an abstract to Circulation documenting his findings that Covid vaccines DOUBLE the heart attack markers he measures on all patients. He wasn’t looking for this…he was just following the same data on all his patients and noticed this obvious change in the inflammatory markers that affect heart attack risk. Maybe those ‘unrelated’ heart attacks in the Pfizer trial were not unrelated at all. https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/circ.144. suppl_1.10712
It’s pretty evident that the vaccines don’t prevent infection or transmission, but they at least prevent hospitalizations and death, so it’s worth it. Unfortunately the most recent data from Europe (where they report vaccinated and unvaccinated data) does not show ANY real reduction in excess mortality in the vaccinated group. Actually in the age group between 16-49 there has been an uptick in excess mortality (not seen at all during the first year of Covid) SINCE the introduction of vaccines for that age group. Hospital admission numbers were not routinely reported in the trials for vaccine efficacy so when they say the vaccine prevents severe disease and death it’s not really based on the trial data.
Speaking of deaths and hospitalizations…in the short, small trial that Pfizer did to get approval of the vaccine in children in the 5-12 age group there was absolutely no difference in the vaccine group or placebo group in terms of serious adverse events. There were ZERO adverse events in either group. So there is no evidence whatsoever that the vaccines prevent serious illness in this group and there is growing evidence that the vaccines can cause serious myocarditis especially in the younger age group. Multiple studies including Dr. Toby Rogers have calculated that since children have a very very low risk of serious injury or death, that the vaccines will do more harm than good.
https://tobyrogers.substack.com/p/ten-red-flags-in-the-fdas-risk-benefit. The reference listed is a pretty stunning indictment of the trial, and points out that the FDA wants to vaccinate every child regardless of prior infection. In the study, Pfizer excluded children that already had COVID. The CDC has admitted that 40% of children have already had the infection and they want to give all kids the shot even though they have not studied giving the shot to kids that have already had natural immunity.
I have not brought up the infertility issue because we will not have real data here for years. I have not brought up the issue of antibody induced enhancement which was the principal reason prior coronavirus vaccine research had been shut down. The vaccine actually made the animal who received the vaccine much sicker when they were subsequently exposed to the virus again. That’s right…the vaccine made things worse. Here’s a reference from Nature https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-020-00789-5. If people who have been vaccinated multiple times start getting sicker…what will they think? Will they clamber for yet another booster, thinking that will help? It will be hard to figure out since we have essentially stopped the control groups on all the trials done so far. Control groups are vital in any study but apparently not important in the biggest and most important vaccine study in the world.
So, efficacy, limited as it is, is waning. Safety concerns are mounting by the day. High risk patients should certainly be vaccinated. The rest of us should make our own decisions without the bullying, and mandating that our government seems to be so focused on. You can continue to just follow the sound bites and headlines or you can decide, on this important health issue, to do your own research. Any of the references listed above will start you on your own journey of discovery. Dr Faucci says an attack on him is really an attack on science. I’m saying that science is no monolith and that refusing to acknowledge any problems with the vaccine is not scientific. Until next month…do your own research…get well and stay well.
JT BARRY MD
DECEMBER 2021 TABLEHOPPING ARTICLE
Well, it’s been a long and strange year and we can only hope that next year will restore some normality but I am not holding my breath. Instead let me focus on getting you through the holiday with some healthy advice. No, I am not going to remonstrate you about your eggnog habit or the wassail bowl. Those Xmas cookies and candy studded fruitcakes get a pass in today’s article. I have the whole rest of the year to chide you about your diet. Rather, I am going to give you some gift giving advice.
They have made much in the news about the supply side issues and making sure you can get your presents shipped in time for the holidays.No worries, I have you covered. I always favor the local guy when I can.
Of course you can always start with massage certificates. Either you like massages or you don’t but there are many different types of massage and we have lots of massage therapists in Central New York. Luckily, if you give a person a gift certificate and they are not into massage there is always regifting. If you want to give something a little different why not get a certificate to the Red LIght Spa in Camillus. They offer hot yoga, heat wraps, hot saunas , infrared treatments etc. Surely this is better than another tie or bundt cake. Better to sweat out the toxins than another ugly sweater.
How about something on the literary side? Dr Gundry’s newest book the Energy Paradox is a great gift for someone who feels run down and worn out. Frankly it’s a great book for anyone who wants to improve their health. Sure , he sells a lot of supplements but that’s absolutely not the focus of the book at all. Dr Chris Knobbe also has a great book entitled Omega 6 Apokalypse that will interest any of your friends who are health conscious. It’s a stunning exploration of the seed oils that are ruining our health one donut, one french fry and one salad dressing at a time.
On a budget? Give the most important thing…the gift of time and companionship.. Take someone for a walk…a tour of the MOLST…. a trip around the Zoo..check out the Christmas tree display at the Everson. Get out with a friend and do something active like snowshoeing at Highland Forest or ice skating downtown. Ok, maybe not take grandma ice skating but you can take the grandkids. How about bringing the family or a friend to the Desantis Holiday Show at St Charles Church Sunday December 12th at 5 pm? This is always a great show for the holidays.
It’s also time to start making your plans for your health next year….if you don’t make plans and have goals you are just drifting through your health care. You are not just some leaf in the gutter swirling around in reaction to the rains..Like it or not your health depends on your diet and environment and you control this. .Make a plan about weight loss, make a plan regarding your exercise, alcohol use, etc. Plan it, track it, change it. It’s great to give gifts to others but what about gifting yourself a plan for better health. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year . Until next year ….get well and stay well….
JT BARRY MD
NOVEMBER 2021 TABLEHOPPING ARTICLE
NEXT GEN
Once again I learn more from my patients than I have from the medical literature. Most of the medical stuff I read in the New England Journal of Medicine, The Green Journal, The Lancet, the Journal of the American Medical Association involves obscure medicines for end stage diseases or political editorials . There is very little in the mainstream medical literature about diet, exercise, sleep and stress. It’s all about chronic disease management not improving health. The phase angle machine that can measure your fat, muscle bone etc as well as provide a measurement of your basic cellular health didnt come from these journals. The alpha stim device which can help anxiety, depression and insomnia didnt come from these journals. Ditto the vitamin scanner and the vascular reactivity test. One of my patients brought me a test that can tell you which metals you are allergic to before you have a joint replacement. Another of my patients keeps challenging me with the energy medicine machines which I thought were a little too new for me until I discovered that NASA uses these machines in all space flights. So too, I discovered the services from RGCC from one of my patients.
Right now, most people go to the cancer doctor and get standard therapies which are based on large clinical trials. We usually treat this cancer with 4 cycles of one combination or other of chemo drugs etc. There is a company called Foundation ONe that will use cell free DNA samples or tissue taken from your cancer to guide the Oncologist in choosing which chemo or therapy to use depending on the bloodwork.. Until now this was the best you could expect. Right now, most people find their cancers either by routine screening i.e. mammograms and colonoscopies or by scans that show tumor growth when the tumor is big enough to be seen. By the time you can see a tumor on a scan we are talking about billions and billions of tumor cells. Until now this was the best you could expect.
Now, however, there are new kids in town. There are two companies that now offer a chance to have your blood taken and look for cancer cells before it shows up on scans. Although I think it’s very much cancer specific, most experts would say that early detection saves lives. If that’s the case then finding the cancer before it shows up on scans or before it becomes clinically apparent should make a difference. The two companies use different technologies but both say they can detect a variety of cancers from just a sample of your blood. One company is based in America and is called GRAIL and their product is called Galleri . Up to 70% percent of cancer deaths are caused by cancers we don’t have screens for. i.e. pancreatic cancer, ovarian cancer etc. It’s too new to be covered by insurance and, of course, it isn’t perfect but if you test negative it’s very reassuring and if you test positive you can pursue the possible diagnosis. There are 50 different types of cancer this test can detect. There is no perfect test and false positives and negatives occur just as in mammograms and colonoscopies. Of course, these tests do not replace the traditional screens at least for now.
The other company interests me even more. It’s called RGCC and they are out of Greece. They too, offer a blood draw test for cancer but they are not just looking for genetic material that suggests cancer …they are actively looking for cancer cells. Cutting edge tech that has evolved dramatically in recent years is used to isolate any cancer cells and study them This has benefit not only to patients that want to be screened for cancer but for patients who have had cancer in the past and is an independent way to study your cancer cells..Lets say its been 5 years since your breast cancer diagnosis and the doctor says you are disease free …maybe they say you are cured. This blood test will check for the presence of any circulating cancer cells….not just your prior breast cancer but any new or different cancers that may have developed. Then, they give you actionable information about your specific cancer cells…How they react to different chemotherapies as well as how they react to a host of natural substances you might use to augment your treatment like green tea extract or turmeric. This is precision medicine at its best ! The RGCC group also offers cutting edge, personalized, RNA based therapy, not only therapy for cancer but for chronic viral illness and even lyme disease but that’s going to have to wait for another column. The RNA message in the Covid Vaccines turn on protein production and create an immune response. The RNA message in the RGCC injection turns off protein production in the cancer cells, and only the cancer cells, and causes those cancer cells to die.
So, the downside is the cost….Neither test is covered by insurance yet but they are both under a thousand dollars and can buy you a lot of peace of mind. Say your mom and grandmom and sister all had breast cancer….besides just mammos and ultrasounds would you get this test? Your best friend dies of prostate cancer ….you are not curious about you? For you, if it would help you, the future is now…
Until next month….get well and stay well.
Check out the links below and discuss with your healthcare provider.
https://grail.com/clinical-expertise/
https://www.rgcc-group.com/
JT BARRY MD
OCTOBER TABLE HOPPING 2021
YOUR DOCTOR SAYS YOU CAN’T PREVENT OR TREAT DEMENTIA ARE THEY WRONG ON BOTH COUNTS??
I have been reviewing Dr Chris Knobe’s excellent work on the dangers of the seed oils, the omega 6 oils as inflammatory and related to most modern diseases. The oils, canola, corn oil, sunflower oil etc are polyunsaturated and therefore highly likely to oxidize which is a chemical change in their makeup that makes them antinutritious. Or you could equally call it slow food poisoning because this stuff is ineverything processed. Excess Omega 6 , and by that I mean the Standard American DIet, is dementogenic, atherogenic, obesogenic, carcinogenic , carcinogenic….I mean come on people how many “genics” do you have to hear before you get the idea these are man made chemicals that don’t belong in your body and are sabotaging your health.
Then I was listening to the Rhonda Patrick Found my Fitness Podcast with Dr William Harris who has worked his entire career investigating Omega 3 oils which are thought to be anti-inflammatory. The higher your Omega 3 index is the better your overall health and the lower your mortality. This is something you can easily measure at your doctor’s office and treat at your grocery store.
Then, to really hammer it home comes the recent Youtube videos of Dr Paul Mason who has posted lectures again linking dementia to your diet. Once you whet your appetite with the short video linked here you can refer to his other work.
In this video posted in September he reviews the literature and confirms that dementia is a dietary issue…not a genetic one. Sure there are genetic risk factors that can affect your risk but they seem to do so only in the presence of an inflammatory diet. Dr Mason reviewed the famous Nigerian study where people who have the highest possible genetic risk still have very low rates of dementia unless and until they adopt the Western diet. …watch the great dr paul; mason reversing .look at the nigerian study…proves its not genetic…didn’t have dementia 100 years ago and our genes have not changed in that short a time…seed oils and fructose….table sugar is 50% fructose….causes insulin resistance…after nine days you can reserve the liver.
There were only rare cases of dementia diagnosed 100 years ago and dementia is rampant now and our genes have not changed over 100 years…genetics takes hundreds of generations. What I liked about this video was the inclusion of the damage done by fructose and how this makes oxidation worse. So you have the one – two punch of insulin resistance / diabetes (which affects most of us if you do the right test) and the damaged and damaging seed oils which acts as a double whammy. I had not previously seen evidence that diabetics actually absorb more of the oxidized oils than non diabetics…makes sense when you think of the damaged gut lining. Also his finding that the highest risk allele the apoe4 ( the gene variants that affect your risk factor for dementia) is the highest risk because it’s the most susceptible to oxidation (from the seed oils) and glycation (damage from the high insulin/ fructose) was new to me and makes sense and might even be true.
What’s that Mr. It won’t happen to me!? Well , currently the risk of dementia doubles every 5 years starting after age 65. 43% of people over 85 carry the diagnosis and we haven’t really come up with an effective treatment since it was first diagnosed in 1906 despite spendin billions and billions of dollars and over 200 failed trials.
What’s that Mr So there’s nothing to be done about it? Well there is if you look at things from a metabolic angle. The brain has 2 percent of total body volume but uses 20% of metabolic energy. The brain is a stove ! And by using sugar as a fuel you are gunking up the pipes . By using ketones as fuel you clean out the pipes and burn more evenly. Ketones can allow the brain of demented patients to use a new stable healthy reliable food soursce as glucose is no longer able lto be used as fuel djue to insulin resistnace. High sugar levels are not good for the brain long term.
Diabetics are two to five times more likely to get demented..the bigger the belly the bigger the risk of dementia..triple the risk compared to slim people.There have been 31 trials comparing low-carbohydrate and low-fat diets that reached statistical significant results every single one of them showed better weight loss with a low carb diet.
Certain cells of the brain can take up sugar without any help but other cells which are spread throughout the brain but interestingly are concentrated in the hippocampus. This is a major memory area. These cells need insulin in order to get the sugar in the brain and if you have insulin resistance you’re not getting adequate sugar to these cells. These cells can however use ketones without any difficulty whatsoever.
People talk about amyloid plaques in the brain being associated with dementia . Actually the amyloid monomer is at very protective of the brain it’s when they are clumped together that it becomes pathologic but the amyloid itself is normally produced by the brain and has protective effect Studies have shown that HDL, that’s right the components of the lipid panel that your doctor has ordered for you many times, actually has protective effect on the brain trying to clear it of these amyloid products . That gets back to the Apoe4 allele…these genetic variants affect the hdl ..damaged hdl can’t clear plaque as well hence their increased risk of dementia. And oxidation ( damage from seed or plant oils) and glycation (damage from higher fructose and high fructose corn syrup/diabetes etc ) are what affects the HDL particles.One study showed that HDL levels over 55 offers a 50% protection of Alzheimer’s. It’s possible that the higher your HDL the less likely you are to have Alzheimer’s Looking at this from the angle of reducing dementia risk we have to mention sleep as well. Sleep deprivation increases beta-amyloid deposition so deprivation equals deposition equals dementia. And this has been shown to happen after only one night of poor sleep based on the Dr Mason data. Sleep deprivation worsens insulin resistance and that’s a consistent if not unifying theme. Check your continuous glucose monitor, your normal morning insulin spike will be higher in the mornings after poor sleep.
Interestingly the dietary supplement carnosine has been shown to both to lower insulin resistance and to prevent glycosylation . Carnosine comes only from flesh that is meat ,it’s not found in plants and Doctor Paul Mason points out that this lack of carnosine might increase the risk of dementia in vegetarians. I am not suggesting you start popping carnosine…do your own research . I haven’t taken it …yet….but it’s intriguing.
Bottom line is an ancestral diet of unprocessed food is your best bet to optimum health. Check out the Weston Price Foundation. https://www.westonaprice.org/ .Of course the most comprehensive approach to dementia I think is the Dr Dale Breseden approach which you can look up as well and a local resource for real evaluation and treatment is right here in town at Clarity Clinical Research . I have not become an official Dale Breseden but I am looking into it bacause I dont see other people locally doing it.
J T BARRY MD