What Doctors Don't Tell You Australia/NZ December 2021 - January 2022

Why do we get cancer, and how do we survive it? Ask the American Cancer Society, and they will point to genes or environmental factors, like smoking or Teflon, booze or red meat, being too fat or being exposed to plutonium, even too much sun. But when it comes to emotional issues, stress or even diet, it’s a firm thumbs down. “Your personality and emotions cannot cause cancer and will not affect the outcome of your cancer,”says the ACS website. And: “At this time, there is no clear evidence that a person’s stress level affects their risk of getting cancer.” As for sugar—which Nobel prize winner Dr Otto Warburg discovered was food for cancer’s deranged cell metabolism as far back as the 1920s: “Sugar intake has not been shown to increase the…

Dr Damien Downing, a specialist in allergy, environment and nutrition, is current president of the British Society for Ecological Medicine, on the editorial board of Orthomolecular Medicine News Service, Chief Medical Advisor of cancer charity Yes to Life (www.yestolife.org.uk), and author of numerous books including The Vitamin Cure for Allergies. Dr Harald Gaier is a UK-registered osteopath, homeopath, acupuncturist, naturopath and medical herbalist. Former director of medical research at The Hale Clinic and a committee member of the Prince of Wales’ Foundation for Integrated Health, Dr Gaier has authored numerous scientific papers and The Encyclopedia of Homeopathy. Dr Michel Odent, a French-trained surgeon and obstetrician, is a pioneer of the natural birth movement, emphasizing home and water birth. Founder of the Primal Health Research Centre in the UK, he has written some…

Important questions about Covid Thank you for your Covid coverage. It’s your usual breath of fresh air on any health topic. After reading September’s comment,“The Ministry of Truth,”I was inspired to write a blog (www.dairyofanonnymoose.com) I’ve been struggling with for over a year and a half, once I saw the UK government putting their focus on vaccination, not prevention, public health or communicating clear guidelines. Here are a few things I’ve discovered: • For those who have not had Covid and had both jabs early on, protection drops to 16 percent, which is why boosters are being prepared. • Those who have had Covid could be protected up to two or three years, as with other coronaviruses. • The vaccine does protect the vulnerable, immunosuppressed, elderly, frail and ill for the time the vaccine lasts. Therefore, we…

Drinking three cups of coffee a day is one answer to chronic liver disease (CLD). It reduces your chances of getting CLD and makes it more benign if you do suffer from it, halving your chances of dying. Any type of coffee seems to have some protective effect, although instant coffee is the least effective. Decaffeinated and ground coffee reduces the risk of dying from CLD by 63 percent, while those drinking instant coffee saw their risk drop by 38 percent. On average, coffee drinkers reduced their risk of CLD by 21 percent and of dying from it by 49 percent, say researchers from the University of Southampton. They tracked the health of 384,818 coffee drinkers against 109,767 non-drinkers to discover the impact of the beverage on CLD. The amount seemed to make…

People who have suffered a stroke should listen to singing—it will improve their recovery and help them regain the ability to talk. Vocal music helps stroke patients recover from aphasia, a common and upsetting consequence of a stroke when the brain area responsible for language and speech is damaged. Therapies to counter aphasia have been hit-or-miss, and the resources for long-term support aren’t available. But getting a stroke victim to listen to singing every day is an inexpensive therapy that can work, say researchers from the University of Helsinki. They tested three approaches—listening to vocal music, instrumental music and audiobooks—on a group of stroke patients and looked for structural changes in the brain after three months. The instrumental music and audiobooks had little positive impact on language ability, but listening to vocal music stimulated…

The psychedelic drug psilocybin—the active ingredient in so-called “magic” mushrooms—can build new neural connections in the brain, and this could explain why it could be an effective antidepressant. Although the drug has been studied as a potential antidepressant for years, researchers have been unable to understand just how it could work. A research team from Yale has discovered a single dose of psilocybin increases the density of dendritic spines, small protrusions on nerve cells that help information pass between neurons. These connections are impaired in people who are chronically depressed or stressed. In tests on laboratory mice, the researchers found the drug improves the rate of new neural connections by 10 percent, and those connections are around 10 percent larger than normal, suggesting they are also stronger. These improvements were visible within 24 hours…