Why we need more Open Source Medicines

Two thousand five hundred years ago, Hippocrates said "Let food by thy medicine, and let medicine be your food." The concept of "open source" had not been invented, but Hippocrates was talking about "open source medicines".

Opensource.com's blog by Bryan Behrenshausen says "Open source is like sharing a recipe." I will apply his 'loaf of bread' metaphor to medicine to explain, using mostly, his exact words. I will use the word 'food' for 'medicine' in the way of Hippocrates.
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Imagine that you have created something for your friends, a food, that can actually improve healthiness. By sharing this food with your friends, you not only give them something that sustains them, but also strengthens their health, and thus their relationships with each other and with you.

But what if you share more than the food? Suppose that in addition to sharing this wonderful food, you also share the recipe for that food. Now you have given them something much more valuable: the power to reproduce the gift you've given them, and the opportunity to improve the lives of others as you've improved theirs.

If your friends lives and heathinesses are improved by the food you've made, they can make more of it for themselves and their friends. If they prefer a food with slightly different ingredients, they can modify your recipe, creating foods that suit their tastes and needs. Maybe some of your friends have dietary restrictions and want to know precisely what has been put in the food you've given them, lest the very thing meant to help them might actually harm them. Possessing the recipe means they can now make a more informed decision about whether to consume what you've made.

And now that your friends have the recipe for your food, they can work with you to produce more of it, increasing the number of people exposed to your creation. Sharing the recipe also means that you and your friends can cook together, strengthening your relationships, and potentially drawing others into the bond you share—because you now possess a common tool - sharing - for collaboration. 

Sharing a recipe isn't like sharing food itself. When you share a recipe, you haven't lost anything; both you and your friends can work with and enjoy the same knowledge at the same time, passing it on without consequence—unlike a food that's already been cooked, which effectively disappears when you've given it up or eaten it.
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My grandfather was fond of saying "You can't return a favour.  Pass it on, and it will work its way back to me." Open source is like that. 

Open source foods can be open source medicines. Let food be your medicines.

Patent Medicines

Today, most of our medicines are 'patent medicines'. In simplest terms, this means they are illegal, unless you have explicit permission from the patent holder. Patent holders can withhold the ingredients, and the recipe for making the medicine, as a 'commercial secret'. Patent holders can restrict other people from creating the same medicine, effectively withholding the medicines from people who might need them.

If you need a patent medicine, you must jump through some legal hoops, before you are even allowed to purchase it.

First, you must qualify, by being diagnosed. You cannot diagnose yourself. Your neighbor friend, brother or mother cannot diagnose you. You must be diagnosed by someone who is an active member, in good standing, of the medical union - e.g. a Doctor of Medicine.

Second, the doctor who diagnoses you must prescribe the patent medicine. If the doctor who diagnoses you does not wish to prescribe 'this specific patent medicine' - you are not allowed to purchase it. If the doctor prescribes a different patent medicine, then that is the only patent medicine you are allowed to purchase. Many will say "you should trust your doctor", but that argument is specious:  the argument looks good, until you ask for a second diagnosis, by a second doctor and get a different prescription. Which doctor should you trust?  

You must purchase the patent medicine from a pharmacist. The pharmacist ensures that you have a valid prescription, from a certified Doctor of Medicine. The pharmacist cannot 'create' the patent medicine for you - even if he knows the recipe. That would be illegal. He must purchase the medicine from a patent holder, and then resell it to you.

Once you jump through all the hoops, you don't own the medicine. If you don't use it all, you are not supposed to save some of it, and you are definitely not allowed to sell - or even give it away, to someone else, that would be illegal.

Patent medicines are preferred by people who want to make money from their medicines. Having a patent has no bearing on the effectiveness or healthiness of the medicine. 

Patent medicines are usually designed to be powerful and fast acting. They are created from concentrated chemicals or chemical extracts, that are then diluted with exacting precision to a prescribed dosage. Consumption over the prescribed dose can cause serious health problems - in fact, in many cases, consumption AT THE PRESCRIBED DOSE can lead to serious health problems, up to and including death in some cases. 

Patent medicines usually tackle illness by decreasing healthiness in some way, in the hope that you will be able to recover from the 'different unhealthiness' more easily. That is why all drugs have side effects.

Open Source Medicines

What are open source medicines? Open source medicines are medicines that are not patented. You can create them or buy them yourself. In many cases, you can diagnose yourself and prescribe them for yourself as well.

Because open source medicines are closer to food, like taking chicken soup for a cold, or for the soul, they are usually low in toxicity. Open source medicines are usually slow acting because they are not concentrated like patent medicines. As a result, they are safer. Some 'open source medicines' are true 'healthicines'.  That is to say, they are not 'drugs' - and they do not have 'side effects'.  If you are deficient in folate, and you buy Folic Acid to supplement your diet - you will not experience side effects - although you might experience health effects - but we don't often recognize the symptoms of healthiness. 

Increasing healthiness is not something that happens in a moment, or a day. It takes time to increase healthiness. 

Open source medicines are also 'richer' than patent medicines.  When an inventor creates a patent medicine, they attempt to extract and concentrate the 'active ingredient', or to re-create it in a laboratory. An open source medicine, made from a food, may contain many active ingredients that work together.  Identification and extraction of each one, measurement of their interactions, and creation of the 'most effective' patent medicine is extremely difficult and typically not attempted.  The open source medicine may be more effective as a result - especially when it comes to increasing healthiness. 

Open source medicines are powerful tools to increase healthiness. I believe in personal health freedom. I believe that everyone has a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of healthiness. I believe in open source medicines.

GreenMedInfo is a site that promotes open source medicines. They don't call them open source medicines (yet, maybe they will someday). Open source medicines are Green Medicines. GreenMedInfo provides published information about research into open source medicines, and how they can be used to treat illness. At this time, GreeenMedInfo does not provide recipes - maybe that's not their role.

Today, GreenMedInfo doesn’t specifically identify any medicines as healthicines. That could be due to the fact that no-one studies healthicines yet. There are no research papers on healthicines - so there is nothing for GreenMedInfo to publish about healthicines. What is a heathicine? A healthicine is something that increases healthiness. I believe that, when Hippocrates was talking about foods and medicines, many of his medicines were healthicines, although the word had not yet been coined.

I am proud to be a Sponsor of GreenMedInfo and their work. I hope others will pick up the banner for open source medicines - so that we can all be healthier.

Open Source Medicines vs Patent Medicines

Which is better?  Open source medicines, or patent medicines? It makes no sense to say that one is better than the other.  

There are many situations where the power and immediacy of a specific patent medicine save lives, money, or both.  Patent medicines make sense.  Sometimes, patent medicines are the best alternative.  Sometimes not.

There are many situations where the healthiness of specific open source medicines is the most appropriate treatment. Open source medicines make sense too. Sometimes, open source medicines are the best alternative.  Sometimes not. Unfortunately, they open source medicines don't have the 'bling' of patent medicines. 

We need more open source medicines.  We need more open research into, and more honest evaluations of the effectiveness and healthiness of every healthicine. 

One of the reasons we don't have good access to open source medicines, is because we don't have many health freedoms.  If we are to build the best systems for health, to create a system that promotes continual health improvement, we need to improve the health freedoms of choice and information. I believe we should always look for an open source medicine first, because it is more likely to tackle the true cause. Patent medicines, by design, almost never tackle the cause of illness. 

Everyone has a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of healthiness. 
to your health, tracy
healthicine.org 
This post was originally published on Wakeup-world.com
It has also been republished at http://returningtohouse.wordpress.com/2012/09/23/why-we-need-more-open-source-medicines-by-tracy-kolenchuk/
and: http://agmclimas.com/why-we-need-more-open-source-medicines/

Tracy is the author of two book about healthicine: 

Are You Looking Healthy, or Looking Sick?

One of the systemic problems with our 'health systems' is the 'sick view'.

Go to your public library and check out the books on 'health'.  In general, you will see the following simple recommendations: eat a healthy diet, exercise, get lots of sleep, etc. But you will also notice that most of the content in the so called 'health book' is how to avoid disease. How to avoid obesity, how to avoid heart disease, how to avoid illness. 

Merriam-Webster defines health as "the condition of being sound in body, mind, or spirit;especially : freedom from physical disease or pain".  By that definition, health starts, in the above image, at the heels of the doctor - and studies of health go no farther towards the green. There are many studies of health that look, like the doctor - towards illness.  Precious few that look towards healthiness.

The World Health Organization takes a different view, in theory: "Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity." In their definition, HEALTH only exists at the far left of the above diagram, where there is "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being". 

But the World Health Organization (commonly known as WHO), does not use this theoretical definition in practice. In practice, they publish statistics of 'health', that are based entirely in illness and infirmity. Their global health indicators are: life expectancy and mortality, cause specific mortality and morbidity, selected infectious diseases, health service coverage, risk factors, health workforce (doctors, nurses, etc, eg - medical workforce) - infrastructure and essential medicines, health expenditures (they mean illness expenditures), health inequities (medical inequities), demographic and socioeconomic statistics, health information systems (medical information systems) and data availability.  There are no WHO statistics about health - because WHO uses the medical view, and they can't see what is behind the doctor. 

This medical view, this 'health blindness' has serious consequences for our health. If you are not sick, you are healthy.  Anything that doesn't make you 'sick' according to a doctor, is 'safe', and thus 'healthy'. 

There are a large number of 'health controversies' that fall prey to this blindness.  Is aspartame 'healthy'?  No one cares. We measure if it causes illness - and if no direct indications are found - we stop measuring.  No one measures the effect of aspartame on healthiness.  Is fluoride healthy? Does it increase your healthiness? We theorize that fluoride prevents tooth decay - and the research stops.  No one bothers to measure if fluoride is healthy. 

We have no way to measure healthiness. 

Once you reach the doctor's heels, moving towards the green - measurement stops.  We can measure 'strength' and possibly 'fitness', but not healthiness.  Healthiness is not defined, not studied and not measured. 

It's time to begin the study of healthicine. The study of health and healthiness. We cannot attain health freedom without information - healthy information.

I believe the study of healthicine is so important, that I have started a website and blog, dedicated to health: 

Healthicine: the arts and sciences of health and healthiness.

This is a turning point for this blog.  A fork in the road.  From now on I will dedicate my inquiries and my writing in two different, overlapping directions.  Sometimes, I will write about healthiness - in the Healthicine blog.  Sometimes I will write about Health Freedom in this, the Personal Health Freedom blog.  Sometimes, I expect I will post the same, or very similar content - on both sites, because there is so much overlap between the two concepts.  Healthicine is about the theory of health.  But when theory meets practice - we need freedom to ensure access to information, and freedom to ensure that we can make our own choices. Everyone has a right to live, liberty, and the pursuit of healthiness. 

to your health,

tracy

This post was republished at: http://agmclimas.com/are-you-looking-healthy-or-looking-sick/ 

Tracy is the author of two book about healthicine: 

Books Worth Reading: Health and Healing: The Philosophy of Integrative Medicine and Optimum Health, by Andrew T. Weil MD

There are, as near as I can determine, no books about health, although there are many titles claiming to be about health – on books about medicines and illness.  We might count books that aren't really about health, like many exercise books.  There are no diet books about health – they are all about illness.

If you want to learn about health, there are a few books worth reading.  Some of them will change your understanding of health and medicine. This is one, although it is not a book about health.

Health and Healing: The Philosophy of Integrative Medicine and Optimum Health by Dr Andrew T. Weil

I listened to the audio book in my car as I drove from place to place – a very effective way to read a good book, although repeating specific passages of interest can be a bit tedious – and referencing them afterwards even more challenging.  This book is a comprehensive review of conventional (he uses the word allopathic) and various alternative medical systems.  It is fascinating, well written and full of interesting ideas.  Dr Weil gives an intelligent review, albeit his personal opinion, of each of the fields of medicine.

Andrew Weil has worked and studied in and with many different fields of medicine, gaining a lot of experience over the years. He provides a very scientific and interesting view of different schools of medicine.  He reviews allopathic (traditional Western) medicine, homeopathic, naturopathic, osteopathic, and chiropractic; acupuncture, holistic medicine, shamanism, faith healing, and psychic healing.

His discussion of placebos is a powerful document on the weaknesses of allopathic medicine. He points out many inconsistencies in the way conventional medicine treats placebos and the placebo concept. Specifically, they do not treat placebos scientifically. However, he neglects to discuss the concept of regression to the mean, which is an important factor in the placebo effect.  Not surprising, as this aspect of placebos is seldom recognized or discussed in medical research.  In simplest terms, regression to the mean is the tendency of things that are ‘out of balance’, or away from the ‘mean’ on first measurement, to regress to towards the mean on subsequent measurements.  To a statistician, regression is a statistical fact that has nothing to do with cures or placebos, it is simply a fact of statistics and how they work. To medical researchers, regression to the mean is easily mistaken for the placebo effect of placebos, or the placebo effect of drugs.  And it is very difficult to separate from the placebo effect, especially in cursory analysis. 

I loved the section of healing of warts – where he demonstrated beyond doubt that none of the so called ‘healers’ has a scientific approach to illness. None can heal warts effectively although all agree that warts can be healed, sometimes by the strangest of techniques; a clear demonstration of the failure of so called ‘medical science’ and of 'alternative medicine' as well.

Unfortunately, although Dr. Weil put the word ‘health’ in the title, the book would more accurately be named ‘Sick and Healing’, or perhaps ‘Medicine and Healing”. Of course it would have sold fewer copies with a more accurate title.  Dr. Weil seldom makes any true references to health except in the binary mode (you are healthy, or you are not healthy).There is no discussion of healthicine in any detail, only of medicine. 

Andrew Weil clearly demonstrates the case that medicine, as studied today is an incomplete and unscientific field of study. He has also demonstrated that the different fields of medicine are adversarial and thus weaker and less scientific than we might hope.

It is unfortunate that he does not take the next step – to suggest a study of healthicine (of which medicine is a small subset). We can hardly blame him – healthicine is not in the dictionary.

Andrew Weil has written many other books, and although I have seen a few of them, I don't think any others have real value in the field of health (as opposed to the field of medicine). He often uses the phrase 'optimal health', but completely ignores many aspects of healthiness, focusing instead on illness.  For example, his book: "Natural Health, Natural Medicine: The Complete Guide to Wellness and Self-Care for Optimum Health by Andrew Weil (Dec 9, 2004)", which might appear from the title to be about health, is according to the introduction: "a complete guide to preventative health maintenance" (whatever that might actually mean is beyond my comprehension).  It has a chapter on diet, one on exercise, one on connections - but the content could as easily have been written by anyone with a bit of common sense. That is to say - they could have been written by any normal person with a bit of knowledge and head full of some right ideas and some nonsense. It has more chapters on medicine than on health - and he even puts supplemental vitamins and minerals in the 'treatment' section of the book. You can't judge a book by it's cover.

Andrew Weil has a website where he promotes his ideas and concepts of health and medicine with the tagline "Your Trusted Health Advisor". Unfortunately the items on his website are remarkably predictable,  and not really about healthiness in any depth. The website has a clear 'medical' focus as opposed to a health focus and repeats many common misconceptions about health.

to your health, tracy
PersonalHealthFreedom.com 

Tracy is the author of two book about healthicine: 

What is Healthiness?

Some time ago, I realized that 'healthiness' was not in the dictionary.  If you search for healthiness, you will (as of today, August 7, 2012) find yourself re-directed to 'health'.  But if you search for 'illness', you are not re-directed to 'ill'.  Why?

I later noticed that 'healthicine' is also not in the dictionary, and commented about these missing words in several blog posts, as I tried to understand their meaning. As I explored by blogging, I found that blogging only gives a small view into the total concept of healthicine and healthiness. As a result, I have decided, and started to write a book on Healthicine, which will be available through online purchase to articulate my ideas about healthicine and healthiness.

Many years ago, I read Kurt Vonnegut's essay 'New Dictionary', in the collection "Welcome to the Monkey House".  At that time I realized that dictionaries are created by people, people with understandings, mis-understandings and points of view.  I take all dictionary definitions as - interesting starting points, to be used to further our knowledge.

Of course when a word is not even in the dictionary, we have to make do. Long before the internet, I saw a common word: 'tare' on the side of many trucks.  I looked and looked in dictionaries, but could not find it.  Finally, many years later, it appeared in dictionaries.

When will 'healthiness' appear in dictionaries?  Today, Wiki re-directs to 'health', Merriam-Webster, and Oxford redirect to 'healthy'.  Wiki and Merriam-Webster make no further reference to the word, providing no further clarification. Oxford Online simply says "healthiness: noun". Healthy is defined: "in good physical or mental condition, in good health", healthiness is the noun, not really defined.

The suffix 'ness' is defined.  Merriam-Webster defines '-ness' as: state : condition : quality : degree .  Oxford dictionary says: denoting a state or condition.  

Healthiness therefore refers to a state, condition, quality, degree, of health. 

Illness - refers to a specific type, or state of 'ill', healthiness refers to a specific type, or state, or quality, of health.

Health is often considered to be present or absent.  Either you 'have your health', or you don't (eg. you are ill).  The word healthiness can be used to indicate a state, or status of health on a scale. Health is not typically measured, because it is very complex and poorly defined.  Each healthiness can be measured. We can measure height, weight and calculate BMI.  We can measure heart rate, respiration rate, temperature.  Some measurements are mechanical and objective - they could be done by a machine. We can also measure subjective healthinesses, like pain - how much pain do you feel, what kind of pain do you feel, how frequently do you feel pain.

When we are 'ill' there can be many different types of illness present, and there can be varying degrees of 'illness'.  You might have a mild cold, a bad flu, or a terminal cancer. There are many unique illnesses, and each unique 'illness' can have many dimensions. The same is true for healthiness.

When we first think about health, we think of it as an overall condition.  He, or she, is healthy (or not healthy). If we translate this to healthiness, we want to know the quality of healthiness.  He, or she, is very healthy, somewhat healthy, a little unhealthy, very unhealthy, etc.

It is possible to be very healthy, somewhat healthy, or unhealthy - without being ill.   It is possible to be healthy, somewhat healthy, and unhealthy, and be ill at the same time.  Thus: "Jim has a cold, but he is a very healthy person, so we expect him to recover quickly." or "John has a cold, and his health is so poor we are worried he will get pneumonia."

Each healthiness is an independent state, although each can affect the other.

When we start to study healthiness, we recognize the need for more detail. Because we don't study healthiness seriously, we have very poor information about the many scales of healthiness. Healthicine is the study of healthinesses. Today, healthicine is not even in the dictionary, and therefore it is not studied seriously by anyone.

On any healthiness scale, the status of an individual person might be deficient, or in the normal range, or excessive.  We know that all illness is the result of a deficiency or an excess.  The challenge is to know learn is normal, and what might be an optimal range for each type of healthiness.

Resting pulse, for example, is a measure of healthiness. Resting pulse might be too low - a deficiency, that can indicate or cause illness, it might be in the normal range, or it might be too high - an excess that indicates or causes illness.  But it gets more complicated. A healthy resting pulse for an athlete is very different from a healthy resting pulse for a senior. A healthy resting pulse for someone with a large heart is lower than for an equivalent person with a smaller heart.

We also need to distinguish between average, normal, healthy and unhealthy. The average adult has less than 2 legs - about 1.9995, because some people have had a leg amputated.  A normal adult has two legs.  An amputee, having less than two legs, can be healthier than a normal adult with two legs.

And so it goes for each healthiness indicator.  Each healthiness has an average range, a normal range, and a healthy range, which may vary depending on the individual being assessed.

Some indicators might have no deficiency level or no excessive level (in normal situations).  For example, mercury provides no useful contribution to health, so there is no possibility of a 'mercury deficiency'.  Because mercury is toxic, the optimal level for health is zero.  The average level is typically higher than the optimal level, because all of us, living in today's society, have some mercury in our bodies.  The amount of mercury that is excessive is not clearly defined - we don't know the level required to create illness, and it varies depending on the specific form of mercury and the individual being assessed.

Some health issues, some healthinesses, are very controversial, or very confused by current medical studies.  What is the optimal level of 'fat' in a healthy person?  Many people believe that less fat is healthier, but this is not proven.  When certain types of fat levels drop too low, healthiness decreases.  The  healthiest levels of fat might vary from person to person, depending on genetic or other factors.

We need to learn to measure healthiness more effectively than we currently measure illness. We tend to not measure illness either. Doctors 'diagnose' illness.  When it is diagnosed, they prescribe treatment. Statistics are collect about the incidence of disease - less frequently about severity.

How many different measures of healthiness are possible?

Is it possible to create a useful 'overall measurement of healthiness'?  Is it useful to create a measure of healthiness at each layer in the hierarchy of healthicine? Each layer in the hierarchy consists of many, many different aspects of healthiness, each of which can be measured.

Which measures of healthiness are most important indicators of overall health? We tend to measure and investigate indicators of 'illness', but not indicators of healthiness.  I believe this missing link, the study of healthicine, is very important, critical to our understanding of healthiness and illness.

Physical Healthiness

We can, in theory, measure the physical healthiness of someone's genetics, nutrients, cells, tissues, organs, systems, body, mind, spirit, and community - each layer in the hierarchy of healthicine.  Which is most important?  For each of the layers in the hierarchy of healthicine, there are thousands of health measurements we can study. We might measure the healthiness of the heart, the lungs, the kidneys.

We might measure the size of the heart, the strength of the heart, the flexibility of the veins in the heart, the fat content of the arteries... and so on. For each organ there are many healthiness measurements. Most of the attention paid to the heart, by today's researchers, are measurements of illness, not measurements of healthiness.

Process Healthiness

Each genetic process, nutrient process, cellular process, organ process, system process, bodily process, mental process, spiritual process, and community process also has healthy aspects that can be measured.  Respiration, heartbeat, memory, coordination, faith, and cooperation are all aspects of healthiness that can be measured and possibly found to be deficient, healthy or excessive.  Today we hardly know what is normal.  Our ability to identify processes that are deficient or excessive is much lower.

Sensory Healthiness

Each of the five major senses (sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell) can be deficient, normal, optimal, or excessive in healthiness. We have many other senses - sense of balance, sense of time, and even common sense.

The sensation of pain can be deficient, normal or excessive. Each deficiency or excess can indicate unhealthiness and may be caused by other unhealthinesses.  Each sensory deficiency or excess can result in other illnesses. A deficiency in "common sense" might also result in (or be diagnosed as) illness.

Unhealthiness

Healthiness therefore refers to a state, condition, quality, degree, of health.  So what is unhealthiness?  An unhealthiness exists when a specific healthiness is deficient, or excessive.

Note: Unhealthiness in this model is a point on the scale (or two points, one for deficiency and one for excessiveness).  It is not a judgement of 'bad' vs 'good', it is simply a tool to help us understand and improve healthiness.

Like healthiness, there are many different types of unhealthiness.  An overall measurement of unhealthiness is the opposite of the measurement of healthiness.  A trivial example, resting pulse rate.  A healthy resting pulse rate for a normal adult is between (approximately) 60 and 75 beats per minute.  A pulse rate that is considerably below 60 is deficient, and a rate over 75 is excessive.  Each of those may indicate a minor, or a serious unhealthiness, as might an irregular heart rate.

In Conclusion

Doctors measure 'illness' rather than healthiness - in order to treat illness.  The tools and techniques we have to measure healthiness are very poor quality.

We have a lot to learn about health and healthiness; the field healthicine, of which medicine is a small but important subset.

When do we start to learn about healthiness?

to your health, tracy
http://personalhealthfreedom.blogspot.ca/p/subject-index.html

Tracy is the author of two book about healthicine: 

How do Vitamins affect Healthiness? What is Healthiness?

Dr. Mercola's excellent post on Vitamin D and Breast Cancers, and the poor quality of comments, prompted me to think about the differences between illness and healthiness, using Vitamin deficiencies as an example. The Mercola article says that many people suffer from a Vitamin D deficiency, and that deficiency causes many illnesses.

I take a different view.  I see a Vitamin Deficiency as one of many possible 'unhealthinesses'.  Unfortunately, healthiness is not in the dictionary - so neither is unhealthiness. My comments to the Mercola post are as follows:

Vitamin D is essential to many factors of healthiness. Our medical system has a focus on 'illness', not healthiness. Studies of Vitamin D - like studies of all vitamins, are generally weak and biased to the medical side.  Healthicine, the arts and sciences of health and healthiness, does not exist inside the medical system for a reason - healthicine is larger than medicine, and includes medicine as a subset.  If we want to study the true value of Vitamin D, and other healthiness factors - we need to learn to study health, not just illness.

Many chronic diseases, including cancers, may actually be 'unhealthinesses', not 'illnesses'.  What's the difference? The distinction between an unhealthiness and an illness is not well understood. A Vitamin deficiency that does not lead directly to an illness is an unhealthiness - it creates a possibility for illness.  The more severe it becomes, the more likely that some illnesses will occur or increase in severity. A Vitamin deficiency, or several, may be severe enough to create several illnesses at one time.  Are you suffering from a Vitamin D deficiency, or from cancer, caused by a deficiency?

Vitamin D may well be part of a constellation of deficiencies, or unhealthinesses, that lead to chronic illness. But we don't study healthiness (it's not in the dictionary - a healthiness is a specific incidence of health, like resting heartbeat,  Vitamin D consumption, level and types of exercise, etc.) therefore we don't understand unhealthinesses.

It is clear that increasing your Vitamin D has very healthy effects - that the healthiest levels of Vitamin D are much higher than most people have. This has been studied and demonstrated with many illnesses.  We need to study how it affects healthiness. We need a healthiness paradigm. http://personalhealthfreedom.blogspot.ca/2011/01/health-paradigm.html

to your health, tracy

Tracy is the author of two book about healthicine: 

Mercola on Vaccines

I have been trying for some time to research and understand the vaccination controversy from a health perspective, rather than an illness perspective. It is sometimes difficult to adopt the health paradigm (instead of the illness paradigm: ) when reading arguments that go back and forth.

Today, Mercola posted an article on the Whooping Cough vaccine, which has tons of information, and the comments from other people provide more information.  I encourage you to have a look - but the information is so complex I don't expect many people to come away satisfied.  I believe this is partly because virtually ALL of the experts discussing vaccines adopt an illness paradigm, only studying a small part of the problem.  We need to learn from a health paradigm, the illness paradigm is too limited to provide valuable infomation: http://personalhealthfreedom.blogspot.ca/2011/01/health-paradigm.html

Here are my comments on the Mercola post:

It is important to understand that immunity, whether it is vaccine immunity or natural immunity, does not kill the virus, nor do they prevent the virus from spreading.  Vaccines are designed to tune your immune system to fight the virus when it appears. Vaccines use a dead virus, so it is natural that they are less effective than natural immunity. 

It is entirely possible that so called 'herd immunity' does not exist. The whooping cough virus exists in the environment.  We cannot eliminate it from the environment.  Even people who are vaccinated come in contact with whooping cough virus - and it reproduces in their bodies.  Then, after some time, the immune system might recognize and fight the virus. Even then it is still reproducing and being spread by the person with the virus. This is the same for every virus we tackle with immunization.

Vaccine statistics measure how many people were affected by the virus, seriously enough to create a diagnoseable condition. Anyone who contracts the virus and exhibit fewer symptoms, or does not go to a doctor, is 'not counted'. People who are vaccinated, and thus suffer whooping cough at a lower level are still spreading the virus.  Because their immunity is lower than those with natural immunity - they might be spreading it more.

Vaccination and the arithmetic of vaccine studies is very, very complex.  Simple statements and techniques like 'herd immunity' and 'cocooning'  are designed to promote vaccines, not to understand them. We need to study and understand the mechanisms, successes and failures of every vaccine individually and not make generalizations that promote mis-information. We need to use a Health Paradigm to understand vaccines, our illness paradigm is too limiting: personalhealthfreedom.blogspot.ca/.../health-paradigm.html  

Everyone has a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of healthiness. tracyhttp://personalhealthfreedom.blogspot.ca/p/subject-index.html

Tracy is the author of two book about healthicine: 

Is Brown Rice Healthier than White Rice

Quora often poses health questions and gets a wide variety of responses from their user community - of which I am an active member. Unfortunately, the questions asked often show the bias, or unscientific nature of the site managers.  And today is no exception. Today's Quora included this silly question:

Why is brown rice healthier than white rice? Is brown rice healthy?  -  you can click the link to see the question and the ensuing discussion.

Let's follow the chain of nonsense.  First untested assumption: 'white rice is healthy'.  Is white rice healthy?  Frankly, we don't know.  Many people think it is - and many people think it is not healthy.

So. Next silly assumption: 'brown rice healthier than white rice.'  This might be true.  But it might not. At least one commenter has suggested, and provided arguments that brown rice is not healthier than white rice.

Which lead Quora to the question:  "Why..."  Of course we cannot discuss why something is true, until we actually measure whether or not it is true.  Has anyone bothered to test brown rice to see if it is healthier than white rice?  Not as far as I know.  Not in a scientific fashion.

My responses to Quora often question the question - and today is no exception.  And I often get negative points for pointing out the obvious, such is life.  Here is my response to the Quora question.


As is often that case, the person who wrote the question made a fundamental error.

We do not know if white rice is healthy.  White rice provides energy, but does not provide other nutrients.  Eating white rice might actually be an unhealthy activity, because it displaces foods that provide real nutrition and not just empty calories.

Is eating brown rice healthier?  As far as I know this theory is 'yet to be proven' as well.

If we ran a lab test, with mice, not people, and fed them ONLY white rice, or ONLY brown rice, we might expect the brown rice mice to live longer, healthier lives than the white rice mice.

Until we actually make some scientific measurements - we don't know white rice from brown. You can rationalize all you want - the truth is only to be found in actual measurements.

to your health, tracy
http://personalhealthfreedom.blogspot.ca/p/subject-index.html

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Tracy is the author of two book about healthicine: 

Health Freedom and the News: Merck vs The Wall Street Journal

I don't generally blog about topical issues, but today - Dr. Mercola's post prompted me to write about Merck aka The Wall Street Journal.

A few days ago, the Wall Street Journal published an article about a lawsuit against Merck.  Former employers of Merck accuse the company of falsifying evidence about the mumps vaccine, and falsifying results of mumps vaccine testing - and publishing false results on vaccine information inserts. They claim that these lies gave Merck a monopoly in the sales of mumps vaccines - costing the taxpayers billions of dollars for a vaccine that was far less effective, and possibly more dangerous than represented.

A few days ago, this news didn't surprise me.  I am currently doing some research of a vaccine blog post, and I thought it would be useful info when I'm working on that post. What do I think about vaccines?  To tell the truth, I'm not sure.  I believe that the concept of vaccines is valid, and that they can work - but I also believe that each specific vaccine needs to be tested and constantly measured to ensure that it is both effective and safe.

Today, Mercola advises that the Wall Street Journal article is gone. It has disappeared from their website and also from all internet cache sites.  Google, for example, and Bing - don't seem to know it existed.  Links that were published are suddenly 'broken'.  According to Mercola, the article disappeared after an "elite" network of CFOs from the world’s top corporations met at the WSJ. Merck is on that executive council." You can view Mercola's post and comments here. 

It's worth checking out the Mercola article, and the comments as well.  I've actually made a point of saving the article to my computer, and also saving a PDF of the court documents because I'm worried about more censorship. 

I believe in health freedom - and it is difficult to attain any kind of freedom when our major news organizations decide what to publish, what not to publish - and what to 'unpublish' based on pressure from corporate interests. Frankly, why should anything they publish be 'unpublished'? If they want to apologize - they should be honest about it and apologize.  Unpublishing, making the news disappear is downright Orwellian. 

Everyone has a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of healthiness.  We all have a right to the news, not just the news that corporations decide to allow us to read.  Yesterday's news is part of history and should not be disappeared.

to your health, tracy

Tracy is the author of two book about healthicine: