Stop mosquito bite itch!

I got a hot tip from Twitter tonight from Cindy at "Living in Rhyme - Whole Life Wellness"

She said to take the itch from mosquito bites, dab on a bit of lavender essential oil.

I'm going to try it!

Meanwhile, if I had used some sense before I went to the garden, I wouldn't have been bitten. I know that splashing on a bit of vanilla from my kitchen cupboard will keep them away. The best part is, you smell good and don't get any yucky chemicals on your skin.

Natural Remedies for Gout & Arthritis

I've never experienced gout, but from what friends tell me, it's one of the most painful conditions known to humans. There is a prescription drug that keeps it at bay and my neighbor has been taking it every day for about 30 years.

If you prefer not to take a drug every day for life, or if you're sensitive to drugs, you might want to try natural remedies first.

According to the Journal of Nutrition (June 2003 & April 2006) sweet cherries have anti-inflamatory properties that help against both gout and arthritis.

Both sweet and sour cherries block an enzyme that causes inflammation.

The drawback, as with many natural remedies, is that you don't always get instant relief. It can take two or three weeks of using cherry juice daily before you see a real difference in your pain levels.

However... I had an elderly friend who had been suffering from gout and his doctor hadn't even offered anything for relief. He happened to mention it to a clerk in a grocery store one day and she told him to get cranberry juice and start drinking it immediately. He did, and by morning his pain was gone. He was pretty upset at his doctor for not telling him there was such an easy cure.

Thus, different bodies / different results.

Maybe you don't want to use Zicam

According to the FDA, there have been more than 130 reports of loss of the sense of smell after using Zicam products. These zinc-based products include the nasal gels and nasal swabs.

If this was a temporary loss, it wouldn't be so bad, but there seems to be no way to reverse the action. Those afflicted appear to have permanently lost their sense of smell.

130 people is a small percentage of those who have used the products, but even one is too many if it's you!

I think I'd rather have a few days of congestion than take the risk, how about you?

Rebound Headaches Caused by Pain Relievers

In our over-medicated society, people are now suffering from headaches caused by too much pain relief!

Anti-inflammatory drugs used to relieve arthritis pain are, quite understandably, being over used, since arthritis pain is more than a once-in-a-while thing. This is not just prescription drugs, but over the counter drugs such as Advil, Aleve, and Motrin IB.

The result, for many people, is headaches that occur just as soon as the medicine wears off. According to a report by Joe Saper,M.D., director of the Michigan Headache adn Neurological Institute, this is the result of brain receptors becoming overly sensitized.

Those who find themselves with worsening headaches may want to consider a topical medicine for arthritis pain, or non-drug approaches such as fish oil, boswellia, ginger, or turmeric.

Another recent report gives a second reason to cut back on these drugs. New studies are showing that continual use can lead to liver failure.

Meanwhile, because of recent deaths due to overdose, some are calling for stricter controls on over-the-counter drugs. While I do feel sorry for the families of those who over-do it, I sure don't want to see the day when we won't be allowed to keep a bottle of aspirin on the shelf!

I know my views on personal responsibility are not politically correct, but I just don't think I need Big Brother protecting me from myself.

Really, it's all ridiculous, since the same people who would limit our use of Tylenol or Advil are perfectly willing to approve drugs whose side-effects can kill, even when used according to prescribed directions.

What do you think?

Listen to Your Body, Not Just Your Doctor

So many of today's maladies are caused because people just don't listen to their bodies. They have headaches or joint pains or they're tired all the time - and they look to a doctor to "cure" it without stopping to consult with the one who really knows what's going on - their own bodies!

Some alternative health experts say that EVERY illness is caused by an allergy, and while I don't have any documentation to prove it, I tend to believe it. If your body is continuously irritated by something, it's going to react in some way. Just think about the warnings on pharmaceuticals - telling you that you should take this, "but oh by the way, it could cause cancer, or maybe death."

The truth is, these drugs might well help one person and kill another - because one body was allergic and the other was not. We're all different.

Several years ago we started seeing an excellent acupuncturist who practiced NAET - Nambudripad's Allergy Elimination Technique. Through him we learned to do muscle testing on ourselves, so that if someone didn't feel very well after a meal or after being exposed to some environmental substance, we could figure out what it was and treat it.

After a while, we became so in tune with paying attention to our body's signals that we could "know" when taking the first bite of a food we should avoid.

And anyone can do that!

Just think how much happier you could be if you knew ahead of time that the fancy dessert in front of you was going to give you a splitting headache. Or if you knew that the orange juice was about to make you have a pain in your knee.

A Google search for Muscle Testing yielded plenty of results, including some from people who don't believe in it. That's fine - they have a right to keep their headaches!

Meanwhile, this site has a good explanation of how it works, and gives a method of testing: http://www.naturalhealthtechniques.com/BasicsofHealth/muscle_testing.htm

This site has videos you can watch to learn more.

What bothers me is that since this is so easy to do - and free - that more doctors don't use it. A simple test in the office could tell them if you should or should not take a certain prescription drug. But, it isn't something they can test and measure, so too many consider it unreliable.

I knew a woman once who decided to have an elective surgery. She was allergic to the anesthetic and she died on the operating table. I think her family would have been a lot happier if her doctor had done a test ahead of time and learned that she had that allergy. It was small comfort to them for him to say "I'm sorry - she was allergic."

Even if you don't try muscle testing - pay attention to your body. If you have a headache or start feeling "yucky," stop and think about it. Write down what you ate, smelled, touched, and breathed in the hour or so before you started feeling bad. Then the next time it happens, do it again.

You'll probably find a pattern and learn what you should avoid. And if you really pay attention, after a while you'll be able to "hear" your body saying "Oh oh, stay away from this or you'll be sorry..."

Could We Lose the Right to Natural Health?

Plenty of people are worried about this right now - the Obama health plan could mean that doctors wouldn't be allowed to use any treatment but that authorized by big pharm and that health care could be rationed.

Those are scary thoughts!

It could also mean that getting our natural supplements would either be impossible, or too expensive to contemplate.

I just read an email by Robert Jay Rowen, MD. that outlines what could happen unless we as taxpayers raise enough ruckus to make our Senators and Representatives know that if they go along with this, their careers are over.

He suggests that the only way to make sure they get the message is to make phone calls - lots of phone calls. Here's why, in his words:

"With mail being irradiated and opened off-site, and auto-emailers flooding servers, one-on-one phone calls are about the only thing our elected officials pay attention to any more. You can find phone numbers at www.senate.gov and www.house.gov."

If you'd like to learn more, or sign up for his newsletters, visit www.SecondOpinionNewsletter.com

Drug prices - enough to make you sick and broke

You already know I think pharmaceuticals are dangerous. But they're not just dangerous to our health - they're also dangerous to our financial situations.

One email I received recently suggested that health care - especially surgical procedures and prescription drugs, are behind the economic crisis we're facing today. They simply drain too much money from too many people.

The following prescription drug prices are excerpted from an e-mail I received today - and they're enough to make you say "That must be a typo!"

I'm a firm believer in free enterprise and in businesses making a profit. They take a risk by running a business, and deserve to reap some rewards. But these mark-ups are just a bit over the top!

Do note that these prices reflect the cost of the active ingredients. The drug companies do have to pay to put those ingredients into a pill, bottle it, add a label - and of course, to print the insert containing the very fine print that tells you possible side effects and drug interactions. And then, the pharmacy that sells them to you has to make a profit - they do take a financial risk by buying the drugs and making them available when you want them.

But still - these profits seem a bit obscene.

If these were products with a low demand rate you might say that the retailer has to make more profit on each item because volume is low. But at the rate that doctors write prescriptions, we know that these pills are sold in high volumes!

Here are a few of the costs vs. selling prices:

Claritin 10 mg Consumer Price (100 tablets): $215.17 Cost of general active ingredients: $0.71 Percent markup: 30,306%

Lipitor 20 mg Consumer Price (100 tablets): $272.37 Cost of general active ingredients: $5.80 Percent markup: 4,696%

Norvasec 10 mg Consumer price (100 tablets): $188.29 Cost of general active ingredients: $0.14 Percent markup: 134,493%

Prilosec 20 mg Consumer price (100 tablets): $360.97 Cost of general active ingredients $0.52 Percent markup: 69,417%

Xanax 1 mg Consumer price (100 tablets) : $136.79 Cost of general active ingredients: $0.024 Percent markup: 569,958%

The email also explained the profits to be made by pharmacies when they talk you in to using the generic equivalent of your name brand prescriptions.

If you had to buy a prescription drug, and bought the name brand, you might pay $100 for 100 pills. The pharmacist might tell you that if you get the generic equivalent, they would only cost $80, making you think you are “saving” $20.

What the pharmacist is not telling you is that those 100 generic pills may have only cost him $10!

It pays to shop around. The email I received gave several examples, but I'll tell you my own experience instead.

I had read before that Costco charged far less than drug stores, so last time I filled my husband's prescription for pain pills, I tried them out. It was true. The same bottle of pills that cost over $30 at home was $14 at Costco. You don't have to be a member to use the pharmacy, by the way.

The email I received cited many more examples - and you might be interested in seeing if a prescription you take is on the list. To read the entire article, go to:
http://www.health-report.co.uk/obscene_drug_mark_ups.htm