As little as one ibuprofen, every four days, was found to increase kidney disease by 800%, acetaminophen (Tylenol) causes liver damage, opioid pain killers cause addiction and over 40,000 deaths, last year. As a specialist in pain relief, with many of my patients presenting with some form or other of muscular or skeletal pain, I can vouch that curcumin, the extract from the Indian spice turmeric, is the safest effective tool for inflammatory pain that I use.

Curcumin is an extract of the spice turmeric. In India, turmeric has been used and crowned the “Queen of all Spices” for over 2,500 years. Its anti-inflammatory properties relieve pain, but that’s the tip of the iceberg. Turmeric first came to the attention of western medical researchers when it was noticed that India had the lowest rate of Alzheimer’s disease in the world. This notable distinction was tracked to the ample amount of turmeric consumed by the Indian population. With Alzheimer’s now a worldwide epidemic, the research into turmeric went into high gear. A plethora of other benefits were discovered:

1. Protects your brain.
Cognitive disorders such as dementia and Alzheimer’s are often linked to decreased levels of Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF), which is a type of growth hormone. Researchers have found that curcumin positively influences the levels of BDNF and may delay or even reverse many brain diseases or age-related decline of our brain functions.

2. Reduces the risk of several types of cancer.
Turmeric may be one of the most potent natural anti-cancer substances. Not only can it prevent cancer growth, but inhibits the development and spread of cancer.

3. Improves digestion.
It stimulates the gallbladder, reduces bloating and gas, and prevents inflammation of the digestive tract.

4. Protects your heart.
It has been shown to reduce LDL cholesterol, prevent blood clotting, and remove plaque build-ups in the arteries.

5. Anti-bacterial and anti-viral.

6. Detoxifying properties.

7. Delays aging and improves longevity.

Free radicals and inflammation are believed to play a major role in aging, Curcumin affects both. I take curcumin capsules for convenience; however, there is a case for taking the turmeric spice in its whole state. This ensures that all its synergistic components are included. To get all the benefits, add 1 teaspoon of turmeric to smoothies, juices, soups, curries, stir fries, and dressings daily. It is better absorbed in the presence of oil, so try to get that in the mix, too, with coconut oil in your smoothies or stir fries. I take mine with my cod liver oil capsules, which is my daily source of whole food vitamin D and essential fats. Turmeric is also a potent dye. Protect your clothes and surfaces when using it. This is another reason that I use the capsules. I carry some with me at all times. With dancing, I never know when I’m going to pull a muscle or strain something.

About the Author: Dr. Collings is an alternative health practitioner with offices in Plymouth Meeting. For more information, visit her website: www.drveronicacollings.com
Blogs: NaturalNews.com, “This Is What Happens To Your Body If You Eat 1 Teaspoon of Turmeric Every day”

Download this article as a PDF: Curcumin: Much More Than Just Safe Pain Relief

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By now, you probably know all about what you should eat and what you should avoid. Well, I’m going to introduce a concept that takes diet to a whole new level. The processes that transforms the foods that you eat into the cells of which your body is composed are digestion and assimilation.

You make about a million new YOU cells, every minute. It is a very intricate process to transform a hamburger into a person. This process is expedited by a group of chemicals called enzymes. Enzymes are catalysts that speed up chemical reactions. Without them, the hamburger that you ate would not be able to become you.

There are three major classes of digestive enzymes – one for each of the macro- nutrients: proteins, fats and carbohydrates. They are proteases, lipase and amylase, respectively.

These enzymes are made by the various organs of digestion. The foods that we eat in their unprocessed raw state also have enzymes that aid in their own breakdown in our bodies, but, because we now eat such a highly processed and mostly cooked food diet, we are not getting the enzymes inherent in raw fruits and vegetables. This means that our bodies need to use more of our enzyme production to break down food. This deprives the many other functions of the body, such as healing and regeneration, of the enzymes needed for those processes. So, enzyme production is essential for overall health.

By age 35, enzyme production starts to decline. This can account for many of the digestive distress issues that develop as you age, not the least of which is that pouchy belly that won’t go away, no matter how much weight you lose. That little pouch is more often composed of undigested food byproducts than fat. Supplementing with digestive enzymes can be the most important factor of your nutritional wellbeing. Not only will you fully digest and assimilate the good food that you eat, but you will also remove, by enzymatic breakdown, the debris and toxic chemicals from your digestive track.

I recommend the full spectrum of enzymes as produced by your stomach, pancreas and small intestines. In addition, probiotics, the friendly bacteria that reside in the bowel and make up the “micro-biome,” although not enzymes per se, greatly aid gut health. This is now finally being acknowledged as being integral to immune function and even emotional well- being. Transformation Enzymes and Standard Process are my favorite purveyors for quality enzymes. I’ve been taking digestive enzymes with every meal for nearly 20 years. They greatly contribute to my health and well being. I recommend that you add digestive enzymes to your health regimen as your first priority of food supplements.

About the Author: Dr. Collings is an alternative health practitioner. For more information, visit her website: www.drveronicacollings.com

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Gluten is the protein portion of primarily four grains: wheat, rye, barley and, on a lesser scale, oats. From digestive distress to Alzheimer’s, gluten has been implicated as at least a contributory, if not the outright, cause of every symptom and syndrome of which you can think. Why is that? And, more interestingly, why so prevalent now? After all, who ever heard of gluten, 20 years ago?

The “why” is that gluten causes inflammation in varying degrees in predisposed individuals. The degree to which it affects one determines the severity of the symptom picture. An individual’s weak link will also determine what is hit first or hardest.

The “why now” requires a little historical perspective. It’s believed that homus erectus, the first upright man, appeared about two million years ago. For the subsequent 1,990,000 of those years, man ate what he hunted and gathered. Then, roughly 10,000 years ago, Egyptians began to domesticate grasses, which led to pasta and bread.

Given that our current genetic makeup is thought to be about 30,000 years old, the introduction of grains is a relatively new phenomenon to our genome. There was always a small percentage of people that hadn’t fully adapted to grains. They were the people who gained weight easily and/ or suffered from a lot of food-related symptoms – certain populations more likely than others. Eastern Europeans, as well as Irish, had a greater preponderance to this sensitivity.

Then came 1996. That was the year that Monsanto received permission from the FDA (which is headed by an ex-Monsanto vice president, by the way) to increase the percentage of gluten of our commonly consumed grains by 15%. Voila, mystery solved. So, for those of us who were perhaps under the radar, experiencing just minor irritation from this food variant, all of a sudden, minor became major.

To add insult to injury, your medical doctor will not be able to validate this for you if you suspect that it could apply to you. Medical doctors don’t typically have any training in nutrition, so to look to food as a causative agent is not on their radar. Celiac disease is what they assume is the only possibility and celiac is not the same thing. Celiac disease is an autoimmune disorder triggered by wheat, but it presents with antibodies, and that’s what your doctor will look for – not necessarily the same for a gluten intolerant person, although someone can be both.

So what to do? If you suspect that this may be you, it requires a 30-day, 100% elimination of all foods containing the above grains or gluten additives. I know that 100% is a big number, but it is necessary. In that first month, you are trying to make a withdrawing from gluten intake. The bad news is that it only takes one- tenth of one gram to get the inflammatory reaction going again. Imagine that you are a house on fire. The firefighter (you, eliminating gluten) is putting the fire out. The fire is going out nicely when someone puts in some kerosene. It doesn’t take much kerosene to get the fire going full force again, does it? Well, that’s how this allergic response works. You really have to go 100% for a full month to really know.

If your symptoms also include mental or neurological problems, it make take up to three months to fully see how much of that is gluten. Dr. David Perlmutter, a neurologist with 35 years’ experience, states in his book Grain Brain that, if you are gluten intolerant, you are 265% more likely to suffer from depression. Dyskinesia, a neurological disorder where people have uncontrolled movements from facial ticks to flailing limbs, have totally resolved with just this abstinence. I wouldn’t have believed it either, except that I have a patient who experienced this exact phenomenon. I also recommend apps for your smart phones. “GF Living” and “GF Scanner” can help greatly to navigate these uncharted waters. There is more to this subject – feel free to delve further. I also recommend Dr. David Williams’ book, Wheat Belly, and Dr. Robb Wolf”s The Paleo Solution. These are great examples of what is possible. Along these lines, there is a great movie on Amazon Prime, The Perfect Human Diet, which can expand your understanding of the benefits of this effort.

Good luck and feel free to call my office for more information.

About the Author: Dr. Collings is an alternative health practitioner, she utilizes only natural remedies. Her offices are located at 120 W. Germantown Pike, Suite 210 in the Meetinghouse Business Center Plymouth Meeting, PA. For more information, visit her website: www.drveronicacollings.com.

Download this article as a PDF: “Gluten Free? Not Just a Fad.”

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The triad of health includes our structure, our chemistry and our emotions. Structure and chemistry are evident disruptors of health covered extensively in many articles. This will focus on the more subtle side of the triangle: our emotions – the emotional stresses that can disrupt our health can present in every area of life.

A moderate amount of stress can actually be a positive thing, but, when it overwhelms our adaptive capacity, it can cause almost any health problem. Anxiety, sleeplessness, digestive distress, weight gain, it can exacerbate any pre-existing health problem, as well as bring out any problem for which there is a predisposition. Even the AMA admits that stress can worsen 90% of health conditions.

We can’t eliminate stress from life, but we can strengthen our resistance to it so it doesn’t overwhelm us.  Several self-help techniques that I’ve used with great success include meditation with sound (mantra yoga), Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), Bach Flower Remedies, homeopathy and herbs.

Meditation can help you achieve emotional wellbeing in the long term. The style of meditation that I use is mantra yoga. Mantra means sound. Repeating a specific sound in your mind’s eye with the properties to “entrain” your brain waves into the calm and peaceful wavelength of relaxation can set up your entire day for a more peaceful experience.

Here’s how it’s done using a generic mantra that has been traced to ancient Hindu traditions. By the way, this is totally secular and does not conflict with any religion.

You can start in the morning and evening with as little as five minutes and work up to 20 minutes if you feel inclined. Twenty seems to be the magic number for me.

1. Seated – not lying down.
2. Stay comfortable with legs and arms uncrossed.
3. You will be repeating the two syllables (sounds) HONG SAW in your mind’s eye. You will not say these out loud.
4. You can breathe in with “HONG” and breathe out with “SAW,” but this is optional.
5. Yawning means that you are releasing stress.

Don’t force anything. Don’t be concerned if thoughts distract you. Just let them pass through the screen of your mind. If you find yourself off in thought land, just come back to the Hong Saw when you realize it. Be kind to yourself. There is not a right or wrong way. If you itch, scratch. If you are uncomfortable, shift your position. Give it at least three full tries before you judge its effectiveness for you.

“Meditation actually changes your brain. The increased calm and quiet that you feel is not an imaginary effect. Neuroscientist Sara Lazar has used brain scans to look at the meditating brain. These show that long-term meditators have an increased amount of gray matter in the insula and sensory regions. They also have more grey matter in the frontal cortex, an area associated with memory and executive decision making.”1

Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) is demonstrated in the website www.emofree.com. It can help you address anxiety by correcting the bioelectrical short-circuiting that can happen when stress becomes chronic.  Once you’ve learned this technique, it only takes a minute or two to apply and can be used anywhere for any circumstance.  From the tension headache to the angry reaction toward the guy who just cut you off in traffic.  EFT is a form of psychological acupressure, based on the same energy meridians used in traditional acupuncture for more that 5,000 years to treat physical and emotional ailments, but without the needles.

For quick fixes in an immediate situation, I carry the Bach Flower “Rescue” Remedy. This wonderful little tool is available in any health food store, online or at Whole Foods. A couple of drops under your tongue and the relaxing effect is almost immediate. Herbs and homeopathic remedies, as well as aromatherapy for all types of symptoms, are also favorites. There are lots of good information online about the properties of these remedies, but, like most other things, quality is everything. I use herbs exclusively from Medi-Herb, an Australian company. Its quality control is impeccable and unmatched by any other company that I’ve found.  I like several homeopathic companies; locally, I recommend the distributor “Arrowroot Natural Foods” in Bryn Mawr. It has trained staff to help you select an over-the-counter remedy.

There are times when stressors require the intervention of a professional. I recommend and use Neuro-Emotional Technique (NET), and Wholeness Energetics (WE). These are systems of energy medicine that facilitate a return to our natural state by removing our unconscious barriers to healing. Both of these systems use applied kinesiology to assist in discovering and eliminating blockages to health, vitality and peace. You can find out more at www.wholenessenergetics.com and on my site (www.drveronicacollings.com) under the dropdown for NET. There is also an audio interview about NET technique in which I participated with the developer, Dr. Scott Walker, in that same section.

Peace of mind, the most worthwhile of attributes, and it’s contagious. Get some and pass it on.

1 www.mercola.com

About the Author: Dr. Collings is an alternative health practitioner, she utilizes only natural remedies. Her offices are located at 120 W. Germantown Pike, Suite 210 in the Meetinghouse Business Center Plymouth Meeting, PA. For more information, visit her website: www.drveronicacollings.com.

Download this article as a PDF: “Emotional Well-being:  A Critical Component of the Triad of Health”

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In the last issue, I wrote that the basic principles of health can be summed up as “toxins out, real nutrients in.” Avoiding all toxicity is not possible in today’s world, but the nastiest stuff is just one shopping decision away.

Two serious sources of toxins are right in your laundry room. Laundry detergents and fabric softeners are loaded with nervous system poisons that have been implicated with many symptoms. The biggest culprits that I have found are Downey, Bounce in any form and any detergent or product with Febreze.

Two examples are from patients in my office. One 35 year-old woman presented with recent onset of numbing hands and fingers with right-sided headache and episodes of severe anxiety. Fortunately for her, she was wearing a freshly laundered outfit and the smell of her very intense fabric softener immediately alerted me to the possibility of neuro-toxin. Because she had the symptoms for approximately a week at about the same intensity, I instructed her to rinse all her recently laundered clothing three times in cold water and call me in 72 hours. That’s usually the time that the stuff takes to wear off. Sure enough, three days later, her symptoms were gone.

Another case is of a woman in her 70’s who presented with numbing and tingling of both legs. Again, thanks to my nose and the recently laundered clothes, the same “treatment” resolved her symptoms.

If these patients had presented these complaints to a neurologist, thousands of dollars later in diagnostic tests and countless trials of ineffective drugs would have left them with the same symptoms and quite a bit more toxic from all the drugs. Even if you are not symptomatic, there is no point in letting neurotoxins accumulate in your body to wreak havoc in the future.

So, what to do? There are lots of alternatives to a safer laundry. I use ARM & HAMMER™ Liquid Detergent HE Compatible, Perfume & Dye Free. It has to say both things – i.e., sensitive skin and scent-free. The sensitive skin one alone has Febreze in it and that’s another can of worms. Febreze “works” not by eliminating the source of smells, but by anesthesia to your olfactory nerve so that you can’t smell anything. I don’t know about you, but my cranial nerves don’t need any more anesthesia! I don’t use fabric softener sheets, but, if this is necessary for you, the very useful little book, Salt, Lemons, Vinegar, and Baking Soda: Hundreds of Earth-Friendly Household Projects, Solutions and Formulas, will provide you a safe formula and many alternatives to toxic household cleaners.

Here are two more tidbits of recent discoveries. The fad du jour is an electronic bracelet, “Fit Bit.” If you haven’t heard of it, it’s an electronic device that measures how many steps you’ve walked and keeps all kind of nifty info about your “fitness” for the day. If you remember a previous article entitled “The Electromagnetic You,” the concept that we are a composite of electromagnetic fields might be familiar to you. Let it suffice to say that wearing this item can interfere with or even disrupt those fields. A patient with a history of neurological injury reported having fallen three times in the prior week. She said that she just “lost her balance.” I noticed she had the Fit Bit on her wrist and asked her how long she’d been wearing it and she said about two weeks. Again, following the adage of doing the easiest, least invasive, least expensive thing first, I told her to stop wearing it and see what happens. Not only did she report feeling better the next day, she recalled that she had found a Fit Bit in her parking lot and was wearing two of them at the same time til she found the owner just prior to the falling episodes. We are bombarded with massive amounts of this stuff that’s never been around before. The evidence is mounting for this EMR being “too much of a good thing.”

A final tidbit. On its release day, Apple sold $300 million worth of wrist watch computers. I don’t know how much EMF is required to have available the knowledge of the entire world on your wrist. Since I live by “when in doubt, leave it out,” I’ll carry my cell phone in my purse and far away from vital organs. That’s also why I use the speakerphone whenever possible. It’s good to avoid electromagnetic radiation going straight into your brain. EMR is considered by many as the most virulent type of pollution. Short of living in a Faraday Cage (EMR block used in science experiments), the best thing to do is avoid exposure when you can, such as these two suggestions. One of my colleagues does home and office calls to measure the amount of EMR exposure you are experiencing. She then makes recommendations such as changing the location of your router, etc. Feel free to call the office for her contact info.

Til next time: see you on the dance floor.

About the Author: Dr. Collings is an alternative health practitioner, she utilizes only natural remedies. Her offices are located at 120 W. Germantown Pike, Suite 210 in the Meetinghouse Business Center Plymouth Meeting, PA. For more information, visit her website: www.drveronicacollings.com.

Download this article as a PDF: “Shortcuts to Living a Healthy Life in an Unhealthy World, Part 2“

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Flu season is a misnomer. Even though more people succumb to bugs in winter, there really aren’t any more viruses around during cold weather than at any other time. The difference is our immune system’s resistance to them. Several easily controlled factors can increase that resistance and improve your likelihood of keeping healthy.

What’s different in winter than in summer? As far as resistance to viruses and other bugs, the most important thing missing is exposure to sunshine. The sun provides us with vitamin D, a vital nutrient for your immune system. So, as soon as fall comes around, replace the missing sunshine with the whole food source vitamin D from cod liver oil. In lemon- flavored pearls, you won’t even taste it. It will also help with Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD – commonly known as the winter blues.

In winter, we eat less fresh fruits and vegetables. Make your body inhospitable to bugs by avoiding the foods that feed them. Bugs thrive on sugar and sugar- producing foods, mainly starches and grain-based food. Avoid these and eat as much of a “real food” diet as possible. In winter, we drink less water and, combined with the drying effects of heating units, dehydration is more likely. Mucous membranes that are dry and more brittle are less protective from invasion by bugs.

Use a vaporizer in your bedroom and increase your water intake. In winter, we breathe more stagnant and contaminated air because we are closed in. Circulate air with a ceiling fan on low setting and allow fresh air into your home, even if for a few minutes a day.

A more aggressive preventive strategy should also include herbal support. One of the best natural anti-infective plants that can help with bacteria and even tuberculosis is garlic. Hundreds of therapeutic properties have been attributed to garlic.

Echinacea root has a powerful effect for a well-balanced immune response. This is not an anti- infective like garlic or golden seal – it is immune support. Fennel seed capsules or tea protect both respiratory and digestive function, both of which have been challenged with the viruses that are around right now.

My favorite immune support whole food supplements are Immuplex and Congaplex standardprocess.com. They contain the vital nutrients that your immune system needs to stay strong.

After all this, remember that the latest research is revealing that a large part of your immune system resides in your gut microbiome – what we used to call the friendly bacteria. Keeping the health of those organisms improves yours. A good probiotic like Prosymbiotic from standardprocess.com will do the job.

Speaking of your bowels, a change in bowel habits is often a first sign that something is brewing. As the famous herbalist Dr. Schmidt used to say, keep your bowels moving at all costs. Use a cascara sagrada- based herbal laxative at the first sign of constipation.

For more on flu prevention, refer to my article in the September/ October, 2013 issue of the Dance Spotlight, “Before the Hoopla for the Flu Vaccine Starts-Some Facts about Real Flu Prevention.” By the way, everything I said then about the vaccine is multiplied for the new high-potency flu vaccine. Stay healthy and see you on the dance floor.

About the Author: Dr. Collings is an alternative health practitioner, she utilizes only natural remedies. Her offices are located at 120 W. Germantown Pike, Suite 210 in the Meetinghouse Business Center in Plymouth Meeting, PA. For more information, visit her website: www.drveronicacollings.com.

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Staying healthy in the 21st century can appear like an onerous task.  We are constantly bombarded with news of frightening challenges to our health. I want to take the fear and feeling of overwhelming hopelessness out of the task of living a happy healthy life. Here are some shortcuts to good health that are easy to apply once you understand the big picture:

About 150 years ago, people were dying mostly of infectious diseases, primarily because of lack of sanitation, namely drinking the poop in the water. Accidents and very high infant mortality were also big. If you managed to avoid those challenges, you lived a pretty healthy life.

We have handled those issues, mainly with sanitation (although drug companies want you to think differently). We replaced them, however, with much graver ones. With industrialization came lots of chemical toxins in our air, water and food – chemicals to which our bodies haven’t yet adapted and are not equipped to eliminate. Maybe in a few thousand years, we will have adapted enough to be able to deal with what DuPont and Monsanto, as well as Pharma, dish out to us, but that’ll be a little late for us. We need to protect ourselves now from degenerative diseases such as cancer, diabetes, arthritis and all the other “itises” (the sufix “it is” means “inflammation of”), as well as their near relations – the autoimmune diseases such as RA, lupus, etc.

Compounding the problems of all the poisons going in are all the nutrients now missing in our foods. Some of you may remember “real food.” That was when food actually spoiled because it had a life cycle from which life-giving nutrition was transmitted to us. Now, we eat devitalized, denatured junk that can sit on a shelf for years and we expect it to nourish us. It doesn’t. Good for shelf life, bad for us. We sicken so slowly from this malnutrition – many of us don’t connect the dots.

Simply, the big picture is we want to avoid poisons and eat as much real food as possible. So a big task can be broken down into some basic steps:

1. Avoid air pollution. Most of us work inside. An ionizing air filter in your home and office will get rid of most of the toxins you breathe. I use Ionic Pro because it does not require filter changes. It’s very easy to clean and is absolutely silent.
2. Avoid unnecessary chemicals in your home. These are other exposures you can avoid by limiting cleaning supplies and other chemicals in your home. There are safe and effective cleaning agents and such simple things as vinegar, baking soda and hydrogen peroxide, which do a great job. Minimize personal hygiene products that are full of chemicals. Organic skin care is your best choice. I use a company from England, Neal’s Yard Remedies. It was founded in 1982 by naturopaths, herbalists and homeopaths to provide healthy makeup and skin care. You can access their products by going on my website and clicking on “organic skin care.” I also use coconut oil as a moisturizer. A filter for your shower will get rid of chorine and other chemicals. A ten-minute hot shower is the same as drinking a quart of chlorinated water. I use a Nikken shower filter.
3. Support your body’s detoxification systems. Organic whole food supplements that keep your liver working at full capacity will help your body to eliminate toxins. Your liver is the most vital organ for getting rid of poisons and it is dependent on the phytonutrients (plant food), primarily from green leafy and cruciferous vegetables, to do its job. I’m always on some liver support supplement from Standardprocess.com. The distinction between whole food concentrates and the synthetic chemicals of most “vitamins” are made is the same difference between real food and petroleum by-products. That is what comprise most of these “vitamins.” For example, Vitamin D is the vitamin du jour in medical circles. Unfortunately, most medical doctors have no training in nutrition, so they don’t understand that taking a synthetic isolate (part) of a vitamin complex can do more harm than good. This is especially true of vitamin D, which is actually a hormone. Besides the sun, its complete form best comes from cod liver oil. Make sure that it is NOT pasteurized because that high heat destroys the best part, which is the omega 3 oils and necessary, so vitamin D does not become toxic. Standardprocess.com . We are constantly bombarded with news of Green Pastures carries it. It comes in a lemonized pearl so you don’t taste it. Synthetic vit D can cause calcification that can lead to hardening of your arteries and arthritis, a side effect previously thought to be caused by vitamin D toxicity. We now know that inappropriate calcification is actually due more to lack of K2 than simply too much vitamin D.
4. Counteracting a sedentary life is crucial. Sitting all day has been shown to cost years off your life as well as well being. Just simply as getting up once per hour and doing three 1⁄2 squats (5 seconds each) right at your desk can turn all that around. You can even do a 1⁄2 squat in a skirt – although I recommend you slip your heels off! Applying even one of these recommendations will make a difference. So select the idea you like best, start with that one. When it’s been totally incorporated into your life, pick another. In part two, in the next issue, we’ll fine tune these concepts to personalize them to your specific needs.

Download this article as a PDF: “Shortcuts to a Healthy Life in an Unhealthy World “

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“Awake
Open your eyes.
Clear your brain.
Reason clearly!
An enemy is at your door.
He has already entered nearly every
home!
Is he in your home?
Are you struggling for life as he slowly
“strangles” you in his “grip of poison”?
Are your sons, your daughters, your
father
Or your mother fighting this fearful
enemy?
If you love life, if the lives of your
loved ones
Are of any value, begin at once to free
yourself
And your home from this horrible
enemy,

 DRUGS”

Bernarr Macfaden and Felix Oswold, M.D. from the introduction to their book about natural healing practices written in 1900!

What prompted this topic was the plethora of drug recommendation reversals that, although affecting millions, received little to no media coverage. So much of the research that the day-to-day practice of medicine is based on turns out to be false, incorrect and misleading. So much research suffers from bias or prejudice due to financial conflicts of interest. Researchers, who are often in the employ of drug companies, tend to ignore non-medical, natural approaches and never study them.

Just a couple of weeks ago, the FDA recanted the claims made by Bayer (which did the original research), more than 20 years ago, that an aspirin a day prevents heart attacks. It has withdrawn the recommendation to take a low dose aspirin daily. Of course, if you are taking the study done by the company that most benefits from the results as fact, then what do you expect? Forty million Americans have been taking daily aspirin, which has a bunch of “side effects” for no good reason – unless you consider the $1.7 billion in yearly Bayer profits from this one product alone to be a good reason. I’m sure Bayer thinks so.

Unfortunately, in the last 35 years, most of the research has been done by the same pharmaceutical companies that benefit from the outcome. Know who you are listening to is my best advice.

CDC whistleblower, William Thompson, PhD, revealed that the 2001 report released by the CDC exonerating vaccines as causative in autism was fraudulent. Statistics that demonstrated that as much as a 334% correlation of the MMR vaccine and autism, with the highest group affected being black males, was kept out of the report intentionally, according to Thompson. He signed off on the report, knowing it was fraud. When you think that, today, 1 in 52 children (as opposed to 1 in 20,000, when I was in school) is affected by this horrible condition, this revelation is nothing short of criminal. You can get the full story on AMC’s documentary video entitled “CDC Whistleblower revealed” on YouTube.

Beta blockers, used in non- cardiac patients prior to surgery, have caused an estimated greater that 800,000 deaths in Europe and the research by Dr. Poldermans that established the guidelines was reported by Forbes, that “the full extent of the misconduct is almost impossible to ascertain, although it appears to be extensive.”

Vioxx is another example of what can happen when a drug is manufactured and marketed under false pretenses. It killed more than 60,000 people in just a few years’ time before it was removed from the market. The list goes on.

I know this article sounds alarmist, but the alarm is exactly what I want to sound. Please don’t ignore the warnings of over 100 years ago. Educate yourself before you accept drugs blindly. I highly recommend Dr. Mendelsohn’s book, Confessions of a Medical Heretic. In it, he teaches you how to protect yourself from the profiteering of a medical industrial complex out of control. If you have children, his book, How to Raise a Healthy Child in Spite of Your Doctor, is the best guide to child rearing that I know. Drugs are not the answer. Americans spend more money on drugs than the next ten leading countries combined and we are sicker than all of them and the following 35. Learn about natural health alternatives.

This article was first published in The Delaware Valley Dance Spotlight, October/November 2014. It is the sole work of its author, Dr. Veronica Collings DC. 

Download this article as a PDF: “Beware Of Deadly Health Scams, Stay Away From Drugs”

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The life-saving information that has been on the fringes of the cancer industry for decades is finally available to you. It has been compiled into a cohesive and easy-to-assimilate format. A seven-episode, 10-hour DVD series was produced by the first organization independent of pharmaceutical interests to investigate cancer cures, the Independent Cancer Research Foundation (ICRF).
 

Why should you care? Catastrophically enough, the current estimates are that one in two men and one in three women will get cancer. You or someone you know will need this information in your lifetime. Think of it as a fire drill. If cancer strikes, you’ll be prepared. Of course, prevention is, by far, the best approach. In the program, a plethora of preventive methods are presented. The cancer patients that applied these strategies did not suffer the fate of the “five-year recurrence,” which so many conventionally treated cancer patients experience.
 

We can no longer depend on cancer “treatment” whose science is based on chemical warfare agents from WWI, burning radiation which also, like chemo, causes cancer (Madame Curie killed herself, experimenting with it, thinking it was safe), and cutting out  diseased organs until there’s nothing left to mutilate for a “cure.”
 
I had the luxury of being given this series as a free preview in digital format that played on my phone. It was very user-friendly to watch/listen to while I went about my life. Even though it was a huge amount of material, it was easy to wrap my head around. It was very well produced and, despite the difficult subject, very entertaining. This is because it was so inspiring that I couldn’t put it down. In all fairness, since health is my profession and my passion, I’m sure I enjoyed it more than most. However, I am also in a better position to be critical. It is my critical understanding that I am sharing with you now.
 
Here’s what you can expect to get from this program: (1) understanding why cancer has reached epic proportions worldwide, (2) what’s different now than just 100 years ago and (3) what you can do about it. The first steps to preventing and curing cancer is understanding exactly what it is, how it forms, and what is currently offered by most mainstream doctors as treatments. In Episode 1, you’ll be looking at the Cancer Pandemic.
 
Episode 2 asks the question: Are You Immune? When most of us think about our immune system, we generally just relate to getting sick like catching a cold. This episode teaches you how important your immune system is for fighting, destroying, and preventing the development of cancer and many other diseases. You’ll learn how to build your immune system, what causes it to break down, and what you can do about it. Episode 3 addresses a term that I often use: Franken-Foods & Cancer Causers. This episode alone is worth the price of admission. I’ll be able to share this with you for free. As part of my purchase of DVDs to play in my reception area, I also got the rights to share the digital format with my friends. So contact me when you want your free copy.
 
Episode 4, Spoiled Rotten, is about specific detoxifying methods for keeping you cancer free. Up to this point, it’s a pretty good summary to use the lines I use in my practice: toxins out, good nutrients in, as the basis of health.
 
Episode 5, Eating Away at Cancer, turns the tables around on our old nemesis. You hear “cancer is eating away at your body.” This episode will show you proven methods to reverse this so that you’re eating away at cancer instead. Yes, more on nutrition, but at this point, who doesn’t get it that “you are what you eat.”
 
Episode 6 features the many doctors who have contributed to the show and exactly what approaches they would personally undertake if they were confronted with cancer.
 
Finally, Episode 7 showcases the many inspirational cancer cures by patients who had been declared terminal and found their way outside the box.
 
Many of the doctors, scientists, researchers and even lay people who have cleared the path for many cancer cures about which I’ve been reading over the years were featured in this program. This allowed me to “meet them” and expand my understanding of their approaches and successes. For you, it will consolidate my nearly 20-year study of this work into 10 hours. Granted, there are some luminaries in alternative cancer treatment hall of fame missing from this show; however, if you take this information in as it is intended, you’ll never fear the word cancer again.
 
For more information on this program, go to www.thetruthaboutcancer.com or call my office with your e-mail address. I will forward the program to you. See you on the dance floor.
 
This article was first published in The Delaware Valley Dance Spotlight, July/August 2014. It is the sole work of its author, Dr. Veronica Collings DC. 
 

Download this article as a PDF: “The Truth About Cancer, The Quest For The Cures”

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Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are organisms bearing the genetic traits of other species such as bacteria and spliced into the DNA of our food. The litany of how unsafe these completely foreign, food-like products are for humans is being constantly expanded upon. Of course, since we left it to our bureaucrats to protect us, it’s all too little, too late. Our food supply is totally infiltrated with GMOs and makers of these “foods” are doing all they can to stop you from finding out that you are eating them.

Last year, Monsanto spent more than $42 million just to prevent Californians from making it mandatory to label foods with GMO ingredients. Monsanto and other GMO companies keep spending massive dollar amounts to fight initiatives like California’s all over the country. What are they trying to hide? Why don’t they want you to know? If you knew, you would not eat GMO-containing products.

The evidence is mounting that this “Frankenfood” could have devastating effects on our health that may be irreversible. This is the big picture. The worst culprit is the herbicide Roundup.  It has been spliced into the cells of primarily corn, soy and canola. This may not seem big until you realize that one or all of these products, in any of their many forms, are in more than 75% of our processed food and that the average child eats 90% of his/her diet as processed food.

So where’s the harm? Glyphosate, the active chemical in Roundup, kills the essential life-sustaining bacteria in our gut. Research is continually implicating disrupted gut flora in almost every disease, directly or indirectly. How this can happen is really very simple. These billions of good bacteria make our digestion possible. If you can’t digest your food, eventually you will not have the building blocks to make more new “you” cells that are made from the foods you eat.

A healthy person regenerates new cells at the rate of about one million new cells per minute. It’s more accurate to say that you are what you digest and assimilate than just what you eat. Therefore, disrupting you digestion as glyphosate does can devastate any system in your body. Then your body has to deal with all this undigested debris which putrefies, goes rancid and ferments in our guts. Often, severe inflammatory reactions result all over the body. Symptoms may manifest differently, depending on each person’s weak link.

One of the newest theories of possible causes of autism, for instance, is called GAPS. It stands for “The gut and psychology syndrome.” When Dr. Andrew Wakefield made this connection, more that 15 years ago. with the gut health and autism as it related to vaccine damage he was discredited, all his research grants and medical licenses revoked. He has since been vindicated as his findings keep getting more substantiated. His medical license was recently reinstated.

So how does this apply to you and yours? There are ever-increasing rates of autism, now one in 50 children compared to one in 20,000 when I was a child. One in six children now has some form of “mental developmental disorder” (that classification use to be called “retarded” before it became politically incorrect), as well as 50% of our children under 17 already being classified with at least one “chronic degenerative disease” (a term reserved for the elderly when I was in school) – we don’t have the luxury to ignore this.

How it affects us as adults can manifest in any inflammatory disease, arthritis, Alzheimers, dementia, heart disease, cancer and, of course, all the alphabet soup of bowel and digestive problems for which everybody is taking tons of drugs with no real cure.

So what do you do now? Unless a processed food is specifically labeled as non-GMO or organic, (organic food cannot have GMO’s), if corn, soy or canola appear anywhere on that label, you can assume that those ingredients are GMO. Don’t eat that food. The marketplace is constantly changing and more and more GMO ingredients are in the pipeline, so you have to be vigilant to protect yourself. Of course, you can keep it simple by following the other nutritional advice that I’ve been giving in this column over the years. Eat real food that is not processed and preferably organic. That circumvents most of the problem, right there.

You still have to make choices when you dine out regarding what foods to avoid. Most restaurants use corn starch as a filler in their sauces. Again, if it is not an organic restaurant. you can assume that GMO corn starch in the sauce.

The next kicker is that the feed your food eats also translates into GMO damage to your gut. Most commercially-raised meats and poultry are fed GMO corn (subsidized by your tax dollars, I might add). Organic or free range meats are your answer. Impossible on my budget, you say. Here’s the good news. Places like Chipotle are now serving free range beef, chicken and pork and locally grown vegetables for very good prices. Unless marked organic or non-GMO, you still have to stay away from the corn, but it’s a small sacrifice to stay healthy. Dressings and sauces are also a big hiding place for GMO canola oil, so ask about the oil or avoid them.

If you suspect that the damage has already been done, you can start healing by reinstating the friendly organisms in your gut in the form of a good probiotic. My favorite is Pro-symbiotic from StandardProcess.com. It not only contains the organisms that your gut health needs, but also contains the right ecology for the organisms to flourish. Digestive enzymes are important for anyone over 35 in the best of scenarios, but, under these circumstances, they are a must. Zypan and Multizyme are the ones that I use. These actions are a great start to keeping healthy. Please support local efforts for GMO labeling so that “you won’t get fooled again.”

 Download & Print this article as a PDF: What are GMOs and Why Should I Avoid Them?

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