Bombshell: Explosive Medical Secrets That Will Redefine Aging (25 page)

SS:
Every time you say that it scares me.

JW:
Why?

SS:
You need to convince me, because I am so hormonal that if I even take my hormones late in the day, I can feel it. But what is significant is that you use the word
cycling
as opposed to
continuous combined
, which means taking estrogen and progesterone every day of the month. Cycling is taking estrogen every day and progesterone for two weeks of every month.

JW:
Yes, even in animals that are given just a balanced combination of estrogen and estriol, and not given a break after a period of time (could be a year or more), the anticarcinogenic estriol starts to become a problem and can actually
induce
procarcinogenic changes.

SS:
So by not giving yourself a three-day break from hormones each month, you can set yourself up for cancer? This is new information. This is not what I’ve been saying in my books. My readers are going to react.

JW:
You raise your risk a little, yes. If it’s too difficult to go “cold turkey” because of symptoms of low estrogen, then take the tiniest amount during those three days that you can to take away the symptoms and to feel good.

SS:
Or send my husband away once a month!

JW:
Today most people recognize that we need to go deeper into hormones than just estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and DHEA in order to live longer and healthier and to combat the dangers present in our world today. For instance, let’s talk about thyroid.

SS:
Oh good. You see, I have this bad habit of analyzing people on television as to who has thyroid problems and who doesn’t … I think I upset a news anchor on Fox News because I mentioned to him he should have his thyroid checked! He took it in good humor. But it’s easiest to recognize with men because you can see their eyebrows, and they usually don’t wear makeup so their entire face is exposed to show the symptoms.

JW:
It’s because the problem is so common that the abnormal looks normal. We’re not supposed to be purple, have sagging skin, and all the other symptoms. Unfortunately, many people just don’t realize the value of iodine replacement.

SS:
Okay, now explain why iodine and thyroid have a relationship.

JW:
We have an iodine shortage in our diets, and iodine is key to a balanced thyroid. In the United States, Mexico, and Canada, we have an iodine shortage in our food and what little iodine there is, is very minimal. The countries with the most iodine in their diets, namely Japan and Iceland, have the least breast cancer. And iodine—among very many other things—is responsible for combining with lipids in the breasts and killing breast cancer cells. Iodine also modifies estrogen metabolism so that we have more estriol, which is the anticarcinogenic component of estrogen.

SS:
But aren’t people getting sufficient iodine from iodized salt?

JW:
Hardly … In the 1950s, “authorities” stuck a tiny bit of iodide (with no iodine) into the wrong kind of table salt, “plain” sodium chloride. I am not talking about sea salt, which is what everyone should be consuming if they use salt, because it has at least a little bit of many missing trace minerals.

SS:
I agree. People buy table salt because it’s cheaper and then spend money on mineral supplements where they could be getting some of their trace minerals from consuming sea salt, and it tastes so much better. But I digress …

JW:
I agree with you … So with iodized salt everybody falsely felt they were protected. In the 1800s, if you lived in the Midwest, it was common to develop a goiter.

SS:
Goiter sounds so “unsexy.”

JW:
True, but, as we said, a goiter is a swelling of the thyroid due to an iodine deficiency. In fact, that area of the country was so deficient they called it the “goiter belt.” Also, unfortunately, city and state officials have allowed toxic chemicals like chlorine and fluoride in the water supply, and even though we have systems available to clean our water by ozonation and ultraviolet radiation, which eliminates toxins, those officials in charge have chosen not to use these methods.

Here’s the problem … chlorine
displaces
the iodine in the thyroid gland. Fluoride is actually fluorosilicic acid, which originated in the waste dumps outside of the Alcoa Aluminum plants, and also comes from Florida phosphate fertilizer mills. We have been told this fluoride “prevents tooth decay,” which is mostly a falsehood.

SS:
I am aware of that myth. Fluoride does not prevent tooth decay; in fact, it encourages decay and bone mottling.

JW:
Right, and fluoride is even worse at getting into the thyroid gland and messing up thyroid function.

SS:
Pretty incredible because the thyroid is a major hormone. If it is too high or too low for too long a time, a person won’t live very long. That’s how important the thyroid is to human function, yet this lack of understanding, or may I say greed, accounts for our iodine deficiencies, then putting carcinogens like chlorine and fluoride in our water truly boggles the mind.

JW:
Particularly when there are inexpensive, safe alternatives to prevent tooth decay such as the natural sugar-alcohol xylitol. There’s really good research about that.

But back to fluoridation and chlorination: Research done in Germany shows that in chlorinated communities, on average the people’s thyroid function isn’t as good as in the unchlorinated communities. So once again, because everybody has these symptoms, and because it is so widespread, we don’t see it. The other problem relative to thyroid is that doctors who test for thyroid problems with lab tests are not treating the individual. In medical school, we were taught not to treat the lab tests but to treat the individual. So you, Suzanne, are correct; you look at symptoms: color of skin, sagging skin, and missing eyebrows. There is a wonderful paper on this by Dr. Denis St. John O’Reilly.

SS:
Okay, an Irish guy; one of mine!

JW:
Yes, thanks to him, he carefully pointed out that the whole structure of checking thyroid is based on two flawed studies done at the Mayo Clinic. The Mayo Clinic is very prestigious so everyone believes everything that comes out in their name. But here’s the flaw: Those studies did not include any details of the clinical examination of the patients, just a statistical analysis of the lab tests.

SS:
Meaning, no one was looking at the patients, just their numbers?

JW:
And, as you know, many doctors have had their licenses removed for doing just that, looking at the patients and diagnosing them without following conventional testing.

SS:
Yes, look at what they did to Dr. James Forsythe, who prescribed HGH to his patient by carefully looking at and examining him. He was raided, taken to jail, and finally won in court because the lab test came back and indicated that, indeed, the doctor had been correct; the patient was HGH deficient.

JW:
Yes, tragic what happened to him … and in medical school, we are trained to look at the outward physical signs, listen to the symptoms, and then diagnose. Lab tests can help, but the signs and symptoms should never be ignored.

SS:
Dr. Ron Rothenberg told me in my book
Ageless
that in medical school they are taught to diagnose the patient while speaking with them in the exam room during the first five minutes, that humans show symptoms outwardly in many cases, and these are signs and indicators of problems and conditions.

JW:
That is true.

SS:
Would you tell my readers why antiaging medicine gives them an edge for living longer, healthier?

JW:
Antiaging medicine could also be called
physiologic medicine
, meaning using natural substances and natural energies in both the prevention and treatment of disease. Physiologic means following the normal patterns that the body follows and using the same molecules and the same quantity of molecules, plus using the same timing. In other words, it’s life-copying medicine. There have been marvelous advances in diagnostic technology; for example, MRI scans, being able to see a tiny tumor in the brain that has never existed before, and other things. There have also been some surgical advances that never could have been accomplished without these improvements. But where all progress has come to a halt has been with the use of patent pharmaceutical medicines, meaning molecules that have never been found in nature or on this planet. I call them “space alien molecules”! How do we expect our bodies—which for hundreds of thousands of years were made up only of nature’s molecules—to function properly with molecules that have never been found naturally occurring on the planet, but are of strictly synthetic origin and are never, ever found in nature? It’s like trying to fix your Ford with Toyota parts!

These patent medicine molecules don’t belong in our bodies and they have side effects, which is another way of saying they do bad things to the body. But if we use molecules found in nature, and I don’t mean overly large quantities of them—for instance, water is natural and a bath is healing, but if we submerge in too much water we will drown—they restore and balance. Hormones and natural medicines must be used in physiologic quantities, and when that happens, they provide restoration and quality of life and health, and we are least likely to do any harm this way.

Over a hundred thousand people a year die of patent medicines (also called prescription pharmaceuticals). But in the last two decades only fifteen or twenty deaths have occurred as a result of natural medicine, and even those numbers are disputable.

SS:
Have we hit the wall with allopathics?

JW:
I think so. At Tahoma Clinic, we’ve found that the large majority of illnesses can be treated and often eliminated with natural substances and natural energies—mostly based on scientific research—and almost no allopathic patent medicines. Certainly surgery can be lifesaving, and sometimes there’s no alternative, but there’s no need for at least 90 percent of all patent medicines, if not more.

SS:
So you are saying, simply put in your body substances that the body itself makes or that come naturally from nature?

JW:
Yes. For instance, if there is something wrong with your Chevrolet, you use Chevrolet parts to fix it. If there is something wrong with our bodies, let’s use from nature, for instance, anything from “I need a kidney transplant” to “I need a molecule of estrogen.” Everybody is going to die someday, but we can live a lot longer and healthier, and not end up in a nursing home or relying on our kids to take care of us, if we follow the plan of nature and use natural substances and natural energies to the best of our knowledge.

SS:
Very well said. That in a nutshell is antiaging medicine.

How important is supplementation?

JW:
Exceptionally important. Unfortunately, just eating a good diet is not enough. The soil and food supply are now depleted of minerals, particularly. Everyone needs minerals and vitamins, and at the top of my list is taking 3,000 milligrams of vitamin C daily. That is based on research. Also important is vitamin D
₃
, and most adult people need to start at 5,000 units daily. Some people I work with need 10,000 units or even a little more. Depends on the individual; we prescribe vitamin D followed by blood tests to be sure no one is taking too much.

Vitamin C is the major detoxifier for nearly every living thing. Vitamin C is made out of blood sugar, glucose, and a series of four enzymes (this information goes back to Linus Pauling and Irwin Stone). If there is stress or a carcinogen or a patent medicine or anything bad that happens to an animal, then some of that glucose is taken out of the bloodstream and out the other end comes vitamin C. The human body, given the same stress or carcinogen or patent medicine, tries to make more vitamin C just like animals by passing glucose through this four-enzyme assembly line, but the last enzyme is not there, so the detoxifying vitamin C can’t be made. When an enzyme is missing, it means a piece of the DNA is missing. That’s the definition of a genetic disease, but since this is one we all have, it seems normal. Technically, the genetic disease we all have is called
L-gulonolactone
oxidase deficiency
, which would be lethal if there weren’t a little bit of vitamin C in our diets. But that little bit doesn’t fully correct the problem.

Dr. Pauling said that one should take vitamin C three times a day because it’s a water-soluble vitamin, meaning it runs through the body rapidly. You know if you are taking too much if you get gas or loose bowels. If you don’t experience this effect, you probably need more vitamin C. You find your own limit.

Researchers at UCLA did a longevity study with several thousand people over a period of seven years. They kept track of what they ate and the vitamins they took. They found that men who took 800–1,000 milligrams of vitamin C a day could expect to live six years longer. For women, it was only one year longer, but then women usually outlive men by five or six years on average, so vitamin C might be an “equal rights” vitamin for longevity, anyway.

SS:
Well, that’s worth it right there; and I am sure these people had fewer colds.

JW:
Actually, that is true. Regarding vitamin D: We don’t get close to tropical optimal levels. Clearly the amount of vitamin D people take in from the tropical sunshine is very high and no one drops dead from it. These people are just healthier. There are two studies, one in Germany and one in Austria, with fifteen thousand people enrolled. Researchers checked participants’ blood levels for vitamin D for nearly ten years.