Showing posts with label homeopathy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label homeopathy. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Psych meds linked to 90% of school shootings: edited *

Obligatory disclaimer: Aside from the following article, I don't recommend World Net Daily as a source of information, given that it's a hate site known for promoting unviable economic programs. One of the dangers of polarized thinking about the school shootings issue is that both sides of the political spectrum are seriously flawed in their analysis of how to treat the problem. The left wants to provide more "mental health treatment" which inevitably means tens of thousands of adolescents being forced to take psychiatric medications that have been proven to produce homicidal ideation. Many on the right, on the other hand, would rather respond to their disturbed teenagers by beating them senseless while insuring that even more Americans have access to the same assault rifles that enabled the massacres in the first place.

Countless holistic health practitioners have successfully used a wide variety of modalities to treat serious mental health issues. Personally, I've found homeopathy to be particularly useful for treating violent ideation resulting from post-traumatic stress disorder. One of the results of PTSD, for me, was a change in an initial belief system organized around non-violence towards one that allowed for things like capital punishment and vigilante justice, and the reasons justifying these acts became increasingly more flexible with every passing year it went on. As homeopathic treatment has progressed, I've returned to my initial belief system and have become more psychologically stable while my physical health has also improved. How would the treatment of psychological illness be affected by the widespread return of homeopathic hospitals, which were far more common throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries?

The efficacy of homeopathy can be demonstrated by the exponentially greater survival rate of Spanish flu patients treated in homeopathic hospitals as compared to those treated in conventional hospitals. The widespread acceptance of homeopathic treatment could also make possible an affordable universal health care program, considering that homeopathic treatment is infinitely cheaper than virtually anything associated with conventional Western medicine. One thing is certain. I sure wish all the right wing lunatics calling for even less gun control had access to it so nobody would have to read their neurotic rants about how assault rifles will make us all safer. Even so, this is a necessary article that everyone calling for more mental health treatment should be reading.


Psych meds linked to 90% of school shootings

NEW YORK – From the moment news emerged Friday that a young man had carried out a horrific massacre of elementary-school children, politicians from local city halls to the White House have been restoking the age-old push for more gun control. While guns have been a common denominator in mass slayings at schools by teens, there’s another familiar element that seems increasingly to be minimized.

Some 90 percent of school shootings over more than a decade have been linked to a widely prescribed type of antidepressant called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or SSRIs, according to British psychiatrist Dr. David Healy, a founder of RxISK.org, an independent website for researching and reporting on prescription drugs.

Though there has been no definitive confirmation that drugs played a role in the Newtown, Conn., assault, that killed 20 children and six adults, media have cited family members and acquaintances saying suspect Adam Lanza was taking prescription medication to treat “a neurological-development disorder,” possibly Aspergers.

Healy cautioned that the public needs “to wait to find out what Adam Lanza was on, and whether his behavior does fit the template of a treatment-induced problem.”

However, in an email to WND, he said he suspected prescribed psychiatric medications was the cause of Lanza’s violent behavior. Healy said that while the public waits to learn more about Lanza, there are two general points that can be made. First, he said, “psychotropic drugs of pretty well any group can trigger violence up to and including homicide. Second, the advocates of treatment claim both that it is the illness and not the drugs that causes violence and that we are leaving huge numbers of people untreated.”

But Healy argued that if this were the case, “we should not find that comfortably over 90 percent of school shootings are linked to medication intake.”

Dr. Peter R. Breggin, a Harvard-trained psychiatrist and former full-time consultant at the National Institute of Mental Health, told WND it’s likely that problems for Lanza began with “getting tangled up” with psychiatric medicine. Breggin insisted there has been overwhelming scientific evidence for decades correlating psychiatrically prescribed drugs with violence.

Writing in Ethical Human Sciences and Services, a peer-reviewed scholarly journal, in 2003, Breggin concluded SSRI drugs could be a factor in suicide, violence and other forms of extreme abnormal behavior, as evidenced in case reports, controlled clinical trials, and epidemiological studies in children and adults...Breggin testified to Congress that research conducted in the medical science demonstrates a causal relationship between antidepressant drugs and the production of suicide, violence, mania and other behavioral abnormalities. He warned Congress of the risks of giving these drugs to heavily armed young men and women in the military....He believes the Lanza case fits the pattern of school shooters in some of the most famous incidents in recent memory, including the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado and the massacre at Virginia Tech in 2007...In many school shootings carried out by minors, court documents are sealed and the extent of chemical use is unknown to the public.

But in a number of high-profile cases, the link has been reported:

Kip Kinkel was withdrawing from Prozac and had been prescribed Ritalin when he murdered his mother and stepfather then shot 22 classmates, killing two, in 1998.
Christopher Pittman was withdrawing from Luvox and from Paxil when he killed his paternal grandparents in 2001.
Elizabeth Bush, who fired at fellow students in Williamsport, Pa., in 2001, wounding one, was on Prozac.
Jason Hoffman, was on Effexor and Celexa when he opened fire at his El Cajon, Calif., high school, wounding five.
Shawn Cooper of Notus, Idaho, was on antidepressants when he fired a shotgun on students and staff.
T.J. Solomon, on antidepressants, wounded six at his Conyers, Ga., high school.
Eric Harris was taking Luvox when he and fellow student Dylan Klebold killed 12 students and a teacher and wounded 24 others before turning their guns on themselves at Columbine High School in Colorado.
At Virginia Tech in 2007, where 32 were murdered, authorities found “prescription medications related to the treatment of psychological problems had been found among Mr. Cho’s effects,” according to the New York Times.

“Violence and other potentially criminal behavior caused by prescription drugs are medicine’s best kept secret,” Healy said in a statement last month. “Never before in the fields of medicine and law have there been so many events with so much concealed data and so little focused expertise.”
more...

*edited to correct the full name of WND, because it's been quite awhile since I spent any time over there and a mistake was made initially. Excuse the sloppiness but life's too short to waste much time on sites whose usual commentary veers alarmingly close to neofascism, barring few exceptions such as the included article.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Coping with trauma: the mind/body connection: updated again 9/26/12

This blog typically deals with a lot of conspiracy research that can be very draining on both an emotional and physical level if not counterbalanced by more, for lack of a better word, positive thoughts and actions. This problem has been on my mind a bit lately, since I've noticed that most people who deal with the subject of trauma-based mind control tend to burn out after a short length of time due to the emotional weight of dealing with difficult subject matter. Since many regular readers here have ongoing issues with physical and psychological health, I thought it might be useful to share some of the strategies I've used to cope with these problems.


TMI warning:
This post contains gross details about some of my ongoing physical health problems so skip ahead if that bothers you. First of all, I've always had physical health problems, from a very early age, and these only became worse as I got older. By the time I was in my mid-twenties, I'd had to deal with heart disease, a stroke from a speed overdose, crippling staph infections, extremely painful endometriosis, chronic fatigue syndrome, PTSD, and the list goes on. Yet, strangely enough, over the past 6 years or so I've gradually been getting healthier, until now I'm probably the healthiest I've ever been despite a long history of problems which were exacerbated by years of substance abuse. One of the most powerful things I have on my side is that I've always believed in the power of holistic health modalities to treat the body and mind, and have almost never succumbed to the lure of pharmaceutical drugging, even though it might have provided some relief in the short term.

About 4 years ago I hit a turning point when I came down with a dental abscess. The pain had been excruciating for weeks, my heart had begun racing, I was having alternating chills and hot flashes, and felt that I would pass out if I stood up or moved around for any length of time. Most reasonable people would have gone straight to the emergency room, but I was determined to avoid it and am so glad I did. I must warn people here that it is only advisable to forgo Western medicine if you are knowledgeable about the alternatives and committed to following what might be a strict regimine. Instead of taking antibiotics and undergoing surgery, I found an article on treating dental abscesses in cats with homeopathic medicine, and immediately adopted an alkaline diet, under the principle that overly acid environments encourage the proliferation of infectious disease.

The pain was gone almost overnight and has since to return, although for about a month afterwards, anytime I ate acidic restaurant food it would come back temporarily. The alkaline diet, for those who don't know, is typically promoted as being centered around fruits and vegetables, with minimal consumption of animal products. Here is a list of alkaline foods, however there is one very crucial fact that almost all of these lists omit, which is that bone broth is an alkaline substance. I take the acid-alkaline lists with a grain of salt, since it seems that many of them are based on dogma about vegetarianism as opposed to chemical analysis of the food. In my experience many animal products such as butter and organ meats did not cause problems although consuming the smallest amount of refined vegetable oil resulted in immediate pain. One addition to the list that was very important in healing the abscess was baking soda, which acts very quickly to alkalize the body. Baking soda alone can't solve long term deficiencies but it can be a short term life-saving medicine that stops the proliferation of infectious pathogens of all kinds. It's best to drink the baking soda solution (one teaspoon dissolved in a glass of water, no more than 3 times a day) on an empty stomach, otherwise it can produce nausea.

Up until this point, I had achieved great success with the Weston Price diet, which emphasizes the consumption of high quality saturated fats that come from pastured animals raised without synthetic growth hormones. Holistic health practitioners often stress the need to reduce saturated fats and animal products in one's diet and, while some have achieved helpful results this way, going the route of vegetarianism can also result in deficiencies for many, particularly in those individuals with a history of depression and/or chronic fatigue syndrome. Previous to adopting the Weston Price protocols, I had been a vegetarian for 15 years and always had low energy and issues with depression and anxiety. Afterwards, my energy levels shot through the roof, my moods improved and, contrary to what mainstream medicine preaches will happen with increased saturated fat consumption, my resting heart rate went down by about 25 beats per minute while my aerobic capacity increased exponentially.

Switching to an alkaline diet which was less focused on muscle meats and more focused on bone broth and organ meats was the final addition which fine-tuned this system, although homeopathy played a very important role in healing as well. The other crucial factor was the addition of lacto-fermented foods, which could be a post in and of itself. Many people rely on pre-packaged probiotics to supply beneficial bacteria, but in my experience home fermentation produces far better results, and in greater quantity. The most versatile product I make is whey from raw cow's milk, although many other recipes can be found here.

On another level, cleansing the body can also have the unintended side effect of releasing toxic emotions in a sometimes dramatic, noticeable way. One of my friends regained memories of trauma-based mind control after undergoing a 30-day fast while incarcerated. Personally, I would not recommend this strategy because drastic cleanses can be dangerous and even life-threatening. The same effect can also be achieved in a safer, yet slower way by emphasizing foods that are pungent or bitter, such as hot peppers, onions, dandelion root, grapefruit peel or lemon, although not all of these foods will help every person. I've been incorporating large quantities of these foods into my diet on a daily basis as a way to treat fibroid cysts, which Ayurvedic medicine interprets as a kapha imbalance. Since adopting these protocols, I've begun expelling thick scar tissue during my menstrual cycle (you were warned!). Healing with Whole Foods is a great, thoroughly researched reference book for tailoring a diet to a person's unique constitution, while emphasizing particular emotional issues that go along with each physical pathology. The author's vegan extremism may not work for many readers so I've found it best to combine the information it contains with that of Nourishing Traditions, a book based on the Weston Price diet. Another useful book which is focused on how thought affects the body is You Can Heal Your Life, by Louise Hay.

In my opinion it is impossible to truly heal unless you are able to address both the mind and body simultaneously. To cite one example, people with adrenal exhaustion or chronic fatigue syndrome are often subconsciously drawn to conflict-laden situations because, like a cup of coffee, these scenarios provide a temporary rush of energy to get them through the day. In the long run, this pattern can result in toxic relationships, substance abuse, or preoccupations with catastrophic scenarios such as economic collapse or end times predictions. So, it is imperative to address problems of the body and mind in a holistic fashion, to prevent systemic imbalances from being allowed to thrive at the expense of your own health and sanity.

The system outlined above is the result of years of trial and error, such as adopting extreme diets like macrobiotics or raw foods which only exacerbated the problems I was dealing with. I still have a lot to learn but have no doubt that the protocols I'm using have improved my quality of life. It would be nice if it was possible for me to be a healthy vegetarian, but unfortunately it simply is not. Actually, this is one of several reasons why the Gnostic idea of Earth being a fallen world makes some sense to me, although thankfully many indigenous cultures do provide an ethical system for relating to this world as it is. But that's a topic for another time. I hope the information contained here has been helpful.










Friday, August 19, 2011

Dreams, updated...

Over the past month or so, to my great annoyance, the use of homeopathy seems to have removed any pleasurable effects of smoking weed, and this means I've been sober except for a few unsuccessful attempts. One of the effects of marijuana is to block memories of dreaming, so as a result of sobriety I've been experiencing a sudden flood of extremely vivid dreams. Since childhood I've had a recurring dream of being pursued by a serial killer. For a long while this dream usually involved me being in slow motion and, later, the lone killer became a team of them, sometimes seeming to be mercenaries or military of some variety. Over the past few years the slow motion sensation has gone away and there have also been people in the dream who are assisting me. At times, there has also been a vague goal of getting the team shut down somehow or even prosecuted. The dreams have gone from being horrific nightmares to being exhilarating, with a lingering sense of accomplishment, although there are still exceptions to that rule.



A few weeks ago was one of those exceptions, a nightmare I had while staying over at a friend's house. This particular friend has been through some extreme situations, so my dream may have come about as a result of absorbing any ambient detritus that may have been floating around in her house. I dreamed that I was living in the apartment of a mercenary soldier who had been decorated with many awards, and had a very well-respected position in his community. I was staying there with a young guy and it was expected that we were to stay out of sight as we would not be welcomed in the community. The soldier wasn't home very often and when he was he rarely interacted with us. One day, while he was gone, the younger guy took a parcel out of the closet and unwrapped it for me to see. It contained a sizable collection of brightly-dyed leather masks, which he claimed were made from the skin of civilians the soldier had murdered in cold blood. The soldier came home in the middle of our intrusion and quickly explained that the masks had come from a South American tribe that practiced cannibalism. By his demeanor I knew he was lying, and indeed the masks had been the culmination of his ritualistic killing spree.



Doing my best to generate exuberance, I said that he should take the masks to a museum or an anthropologist to ensure their preservation. He returned my distrust with a penetrating gaze and I believed I was not safe in his house, or even outside of it, since the surrounding community was hostile to strangers. He left shortly afterwards and I resolved to catch him by surprise before he could murder me. The soldier returned home in the middle of the night and, waiting in the shadows of the hallway, I approached him, wrapped my hands around his throat and strangled him until he stopped breathing. When I awoke in the morning, I was disgusted and queasy about what I had done and there was no feeling of success as there has been in other dreams. I also realized I had not come prepared with the proper clothing since the area my friend lives in is fairly chilly compared to the climate I'm used to. When I left, she gave me a bright red leather jacket to keep warm. It wasn't until I was almost home that I realized exactly what the dream had been trying to tell me.



Putting aside the obvious meaning, a simple verification of non-violence as the most ideal response in any situation, and certainly the one in my dream given that it would have been far easier to just leave the house, I looked up an online dream dictionary which had this to say: "To dream that you have committed a murder, indicates that you are putting an end to an old habit and a former way of thinking. This could also refer to an end to an addiction". A possible reference to quitting smoking weed, or maybe also the ethos of fear-based survival? Hopefully I'm not boring people with the dream analysis, because this kind of analytic thinking can really gloss over less academically acceptable possibilities, such as external influence, not to be discounted in the overall scheme of things.



Then last night I had yet another serial killer dream and it was better, in the sense that I was not doing something which directly contradicts my personal ethics, even if the plot development is a bit lacking. This time, I was working at a mall that was owned by a family which was, again, very prominent and influential in their community. Most of the franchises at the mall were also owned by said family and, like the way that many Chinese corporations have their own police forces, the entire place was run like a prison, with tall fences surrounding it and armed guards at every entrance. One of the girls I worked with, who was an accountant for the family, had also been given access to a walk-in freezer which was off-limits to other employees. She brought me there one day and showed off what appeared to be rows of human bodies in cold storage. I convinced her that this was not a place where we should be working and that knowledge of the freezer was, in itself, a liability. We rounded up another guy who worked with us and decided to try and escape. In the parking lot, we found an older biker couple who agreed to give us a ride in their pick up truck. Along with the couple's giant mastiff, we all jumped in the back of the truck and they covered us with a tarp, before successfully driving out of the compound.