Archive for February, 2012

Dear GreenSmoothieGirl: What would you do if one of your kids got cancer? I have read in the news where they have tried to get alternatives treatments for their kids and they were put in jail because of it. Right now, our only plan is to take them straight to Mexico to get the same treatments our family has gotten  treatment, before anyone knows we are gone, and have him come back healthy. Do you have any other ideas to avoid jail time?

Answer: I have known a number of people who have spent years defending themselves, after they came to the attention of social workers and doctors because they refused to follow a drug-treatment protocol.

Each of those I have known are intelligent, educated people whose children were healthy and well cared for, and they went with their own intuition and research, against a doctor’s “advice.” (It’s not really advice, and you’ll understand why at the end of this blog series.)

Many people reading this probably think this is a ridiculous proposition to worry about. The government does not persecute good parents. Only the kind who chain their children to cinder blocks in the basement. Right?

Unfortunately as I researched this nearly a decade ago, I found MANY families, good ones, attacked by their state governments if they wanted to try something different than the Big 3 (cutting, burning, poisoning) for their child diagnosed with cancer. Or if they questioned the diagnosis.

Some of them have made international news like Daniel Hauser, Parker Jensen, Abraham Cherrix, and Katie Wernecke. All of them wanted to refuse chemotherapy—not for religious reasons but because they feel it doesn’t work or would kill them.

The parents were charged in all four cases with “medical neglect” for objecting.

When a doctor complains to Dept. of Family Services that a parent won’t do what he says, multiple government agencies converge and rubber-stamp each other’s decisions. These include Dept of Family Services, Guardian Ad Litem, Attorney General, and the D.A. They are supposed to be checks and balances, but my observation with all the cases I have studied is that they simply move legal processes forward, against families, together. Once a family is accused, there is a formidable machine against them. The state has tremendous resources, and a family can be very overwhelmed fighting for their child’s best interests.

Combined, the government has all kinds of rights and can take your child without just cause or due process. They have done so, in all 50 states. If this happens to you, you have fewer rights than an accused murderer.

Tomorrow let me tell you the astonishing story of Parker Jensen.

I recently misquoted a statistic that stuck in my head a little differently than how I originally read it. Here’s the truth:

In 2002, the combined profits of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies were more than the combined profits than the other 490 companies in the Fortune 500! (This analysis compliments of journalist Randall F. Fitzgerald, published in his book The Hundred-Year Lie.)

(I had said the top 5, and I may have implied a comparison of revenues rather than profits.)

It’s still appalling. One of my frustrations is that many “charities” we give money to are really just funneling even more money into R&D for drug development. It’s certainly expensive to go through clinical trials with a drug. But the companies who can afford to do it stand to make billions on one patented chemical. Dr. Jerry Avorn of Harvard Medical School says, in his book Powerful Medicines,

“There is a comforting shared myth that by the time the FDA approves a new drug, the product has been studied exhaustively and determined to be a worthwhile new addition, and that all its actions in the body, both good and bad, are well defined. In fact none of these assumptions is quite correct. The FDA itself does not study any drugs prior to approval, relying on the company that makes the product to generate that information.”

Dr. Marcia Angell says in her book, The Truth About the Drug Companies, “Is there some way companies can rig clinical trials to make their drugs look better than they are? Unfortunately, the answer is yes. Trials can be rigged in a dozen ways and it happens all the time.”

The fox is guarding the henhouse. I don’t give money to the “pink ribbon campaign” or other thinly disguised bankrolling of Big Pharma, to help them make more chemicals that will never cure women of anything.

But thank you to a reader who questioned my statistic about the top pharma companies versus the rest of the Fortune 500.

One last comment about PSA. We have people at both ends of the spectrum writing us. Some are furious that their loved one died of the treatment. Others are indignant that we don’t see what a wonderful gift the PSA test is for saving lives. I think this brief experience Dave R. wrote us is worth bringing front and center:

“Thanks for the article.  I went in for a routine physical a couple of years ago (I’m a scout leader and needed one for summer camp).  My doctor suggested that I should have a PSA test.  I said fine.  My PSA count was moderately high for my age and I was referred to a specialist.  The specialist confirmed the readings and suggested a biopsy.  I procrastinated the biopsy for a year and then finally went in for the procedure.  It was not only uncomfortable, but painful.  My doctor said that the biopsy was negative and told me that in his opinion, I will never have prostate cancer.  In fact, he has never had a patient with a negative biopsy ever get prostate cancer.  This should be the end of a moderate to good story, but now I am considered uninsurable unless I’m included on a big companies heath plan.  Just because I had a moderately high PSA test!  I wouldn’t advise anyone to get a PSA test.  I’ve heard too many other horror stories.”

Thank you for sharing that, Dave, and I’m sorry it happened to you. I know several people who have been tormented for years by Dept. of Family Services for not administering the drugs that pediatricians demanded their child take. When you go in for an ear infection, that simply isn’t an outcome you expect! I worried about that, myself, since I had a child with chronic ear infections but never gave her an antibiotic (I did get tubes in her ears, however), and I needed the pediatrician to work with me, and know that AB’s were not my remedy of choice. To that end, I had to change pediatricians. (Locals, Melissa Kendall is our pediatrician, although I doubt she would know us since we never go there.)

I’m sure Dave never counted on getting a PSA resulting in his becoming “uninsurable” and being forced to work for only big companies.

Any time we take on a sacred cow—like testing PSA for prostate cancer—we hear about it. We are certainly getting emails and backlash now. I anticipated that. Thank you to everyone responding. Let me reiterate that I honor anyone’s right to decide about the PSA or mammogram issue for themselves. I feel strongly that we should be educated about risks and benefits before we undergo harmful treatment or diagnostic procedures. To that end, I call attention to not just one or two, but quite a few experts and groups evaluating data and calling for a change in the way we deal with prostate and breast cancer.

Of course some people feel that a PSA test detected advanced cancer and thus saved their life—including Rudy Giuliani. But the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force says men should not get the PSA test because of so many who are consequently maimed and radiated unnecessarily. Read about it in the New York Times HERE.

And read a great interview on NPR here challenging the sacred-cow idea that “early detection is better.”

My opinion is that we need a new cancer marker for the prostate. And if we continue to monitor PSA, we need doctors to stop nearly automatically subjecting men to biopsies, surgery, and radiation for elevated (but lower) PSA numbers. We need more docs willing to work with patients on highly effective lifestyle changes as alternatives or at least complements to the surgical and radiation protocols.

The same task force reviewed the literature and recommended AGAINST women in their 40′s receiving annual mammograms, for similar reasons, one being that mammography finds cancer tumors that would never grow and become a problem in the woman’s lifetime. (I have mentioned here that a tennis opponent of mine had a mastectomy this past summer and was still home-bound 2 months later, having detected a STAGE ZERO tumor in a routine mammogram.) We also must consider that the radiation exposure cumulatively (and ironically) increases their risk of breast cancer, more in younger women than older women. Those with genetic markers for breast cancer are excluded from this advice. Read about it HERE.

I have been asked what I do. I state that here not to influence anyone else, who must be responsible for their own choices, of course, but simply to answer the question. This is not intended as medical advice.

I confess I have never had a mammogram and do not plan to, in the future. (My mother has never had one.) I choose a present and future without radiation. I feel confident in this decision mostly because my lifestyle is very disease preventive. I did have a thermographic scan a few months ago and will do that periodically. I have always worn a bra 16-18 hours a day and am changing that to about 8-16 hours  now.

I recently mentioned, rather controversially, ways that the medical industry may actually be increasing our likelihood and rate of breast cancer, with mammography. I will document this more precisely, soon. I also wrote how the heavy metals in deodorant coupled with shaving, and also lymph restriction from wearing bras, increase our risk of breast cancer.

Let’s talk about prostate cancer. American men have a 16% chance of being diagnosed with it, though they have only a 3% chance of dying from it. Most prostate cancers grow very slowly, which means that you’re more likely to die WITH it than FROM it, according to Dr. David G. Williams.

The New York Times and the Washington Post have both reported that the PSA test is far from a definitive test for prostate cancer—in fact, it’s pretty useless. As I speak to prostate cancer patients, I am always struck by their fear of, and careful documentation of, widely swinging PSA numbers. And that’s how prostate cancer is diagnosed. We spend $3 billion annually testing PSA levels in men.

The PSA test measures how much prostate antigen a man has in his blood, which simply indicates inflammation level. However, any number of other causes, such as benign swelling (almost all men over 50 develop “benign prostatic hyperplasia”), Ibuprofen and other drugs, or infections, can elevate the PSA even though it is unrelated to cancer. But very few doctors point this out to patients, nor do most seem to be aware of the controversy.

Dr. Thomas Stamey of Stanford University is one of the original PSA promoters. In 2004 he stated, “PSA no longer has a relationship to prostate cancer. The PSA test is not relevant any more. You  might as well biopsy a man because he has blue eyes.” (Feel free to google Stamey and his comments and read many experts quoting him and discussing the PSA controversy.)

Stamey told Medscape Today’s Laurie Barclay, M.D.:  “About 20 years ago…we reported…there was a reasonable relationship between the blood PSA and the size of the…cancer. In fact, that relationship was approximately 50%, so it wasn’t even perfect 20 years ago when we first started using PSA to diagnose prostate cancer…in the last five years it’s now only 2%, so that’s negligible. That allows me to say that PSA today in the United States no longer has any relationship to the cancer except for 2% of men.” He states that a new cancer marker is needed.

The PSA test has been so ineffective in detecting prostate cancer, its inventor, Richard Ablin, has been speaking out against his own discovery for many years. Ablin is quoted in a March 2010 edition of The New York Times saying, “The [PSA] test is hardly more effective than a coin toss. As I’ve been trying to make clear for many years now, PSA testing can’t detect prostate cancer….The test’s popularity has led to a hugely expensive public health disaster.”

Biopsy or removal of the prostate not only causes incontinence and impotence, but also causes a dormant cancer to quickly spread.  I wonder how many men have undergone surgery and radiation for no better reason than a PSA score, even though IF they even had a cancer cluster in their prostate, they may have had no symptoms for decades.

Dr. David G. Williams, whose newsletter “Alternatives” I subscribed to for many years, feels that the PSA test is a travesty akin to mammograms for women, since it results in many “false positives” and may contribute to causing cancer rather than diagnosing it.

I have been meaning to write about this subject for quite some time. I do so now because I made a Canadian friend at Hippocrates, a 64-y.o. horse rancher named Craig, who was there to deal with his prostate cancer. The good news includes that there’s no chemotherapy prescribed for prostate cancer, so he wasn’t recovering from that nightmare as many are. Plus Craig has given up his beer and animal-flesh diet, in favor of green juices, sprouts, and plants. He has lost over 30 lbs. and feels great.

But I told Craig that there’s a lot of underreported controversy about the PSA that he puts so much stock in. He had no idea. This post is dedicated to him and I’ll send him the link.

Since these experts have stated in the New York Times and Washington Post that research shows little or no correlation between PSA and prostate cancer, just last month both papers also reported that new research shows PSA screening has not saved lives.

In 2009, The New England Journal of Medicine published findings from two studies that screening didn’t reduce the death rate in the U.S. In Europe, it was slightly reduced, but 48 men would need to be treated to save one life. That means 47 men become incontinent, impotent, or both, to save one.

Foods, herbs, and practices to decrease inflammation in the prostate and avoid cancer in that area include these ideas:

Saw palmetto, turmeric, lycopene-rich foods (watermelon, tomatoes, etc.), walnuts and pumpkin seeds, hot peppers, and lots of water. Be physically active, walk, rebound daily to move muscles and organs in the pelvic area and increase circulation. “Bicycle” in the air on your back.

And for the record, I do think a low PSA is a good thing. Inflammation is at the root of all disease. One possible corollary, however, should not be accepted: that a high PSA indicates cancer.

Thank you for all the birthday wishes on Facebook a week ago! I am officially 45 years old but I have never felt better. I have taken several days off blogging because we are in a migration of the site to SPEED IT UP. We are approaching 100,000 hits per month and the site has been bogged down lately. In the next few days, you should notice a much faster page-load speed!

On my birthday, I spent the whole day canceling credit cards and bank accounts and talking to police and arranging to have my car repaired when a thief broke my car window and stole my purse. My purse had my cancer books, all marked up. I guess now I get to buy them and read and mark them again!

I’m just back from two lectures in Florida with Dr. Brian Clement and a short stay at Hippocrates Institute in West Palm Beach.
Here’s a photo of me with Shelah, one of our volunteers, that she posted on FB. Kristin raved about how every one of our volunteers were just amazing. If you have ever helped at a GSG class, please know that WE LOVE YOU and we could not take our show on the road without GSG event planner Amanda, and our volunteers, who are goddesses.

Fun things:

1. A Utah State legislature rep just asked me to come teach a green smoothie demo class to the senate / house wives in two weeks.

2. An M.D. Anderson radiation oncologist wrote, asking me to help him get 10 BlendTecs to do a clinical trial to show if raw foods and green smoothies will help radiated head/throat/neck patients recover. He says they are so damaged by the treatment they often cannot swallow/eat. (As we say here in Utah, you bet I will!) It’s exciting and energizing to me whenever someone in the mainstream medical community wants to figure out how to change status quo. It’s frustrating to me that supposedly “integrative” practices like Cancer Treatment Centers of America won’t abandon the ineffective burning/poisoning approaches. They simply can’t, for financial reasons—but adding things to try to heal and rehab people of the trauma is better than nothing.

3. Dr. Greg Olson of the Nevada Clinic commented on this blog, agreeing with the breast cancer / bras blog. It’s funny, because my friend Ben, who got his ex-wife cured there, many years ago, of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, has been begging me lately to go study at the Nevada Clinic. They are two M.D.’s who practice holistically (and Dr. Greg has an M.D. and a PhD, very impressive).

I love my life. I get to learn from the masters. Next up, my class in Buena Park, CA in two weeks before Expo West, and after that Honolulu and Maui, sponsored by the Vegetarian Society there.

My daughter Emma, 16, and I had a convo the other day about how every vegetarian gets sick of the question, “How do you get your protein?” (I bet we hear from some of them here!)

I often point those asking that question to my report HERE called “Protein: Are We Deficient? Or Overdosing?”

A soccer teammate of Emma’s props up her diet with protein shakes. EVEN THE VEGANS BUY INTO THE PROTEIN MYTH! And she’s not healthy. This is the logical fallacy:

“I know a vegetarian, and she’s not healthy. Therefore we must need meat to be healthy.”

Nearly every logical fallacy applies here, and I love exposing logical fallacies, but don’t want to deliver a dissertation on all the ways that fails. My readers are smart and you can poke holes in that kind of thinking yourself.

Most if not all our degenerative diseases are related to undigested proteins floating in our bloodstream. That’s right, our EXCESSIVE PROTEIN consumption is killing us. We do NOT need 20% animal protein, thank you very much Dr. Robert Atkins. (It didn’t work very well for him, did it?)

Those of you eating a plant-based diet, what’s your favorite response to that question, “Where do you get your protein?”

I have been working for a long time on a way to get you quality kefir grains. It’s hard because they are live organisms, and so we cannot mass-produce them.

I’m happy to announce that Melinda (GSG staff) and I have been growing them, both WATER grains and MILK grains, and we have them up on the site HERE.

See the photos and instructions on that page, how to use your grains to make infinite batches of kefir, and what to do with your kefir.

Please note that we will likely sell out after I post this on the blog.

But if you try to get some grains and we’re sold out, just make a note of the page on the GreenSmoothieGirl.com site, and come back. We’ll have more later.

When people ask me what the two most important steps in 12 Steps to Whole Foods are, it’s kind of like asking who my favorite child is when I love them all. But with so many people with gut issues, I say Step 1 and 8.

Step 8 is all about making fermented foods to replace the probiotics missing in anyone’s diet who has EVER been on antibiotics, or who eats processed food, or who has ever eaten animal products from animals fed antibiotics.

When you start eating kefir every day, you may find you don’t get sick any more. It’s a critically important habit to keep your immune system strong. Most of your immune function is in your gut. Your helpful microorganisms in your body outnumber your body’s cells 9 times over.

Hello!  This is Kristin,  Robyn’s site director, blogging for Robyn while she is en route to Hippocrates Health Institute today!   I’m just sneaking in to remind you that if you missed the first sauna webinar broadcast last night, we will be hosting it again tonight and tomorrow at 7 PM MST.

Read Robyn’s extensive research on the health benefits of infrared sauna HERE.

Tune in tonight or tomorrow for the webinar and find out how you can get WHOLESALE pricing on a sauna and save yourself nearly $1,000.00, for the next two weeks only!  You will also get free shipping (continental U.S.),  healing L.E.D. lights, an aromatherapy cup, and a cedar towel rack.

You can hear a replay of last night’s webinar   HERE.

Or listen in tonight, Tuesday February 14, at 7 PM MST   HERE.

Or listen in tomorrow, Wednesday February 15 at 7 pm MST   HERE.

These links will be running replays for the next two weeks while we are running this amazing deal!  So if you can’t tune in LIVE, then listen any time it’s convenient for you!