The 1-Minute Weight Loss Cheat Sheet – Quick Shortcuts & Tactics for Busy Women (12 page)

One thing I want you to begin being aware of is that we often do the opposite of what is best for us.

Let me give you an example. When you come down with a cold and begin dripping and running from your nose, your first instinct is to stop that runny nose. It’s gross, it’s a hassle, and it’s time-consuming to be blowing all the time. But step back a little and consider this: Why is your nose running?

Could it be that your body
needs to expel toxins?

I use the term
toxin
to cover a wide range of substances not healthful to our bodies but don’t let the term frighten you. It’s not that you were necessarily poisoned by something. It’s
infection
or
bacteria
that your body says, “I don’t like this and I want to eliminate it. The fastest way I can do that right now is through the nose and mouth.”

Hence the coughing and hacking when you get sick.

The next time this happens to you, instead of getting an OTC to dry yourself up such as a decongestant, you might instead try to follow your body’s lead! You might look for, instead, an
expectorant,
which is a capsule or liquid that encourages your mucus membranes to flow even more heavily.

Get the idea? You are now
helping
your body eliminate the problem faster than you do by suppressing the mucus.

Do you know why your body gets a fever when you get sick? Infections have a much harder time living in a feverish body. Your body is trying to kill the infection for you! So why would you eliminate the fever as soon as you can? Some of us... and this will sound crazy... actually go soak in a very warm tub when we first get a fever. I encourage my body to heat up when it gives me the signal through a thermometer than it needs to heat up. I’d never take an aspirin to reduce a fever when I first get a fever. I want to kill off whatever it is my body wants to kill off and I’ll gladly follow my body’s lead.

Yes, a fever that prolongs is a sign of a serious problem. It’s not always a serious problem, but a fever that lingers is not a great thing. You should get it checked. Fevers that get too high can begin to affect the brain, especially in children. But you know I’m not talking about extended illnesses that require the attention of a professional. I’m talking about the once-in-a-while kinds of sickness we all get from time to time. I’m asking you to look at how your body responds... and then consider
helping
your body, even if it means going against the traditional OTC medical attention you’ve given it in the past. In some cases, to the extent that you do that, you might just feel better and get well faster.

You need to become aware of some OTC issues you may not have known before. Whether or not this knowledge changes your use or approach to OTC medicines is up to you. But you owe it to yourself and your family to listen to some information.

Here are just a few of the issues related to OTC products that I’ll address shortly:


     
OTC drugs with full FDA approval and knowledge sometimes keep you sick


     
OTC cough therapies are often worthless


     
An OTC painkiller is linked to cancer

A couple of years ago the FDA approved new guidelines for the over-the-counter products it regulates. Knowing more about this particular set of rulings issue helps you understand the importance of diligence and research when something is done that affects any product you take. The product we’ll focus on is sunscreen. Yes, sunscreen is considered in the same category as other OTC products. The FDA finally got its OTC division involved to begin regulating the sunscreen you have available without a prescription.

Before getting to specifics, notice this chart that comes from the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development:

The sobering fact is that the United States outspends every other industrialized nation on its health care as you can see from this chart – and this was in 2004, long
before
Obamacare was even a possibility – but the fact we must come to accept is that the USA is dead
last in life expectancy
compared to its peers.

We are also the most vaccinated country in the world. Shouldn’t vaccinations prevent disease and extend life? Then why are we dead last in life expectancy among the developed nations?

Let’s consider the sunscreen fiasco. (
Fiasco
is my term.)

The FDA
has wanted to regulate sunscreen since 1978. They published draft rules in 1999, but delayed the final ones 2011. In the interim, you probably have slathered on sunscreens with ascending degrees of SPFs, thinking they're protecting you from cancer because – the FDA said they do.

Guess what? Instead of dropping,
rates for melanoma – the most serious type of skin cancer – have gone
up
by four percent
per year
since 1973.

True to form, the
CDC blames more exposure to the sun for this. Of course they do. It’s a lot like the dental industry saying that the mercury in amalgam fillings does you no harm. It is my view that to detour from their historical recommendations would be to admit to a massive liability problem.

I
t turns out that some, if not all sunscreens may be contributing to the
rise
in skin cancer! As revealed by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), the FDA was aware of this for ten years, but did nothing about it. They denied it, but 
documents show that 
the agency itself
 not only had done the research, but posted it on its website.

I
wonder how many people died from sunscreen-caused melanoma while the FDA failed to act on this.

Another thing that neither the FDA,
 nor the CDC, nor the Institute of Medicine's Food and Nutrition Board (FNB) are admitting is that their recommendations to stay out of the sun, or keep most of your body covered while you're in it, aren't in your best interest either. Australians found out the hard way that their aggressive anti-sun campaign ended up with 35 to 70 percent of the population being severely deficient in vitamin D. As a result they've seen a massive increase in osteoporosis-related broken bones, which costs their healthcare system $1.9 billion a year to treat!

M
ost Americans are deficient in vitamin D. There's ample evidence that vitamin D plays a part in cancer prevention, heart disease, and diabetes. Since even WebMD promotes safe sun exposure – without sunscreen – for maintaining healthy levels of vitamin D, the only question left to ask is: why is the FDA bombarding the media with warnings to stay out of the sun (a natural source of vitamin D) and why would the FNB recommend such low levels of it that it literally could keep you sick?

A possible answer could be that, as Daniel Haley,
 a former FDA official-turned-whistleblower said, the FDA considers the drug industry their client. That's right; they're not working for you, the consumer.

They work for the drug industry.

As Haley pointed out, the FDA has a history of making decisions that look out for their client.

So what does sunscreen have to do with OTC drugs? Everything.

Sunscreens have been turned into an FDA approval process with their guidelines that mimics that of every OTC drug.

A
placebo effect
occurs when a product is perceived as being a cure or a benefit but that product is, in reality, inert and neither helps nor hurts. The American College of Chest Physicians is now advising those who have colds that over-the-counter (OTC) cough syrups and drops are worthless for their intended purpose of stopping your cough.

Worthless.

Surprisingly, there is no scientific evidence that either suppressants like dextromethorphan or expectorants like guaifenesin relieve cold-related coughs. This was found back in 2004 by a different group, the non-profit Cochrane Collaboration, which discovered no good evidence either for or against the effectiveness of OTC cough medicines.

Keep in mind, every single OTC product that says it helps your cough was approved by the FDA. The drug company selling each and every one of them spent sometimes millions of dollars bringing that product to market. Yet it’s highly possible that
not one of them helps in any way
other than as a placebo effect. You think it helps your cough so it does. But they also may contain some form of drowsiness inducing drug that helps you sleep when you need it. That’s not always a bad thing, but perhaps it is only
that
which makes you feel better and nothing about your cough is touched by it.

Who knows?

A cynic might say the drug companies put out the OTC’s that do nothing so you buy them, often needing something stronger so you go to your doctor and then buy a more expensive prescription cough syrup that may work. A cynic might say either OTC or prescription drugs, the FDA gets its fees both times too. A reasonable person, and that is the category you should fall into since you’re reading this book and actively looking for health answers, just looks at the evidence and says OTC cough syrups don’t appear to help coughs, so perhaps that is one OTC product you may want to eliminate.

One thing to keep in mind though, cynic or not: A spokesperson for Wyeth – the maker of Robitussin – defended the value of such worthless OTC cough syrup products based on consumer demand and their safety. That same spokesperson also failed to mention the dangers of cough medications, including the fact that dextromethorphan can cause birth defects and has become one of the leading abused drugs among adolescents in recent years.

It pays to know more than most people do about the products we take.

Let me make it very clear that the research is still being tested on the following information. Sadly, the signs are there that the initial findings are true but more research is being done.

A painkiller for a headache you get every once in a while is one thing. You might, however, be one of the many who routinely take Tylenol or other OTC products that contain acetaminophen.
New research shows that long-time chronic users of acetaminophen, the active ingredient of Tylenol, produce an increased risk for blood cancers.

Reuters had this to say:

“The scientists followed nearly 65,000 older men and women in Washington State. At the outset, they asked the participants about their use of painkillers over the past ten years and made sure that no one had cancer... After accounting for things like age, arthritis, and a family history of certain blood cancers, chronic acetaminophen users had nearly twice the risk of developing the disease.”

How prevalent are the problems? After all, you don’t hear about Tylenol being all that harmful. Let me end this section with only one statement, given by the FDA of all groups, that helps confirm the reason that the Journal of American Medical Association stated that acetaminophen use is the
number one cause of acute liver failure in the United States:

“
… taking more than the recommended amount
[acetaminophen]
can cause liver damage, ranging from abnormalities in liver function blood tests, to acute liver failure, and even death.”

Do vaccines save lives?

Yes.

Do vaccines kill?

Yes.

As with it all, vaccinations are tools. When wrongly approved, when wrongly used, when overused, when underused, vaccinations can kill or keep a disease at bay.

After the previous chapters, it’s easier for me to relate to you the news about vaccinations. You know the big problem: full trust in the medical and pharmaceutical and government regulatory complexes is not a wise course of action. Understanding what you need to know to make better decisions is what counts. It is all on you.