Fluoride

Articles by Dr. Erdman are for informational purposes, and are not to be taken as specific medical advice.

Today we are going to look at a topic that we have been told by certain authorities is good for us and has positive health benefits.   The biggest benefit they give for fluoridating water supplies is for dental health.  Really?  Many of you believe it without ever asking about the safety or efficacy of its use. But, is fluoridation of drinking water really healthful and good for you? Does it have benefits that outweigh the risks to your health? Are there studies to guide us to a particular conclusion?  Luckily, living in the rural areas we do, this isn’t a problem for most of us.  I write this for those who have family and friends in urban areas who need this information, give it to them.

It is an established fact that fluoride has the ability to alter your endocrine function, yet this fact is basically ignored by the agencies and associations that continue to promote the practice of water fluoridation. This altered function involves the thyroid, parathyroid, pineal glands, adrenals, pancreas and pituitary. The thyroid and associated hormones are responsible for maintaining your bodies overall metabolic rate and for regulating normal growth and development.

Stand Up!

Articles by Dr. Erdman are for informational purposes, and are not to be taken as specific medical advice.

We all know that smoking, lack of exercise, excessive alcohol and a poor diet all have detrimental effects on our health. We now know that sitting needs to be part of that list.

Look around at those who have completely sedentary jobs. It becomes obvious pretty quickly what can become of you if sitting a lot is your current situation.

From a chiropractors perspective, sitting is one of the most destructive positions for the musculoskeletal system. Sitting reduces activation of the low back muscles and shuts off electrical activity to the legs. When muscle activity shuts off or slows to minimal, other structures of the spine must work overtime. When you sit in a chair with a slight forward slump, the pressure on the low back discs is greater than any other position, without additional load. The stabilizing core muscles become lazy and deconditioned, and the hip flexors become short and tight. These are some of the main causes of low back pain. The multifidi muscles of the lower back atrophy. These muscles are in direct segmental control of each and every motion a particular vertebra can perform.

Flu Vaccine - Shot or Not?

Articles by Dr. Erdman are for informational purposes, and are not to be taken as specific medical advice.

by Carissa Erdman

Every year at this time we are bombarded and badgered by mainstream medicine about flu shots.  I have written several articles on these topics, so I hesitate to bring you yet another series on the flu shot.  Since they don’t give up trying to shoot you up with this poison, I take it as my duty to continue to inform those who haven’t heard the alternatives available.  The next two articles were actually written by my oldest daughter as an English composition essay.  I couldn’t have written it any better, so I’m just going to present it in a two part series.  (Part 1 & 2 combined here)

A study of vaccinations in infants and of Infant Mortality Rates published in Human and Experimental Toxicology has shown that vaccines are linked to high infant mortality rates – the more vaccinations infants receive, the more infants will die (Miller). With this knowledge, what parents would willingly allow a child to receive unnecessary vaccinations that have the potential to harm the child? The answer, quite simply, is none. This is especially true if there is a natural preventative with nearly the same or a greater success rate as the artificially produced vaccine. Such is the case with the influenza vaccine. The influenza vaccine is unnecessary for people of any age because the industry falsely portrays information to the public about the vaccine’s creation, effectiveness, and necessity; the flu shot industry also attempts to conceal studies proving vitamin D a highly effective alternative to an influenza vaccine.

Neuroimmunology, Part 3

Articles by Dr. Erdman are for informational purposes, and are not to be taken as specific medical advice.

This week I’m going to go back to the immunology information I learned at the seminar a few months ago. We have gone into great detail on the subject of how your immune system responds to a natural exposure to a disease versus a vaccination.

Now, we’ll look at the starting point of your immune response. The care of the mother and the initial care of the infant play a huge role in the health of the baby. We all know that don’t we? Significant new research is showing that we haven’t known the half of it!

Would you believe the latest studies show that when a woman is pregnant, her diet, environment and care of herself affect not only her child, but her grandchildren and even her great-grandchildren? That is mind blowing! The way this is possible is through something called the epigenome. The epigenetic response is how you respond to everything that happens to you, including your environment, diet, child abuse, vaccinations, clean water or pesticide laced vegetables. Your genome doesn’t change as we age, but your epigenome changes drastically as we are influenced by our environment. That good news is that you can do something about your mother’s bad habits.

Whooping Cough Revisited

Articles by Dr. Erdman are for informational purposes, and are not to be taken as specific medical advice.

I had another article about mothers and babies’ immunology in line for this week, but I just can’t pass up the recent news on the ineffectiveness of the whooping cough vaccine.

Here is a quick refresher on medicine’s view of vaccines. They totally believe that receiving a vaccine for whooping cough is the same as actually getting it. We know this to be completely false in the world of real scientific evidence.  Their own evidence bears this out. They have real data showing real failure of the current vaccine. They show that after the last ‘booster’ at around six years of age, the ‘protection’ rate falls from 95% to 71% in five years. Now, do you think your natural immunity, from getting the disease itself, would forget how to fight this disease in five years? No, it’s impossible.

The information that the whooping cough vaccine ‘wanes’ in effectiveness has been known for years.  Its just that this year there is a major outbreak of it in vaccinated people all over the USA.  Back in 2010, there was a major outbreak in California. They had over 1500 cases of reported whooping cough, and 10 infants allegedly died.

Neuroimmunology, Part 2

Articles by Dr. Erdman are for informational purposes, and are not to be taken as specific medical advice.

Did you know that 80% of your immune system is in your gut? All of the bacteria in your body are called the Bionome. You can control the 80% in your gut; the other 20% is beyond your control, for good or bad. As science learns more about our defense mechanisms, they are realizing that antibodies to disease are but a small part of our lines of defense. Unfortunately, antibody titers are all that conventional medicines approach to disease control cares about. A TH1 response occurs in reaction to naturally obtained infectious diseases.   A TH2 occurs with vaccines and with a few other areas of body responses, like toxin and allergy mediation.

You want a TH1 response for most insults to your immune system. What is involved in a TH1 response? It includes the first, second and third lines of defense. The first line of your body’s defense of itself is actually any barrier that blocks invasion at a portal of entry (mouth, nose, ear, eye, etc.) This line of defense limits access to internal tissues. It is your skin, secretions of eyes, mouth and mucous membranes. It really isn’t a part of the immune system, per se, because it doesn’t involve recognition and response, just barriers to entry. This is where your bionome is important. It’s like a yellow alert to your system.

Neuroimmunology, Part 1

Articles by Dr. Erdman are for informational purposes, and are not to be taken as specific medical advice.

I recently attended a twelve hour continuing education seminar titled, “Neuroimmunology: Patterns of Influence,” by Dr. Stephen Marini, M.S., D.C., PhD. Today’s article comes from this seminar.  It is going to concentrate on some challenges to the medical paradigm that are held so dear by most physicians, yet makes so little sense when compared to verifiable, scientific truth. This is a very difficult subject to write about due to its complexity, but is vitally important to understand when learning about how to stay healthy naturally.

The conventional medical paradigm holds to some very wrong headed public health ideas, which completely drives their research agendas and public health policy. First off, medicine believes the immune system is independent and autonomous (works alone without help). Scientific research shows this to be completely false. Can thoughts of the mind affect your physical health? You bet.  Have you  ever heard of the placebo effect? Does physical trauma affect the psyche or nervous systems? Sure. No one system stands alone, yet this is how medicine treats the immune system when it tries to fake it out with immunizations for contagious disease.

They believe that natural immunity (actually getting a disease and recovering) is the same as artificial immunity (shots). It is not!  This subject will be another whole article.

Alternative Artificial Sweeteners

Articles by Dr. Erdman are for informational purposes, and are not to be taken as specific medical advice.

In this article on sweeteners, I will present a few acceptable alternatives to the chemical slurries commonly used. There are six sweeteners to consider: stevia, stevia based alternative, xylitol, dextrose or pure glucose, and lastly, sugar and honey in moderation.

We’ll start with my favorite of the bunch, stevia. Stevia belongs in the herb and shrub genus in the sunflower family. It comes from the Central and South Americas. It is 300 times sweeter than sugar, has no calories, no fat, carbs or sugars. It has a negligible effect on blood glucose, so diabetics and low carb dieters can use it without worry.

Artificial Sweeteners

Articles by Dr. Erdman are for informational purposes, and are not to be taken as specific medical advice.

How many of you think you are doing yourself a favor by reducing calorie intake with artificial, no calorie sweeteners? You know the pink, blue, yellow, and now green packets. Advertisers entice people to use artificial sweeteners as a means to lose weight. Did you know it doesn't really help at all? Would you believe it actually makes you fatter? Studies show that artificial sweeteners have adverse consequences, including tricking the body into desiring MORE calories. Plus, the long list of side effects connected to them just doesn't make sense for your health. This week, we’ll look at the ones you should avoid, and in the next article we will cover what you can safely use as alternate sweeteners.

First, to prove my point above, a study by the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, presented this report at an American Diabetes Association meeting. Diet sodas are not a “guilt free” treat at all. After following 474 diet soda drinkers for 10 years, they found that their waists grew 70% more than those who drank non-diet sodas. For those who drank 2 or more diet sodas a day, their waists increased, on average, over 500%. Waist size indicates the amount of fat at your organs, which is strongly linked to type II diabetes.

Soy

Articles by Dr. Erdman are for informational purposes, and are not to be taken as specific medical advice.

How many of you think that soy is a healthy protein source that can be substituted for some meats in your diet? We’ve been told that you need to reduce saturated meat fats and eat more ‘vegetarian.’ This is how most ‘health’ providers will council you when it comes to heart health, cancer prevention and good nutrition. What does good research say?

Research done by commercial soy producer’s claim that Asians have a diet high in soy and yet they have lower rates of breast, prostate and colon cancers.  Asians have been found to eat, on average about 10 grams, or fewer than 2 teaspoons, of soy per day. About 1.5% of their calories are from soy. Compare that to the 100 grams of soy protein recommended by Protein Technologies International to supposedly reduce cholesterol levels. That’s ten times what the Asians consume. In 1992, the Swiss Health Service estimated that 100 grams of soy protein provided estrogen equivalent to the pill.

Betaine Hydrochloride

Articles by Dr. Erdman are for informational purposes, and are not to be taken as specific medical advice.

In my initial consultation with prospective new patients, I try to cover any and all ill health symptoms each person reports. I do this to allow me to open the conversation about topics not usually associated with a chiropractor. One of the symptoms reported the most is acid reflux, heart burn, gas and bloating, or whatever you wish to call it. They are all linked by having a single cause, in many cases.

Many of you are already saying, “Well, that’s easy, it’s too much stomach acid.” WRONG! This is a common misconception propagated by the endless TV commercials for antacid drugs. Strangely enough, the symptoms of overproduction and underproduction of stomach acid are virtually identical. Therefore, it is unwise to jump to conclusions regarding what is occurring in the stomach without actually testing.

PSA Screening

Articles by Dr. Erdman are for informational purposes, and are not to be taken as specific medical advice.

I read a recent update on prostate cancer screening this week. Let’s look at PSA screening in light of recent research results. Then we can see how preventing prostate enlargement and cancer is your best plan of action.

The United States Preventive Services Task Force recently put out its latest recommendation on prostate screening. It essentially says that routine screening of men, at any age, is worthless. Why? They say the harms outweigh the benefits! While a few may benefit, many more are harmed.

A PSA (prostate specific antigen) that is elevated tells you only one thing, the general size of the prostate. A high PSA does indicate enlargement, but it gives you no clue as to why. There are no good tests to differentiate between those who need treatment for cancer, and those who don’t. Therein lays the conundrum.

Coconut Oil

Articles by Dr. Erdman are for informational purposes, and are not to be taken as specific medical advice.

To continue a theme from a few previous articles, regarding how a low fat diet really doesn’t work, we see that our bodies need certain fats. Depriving your body of essential fats increases cravings of other foods, such as refined carbohydrates, that lead to weight gain. One of those naturally occurring healthy fats that have been demonized by the medical establishment is coconut oil.

Now, all saturated fats are not the same. There is a big difference between naturally occurring saturated fats, like coconut oil, and artificially manipulated, man-made fats. These are called hydrogenated oils, and are terrible for you. These “trans fats”, as they are called, should be avoided for your good health.

Coconut oil is nature’s richest source of medium chain triglycerides (MCI’s), not counting breast milk. Virgin coconut oil is very stable, and does not oxidize or break down quickly. It has a shelf life of more than 2 years.

Coconut oil actually increases metabolic rates that lead to weight loss. MCI’s promotes thermogenesis, making heat or energy in your body, which burns calories.

Whooping Cough Vaccine

Articles by Dr. Erdman are for informational purposes, and are not to be taken as specific medical advice.

I’ve just finished reading an article published in Reuters Health Section. As you know from my previous writings, I am pretty much completely opposed to routine vaccination of children or adults. All the real science, not that which is done by the drug makers themselves, says it is a dangerous and worthless endeavor. The title of the article is “Whooping cough vaccine fades in pre-teens: study.” The pertussis vaccine is a part of the five shot series given to babies known as DTaP, or the old DTP term.

This retrospective review of a 2010 whooping cough outbreak in California admits that the majority of those cases were in kids who were immunized. This was a study done by Dr. David Witt, an infectious disease specialist at the “Keiser Permanente Medical Center” in San Rafael, California.

Sprint 8

Articles by Dr. Erdman are for informational purposes, and are not to be taken as specific medical advice.

Since summer is here and the swimming suits are coming out, only one question matters, does it still fit? For many of us, the answer is no, and now we scramble to find a way to get back to that size. I’m going to introduce a new way of looking at weight loss using exercise as the tool. Of course, you must cut some calories too, but this type of exercise is almost all you need to burn them off.

How many times have you heard that you should exercise by choosing a heart rate at some level less than maximum, and keep it there for 30-60 minutes, up to 5 times a week? This does your heart absolutely no good. It is so unhelpful that the American Heart Association took it out of their recommendations. It’s worthless for heart health, and it’s worthless for maintaining a healthy weight.

A type of exercise designed by Phil Campbell and promoted by Dr. Mercola is called, Sprint 8. The benefit of this type of exercise is that it causes your brain to produce more Human Growth Hormone, up to 77% more.  HGH increases cardiovascular fitness, increases fat burning and radically reduces exercise time, everything we are looking for!

Raw Milk

Articles by Dr. Erdman are for informational purposes, and are not to be taken as specific medical advice.

Let’s see if I can touch a raw nerve, for our area, without losing a bunch of patients. As I read the newspaper this week, there appeared an article on raw milk, written by someone in California. Right beside it was an article on the latest health scourge, pink slime.

Now, a common sense person, when thinking of these two subjects, would probably presuppose that the article on raw milk would be a positive article on its many benefits, and the one on ‘pink slime’ meat would tell you how to avoid this convoluted product. Not so.

Instead, we have an article saying raw milk can kill you, and that pasteurized milk is no different nutritionally, and that pink slime is just a much maligned, safe product. Isn’t this just typical government misinformation at its best? Does your government really have your best health interests in mind, or is it the biggest campaign donors’ best interests?

Type II Diabetes

Articles by Dr. Erdman are for informational purposes, and are not to be taken as specific medical advice.

Type II Diabetes is a serious disease, which, if not controlled can be life threatening. It is often associated with long term complications that can affect different body systems. It can contribute to eye disorders and blindness, heart disease, stroke, kidney failure, amputation and nerve damage. It makes pregnancy more difficult and can cause birth defects.

But, diabetes is not the hopeless disease most people think it is. It can be a long and losing battle if you blindly listen to your medical provider, and take no responsibility for your own health. The big drug companies do not really want you or your doctor to become aware of the real causes of diabetes. It certainly doesn’t want you to have information that can reverse or prevent diabetes.

Good Money After Bad?

Articles by Dr. Erdman are for informational purposes, and are not to be taken as specific medical advice.

How many times have you been asked to give your hard earned money to one of the hundreds of causes working towards a cure for a particular disease? It seems like we are bombarded daily with pleas for help. How many of us just blindly give to one of these organizations without even looking into how your money will be spent?

Personally, I do not agree with the medical model of research into many of the major diseases like cancer, ADD/ADHD, diabetes etc. They always place the emphasis on what drug or magic elixir can we give to people, rather than looking at how to prevent or cure diseases based on diet and naturally occurring means. That’s not to say drugs don’t have a place, but the future of health care is to not get the disease in the first place, instead of only trying to cure it once you’ve got it.

Aspirin

Articles by Dr. Erdman are for informational purposes, and are not to be taken as specific medical advice.

Before you jump on the bandwagon of taking aspirin daily for the reduction of heart attacks, stroke and cancer, you really need to educate yourself on the actual benefits and side effects.

Let’s start with the professed benefit of taking an aspirin a day. It is said to help prevent cardiovascular events, especially in a person who already has had a heart attack or stroke. A recent report came out saying aspirin prevents cancer when taken for at least 3 years. The process of thinning the blood so it can circulate more easily amongst clogged and narrowed arteries sure seems logical enough, if it only were true.

Cholesterol - the 3 part series

Articles by Dr. Erdman are for informational purposes, and are not to be taken as specific medical advice.

Part 1

This week I am going to embark on a series of articles about cholesterol.  We are so misinformed about this necessary molecule.  Conventional medicine, based on fabricated data, has brought us to this point. Everyone is scared of cholesterol.  We’re told to check it every year, your health and life insurance premiums are partly based on this number.  It’s reported as a killer of thousands of people.  We’re excoriated to get your number down, no matter what it is.  I’ve had patients with a cholesterol number of 190 told they need to watch it, and were even prescribed a statin drug!

In this article, let’s take a look back in time to where this nonsense started, how it has been propagated over the years, and then see how medical “studies” are abused and misreported to mean whatever the guy paying for the study wants it to.

Flu Season - Skip the Shot!

Articles by Dr. Erdman are for informational purposes, and are not to be taken as specific medical advice.

Here we are at that time of the year which those in the medical community call ‘Flu Season.’  Most people never question why it always occurs at this time of the year.  Most people never ask why they got the flu right after getting the shot.  If you ask your doctor, they will typically reply that you would have been worse had you gotten the flu without the shot.  I’d like them to show me a study that has ever come to that conclusion.  They can’t, because it’s impossible to do!  So why do you believe it?  I hear so many people tell me they got the flu soon after getting the flu shot.  Medicine says that’s not possible, it’s a killed virus.  Then why does it seem to happen so many times?

Do you know what’s in a flu shot?  It’s a slurry of many things, but the most toxic ingredient is Thimerosol.  It is 49% mercury by volume.  Mercury is a known and proven neurotoxin.  It is particularly damaging to young brain cells.  The EPA says mercury has a safe limit of 0.1 micrograms (mcgs) per kilo of body weight, per day.  Each shot contains about 12 mcgs of mercury, which, by EPA standards is unsafe for anyone weighing less than 265lbs.  If the EPA says it’s not safe to eat or breathe that much, why is it safe to inject directly into your blood stream, bypassing all the natural detoxification methods of the body?

Laser Therapy

Articles by Dr. Erdman are for informational purposes, and are not to be taken as specific medical advice.

Light Amplified by Stimulated Light Emission of Radiation

Have you heard about the latest advance in pain relief?  It is called Class IV high power cold laser therapy.  Let’s take a look at the history of light therapy, what laser therapy is, what physiologic changes occur, what conditions benefit from its use and its safety and effectiveness.

Laser is an acronym.  It stands for Light Amplified by Stimulated Light Emission of Radiation.  It was theorized by Albert Einstein in 1916, invented by Theodore Maiman in 1960.  In 1967 Endre Mester discovered the bio stimulatory properties of laser light.

Therapeutic lasers are used for the stimulation of cell function.  Their biological effect is photo chemical not thermal, as is the case with surgical lasers.  A class IV laser delivers therapeutic doses of light to large areas in a short period of time.  These wave lengths of light that are used are not new.  Initially, bulbs producing the therapeutic wave lengths were used, but they were of lower power, about 5 milliwatts, and treatment times were measured in hours.  High power lasers have up to 15 watts of power and treatment times are measured in minutes.