My DrNatura Colonix Experience and Personal Review

Welcome to my website. I have designed this page to share how colon cleansing with the Colonix turned my life around. I truly feel that it is my life’s mission to share this information with as many people as possible. I know that so many of you may be suffering like I was for so many years.

I would like to say that discovering internal cleansing has had a tremendous impact on my life, not only physically and mentally but also, and most importantly, spiritually. Like so many people with a long-lasting illness, whether or not diagnosed, I had gradually become self-centered and self-absorbed. I focused almost exclusively on how poorly I felt day in and day out. In other words, I was selfish and only interested in myself. Reading all the testimonials on the DrNatura site was one of the wake-up calls I desperately needed: it allowed me to put into perspective my own, minor, ailments by realizing that, no matter how bad my lot in life, thousands of people go through much worse situations and that there is always a bright light at the end of the tunnel and every cloud has a silver lining. Trite and corny? Possibly for some of you.

After weeks of hesitation, I finally ordered two kits of the Colonix internal cleansing program. Why two and not three or just one, like many people? Beats me! I just did. I immediately started and, for the first time in my life, I actually followed all the directions to a T. Oh, I had the motivation. And the incentive! I wanted what all those people had found with Colonix. And I saw results within days.

As I said earlier, I never had any digestive problems except, maybe, an occasional heartburn after very specific foods but it came as a shock to see how large a menagerie such a flat abdomen could contain. It was mind boggling. As some Colonix users had before me, I started to poke (chopsticks do a really good job) and sure enough, I had a substantial quantity of bugs: long, thread-like creatures, white cotton balls with what appeared to be brown skinny legs or tentacles, small, red, pimento-like ½ inch long parasites, calamaries, shrimps, jelly fish, you name it.

Every time I found a new bug, I looked for information about it and I believe that the pimentos might have been blood flukes. One thing I didn’t seem to evacuate three weeks into the program was the rubber-like substance shown in DrNatura's picture gallery. That was odd. If I didn’t have the old impacted rubber-tire everyone else described and sent pictures of, how had those parasites been able to survive? And why wasn’t I profiting from all the vitamins in the juices? And by the way, why no sacs with eggs? How come my inhabitants hadn’t laid eggs? Were they all sterile? DrNatura speaks of a 97% success rate! Nooooooooo! I couldn’t be one of the 3% on whom Colonix didn’t work! Why Me? Was I too far gone? Was I in the no-return zone? Was there a class of people who had been so bad during their lifetime and had indulged in so many bad habits that they were condemned to the most pain-in-butt programs there is and was I one of them? I can laugh about it now but, back then, a year ago, I was genuinely concerned.

I called DrNatura and was asked one simple question. How was I heating the water for the tea? Well, Jeez, the microwave, where else? It was very kindly explained to me that microwaves change the composition of the water and that I should rather use the stove. Good, good, good! That same night, pot in hand and somewhat mortified I complied and the result was… unbelievable! Mind-boggling! Breathtaking and I mean it literally!

The following morning, I evacuated every single rubber tire of an eighteen-wheeler while holding one single breath. And I continued for many weeks. Many weeks. Judging by the daily quantity, every single tire of a whole fleet of eighteen-wheelers came out. That is as graphic as my sophistication allows me to be. I still wonder though where my organs had moved while all that was occupying every cubic inch of my abdomen… There simply is no physical way a 5’4” 115 lbs body could have housed full-sized well-functioning organs and whatever left me during those weeks, the whole menagerie included. I placed another order for Colonix, intent on following the program for the recommended three months. Since I was at it, I ordered some for a couple of friends. Didn’t know whom yet but somebody was going to get some Colonix!

During the cleansing, I felt some interesting sensations, which lead me to believe that I was infested with parasites from head to toe. A human Noah’s Ark. At times, I could feel something crawling (or creeping) up either the veins or the muscles of my legs. Sometimes, lying on the couch, I would actually see the muscle twitching. And I swear on my own life and to my grave that I am not making that up! I also felt muscles twitching in my buttocks (so much so that I could see it through my pants when I looked at my jumping behind in my full length mirror. And, again, I am not making that up!), my biceps, my neck and around my eyes. It was both annoying not to be able to control it and exciting to know that somebody had received an eviction notice: something was definitely happening. I kept on with the program and juicing and I started to feel much better over the course of three months. I actually started to look forward to being outdoors, doing yard work and walking my dog. Slowly, I found myself less irritable, frustrated and anxious. In fact, I felt at peace about pretty much anything that, several months earlier, would have thrown me into a hysterical frenzy. I was no longer depressed, the sclera of my eyes was becoming whiter and I had an incredible energy. Most of my pains were gone, except for intermittent sharp pain in my low back: I had hardly exercised for a couple of years for lack of desire and I resumed going on long walks. My low back pain disappeared.

I am now on a regular maintenance of Colonix and liver flush, which I do every four months. I must say that I am rediscovering feeling as good as I did when I was a child: care free, energetic, enthusiastic, confident, happy and, best of all, clear minded and completely fear free. My sense of smell is keener, my eyesight has improved, my taste buds tell me that I must stay away from certain foods and that, in fact, they never tasted all that great to start with. And my body protests when I don’t. It feels as though my body and I have become a team again! The amazing thing is that I had lost all those qualities over a forty-some year period, one day at a time, one breath at a time, one meal at a time, one sip of polluted water at a time, one behavior at a time, insidiously enough not to realize what was happening. I am now aware of it. I can feel it. Being aware, I am more sensitive to my body’s response to my behaviors and changing them no longer requires that I white-knuckle endlessly through life. Heck, I have such a taste of Paradise, I would be too scared of doing anything to jeopardize it!!! Giving away bad behavior is, actually, its own reward.

I have vouched not only to never lose myself again but also to help others regain themselves as well, by talking about Colonix every chance I have and in whatever language I know. For the first time in many years, I have a purpose: dispatch the information to as many people as I possibly can. All it takes is an open mind, the will to feel better and the right tool. Colonix is it! Don’t wait to be desperately in pain, depressed or fogged-up to act. There is a lot to be said for the proverbial ounce of prevention. The word about DrNatura is spreading like wildfire. Imagine! A world where everybody is healthy, no fear, no anger, no anxiety! It is coming!

To find out more about me and how my journey led me to find DrNatura, please see the About Me page.

Up until now, my site has been mostly about the radical positive changes I observed after going on a 90-day Colonix program. Keep in mind that I never dealt with digestive troubles of such a magnitude that medical intervention was required: my occasional heartburns or gas always resolved on their own and, in the big scheme of the slew of things affecting me, were rather inconsequential.

My main problems were depression, general weakness and permanent blues and blahs. I simply couldn’t enjoy my life. I was angry, fearful –hence distrustful- unfocused and overall dissatisfied with my lot. I had no desire to do anything, getting up in the morning was an overwhelming and aimless undertaking and I would drag myself to a job I dreaded, looking forward to returning home and… go to sleep after having numbed myself for a few hours with mindless TV shows or movies, cigarettes and wine. If that’s what life was about, I no longer wanted any part of it.

Because my body was in such a bad shape (although it wasn’t “sick” by medicine standards, as evidenced by my occasional check-ups), my mind was sick. I had done quite a few dumb things in my life –and was still doing them- which I knew were contributing to my condition, but I was at that place where I would passively endure without any clue about what to do and where to start, other than blame myself for my ongoing stupidity and lack of will power. To top it off, no one could help me: my well-meaning healthy-minded friends would tell me: “Don’t be depressed. It serves no purpose” or “Why don’t you join a gym?” Don’t be depressed? I’m all in favor of it. But how do you propose I do that, exactly? Join a gym? Well, I did. I went there a few times, I hurt myself, I felt worse afterwards and, exhausted, I had to crash for two hours to get over it. Tell me again: how it is helping me? Just in case I missed something…

Some not-so-well-meaning friends would go as far as say: “As you make your bed, you sleep in it. You brought it upon yourself”. A heck of a comfort to throw it right back to my face. That would irk me to no end and make me feel worse: not only was I feeling lousy all the time but it was by my own doing. Hearing what they had to say brought out anger instead of relief. I eventually did away with those friends.

In earnest, Colonixwas the first step toward my recovery. The wonderful thing about it is that it started me on a quest for sustained wellbeing and accomplished a miracle for me (and thousands of others who shared their testimonials). Since it delivered more than I expected and much faster than pills or psychotherapy, I decided to trust the company behind it and take the next step: Toxinout. And in fact, things really do happen for a reason: as far as I was concerned, the order and the timing in which I proceeded were perfect… for me. I would simply not have been able to foot the price of both programs at once, had I originally decided to go for “the works”.

A year after completing Colonix, I ordered Toxinout, not really expecting anything since I was already feeling great. And to be honest, but for a seemingly insignificant incident, I don’t think that I would have noticed any drastic difference.

I have a shirt that was given to me a long time ago and, quite frankly, I never wore it. It is a yellow and black plaid, with navy blue lining and buttons… which makes absolutely no sense! Who in his right mind would line a black shirt with navy blue? Since I could not make sense of that unheard-of fashion faux pas, I always somehow doubted the accuracy of my eyesight. On the other hand, I see everything else, although with glasses. Why would my eyes betray me that much for what a stupid shirt was concerned? I always liked that shirt but I simply couldn’t wear it as is. So, I didn’t. Actually, every time my eyes caught a glimpse of it, I would pull it out of the closet, bring it to the window, stare at it in the sun light (miracles have been known to happen and I am an incurable optimist) and, disappointed, ask my daughter, then in high school, what color it was. And every time, she would come to the window, roll her eyes and utter some variation of the following: “Mom, how many times will I have to tell you that it is black! For Pete’s sake, wear it or give it away but, please, get over it! And for the life of me, stop bugging me with it!” Actually, last time, she blew a fuse over my thickness, angry about my refusal to submit once and for all to what she perceived to be the law of evidence: if I saw it black and if she saw it black, then it was black. Period. End of discussion. Both of us ended up in an argument, a shouting match of sort, our feelings hurt over… a stupid shirt. Dumb and rather immature on my part.

Well, I am both very happy and extremely sad to report that the child was wrong, wrong, wrong! (I love the sound of that…) I realized it several weeks ago, when looking once again at that shirt (I like it too much. Never could get rid of it). In fact, all along, it was yellow and navy blue, hence the blue buttons, lining and sewing thread. Part of me felt vindicated (did I say immature?) for having doubted my eyesight and trusted my common sense. Part of me was thrilled about having recovered said eyesight. And part of me became very concerned about the implications of such a discovery…

Which brings me to some very important points: as we gradually become more and more toxic, we lose our senses (tools of perception) at an earlier age. Many people reach their 60s, unable to differentiate between dark brown, navy blue and black without ever being diagnosed with any vision trouble other than what is considered “normal age-related macular degeneration”. Many women stop knitting and sewing at that age because of it. Losing our perception of colors, smells, taste, etc. is considered a normal part of aging. It is expected and when it happens, our doctors tell us: “What do you expect? It’s called getting old” I know I never had any corneal or retinal disease but I could no longer, for quite some time, distinguish between certain colors. But for Toxinout, I would never have known about it. I was not “getting older”, I was getting more toxic! Age-related macular degeneration might simply be just that: another degenerative ailment resulting from a toxic body. Needless to say, Toxinout is now as much part of my life as clementines in the winter, eight glasses of water during the day, Christmas once a year and the Colonix program every four months or so.

The next point I want to make is quite sobering: if my daughter, who grew up on homemade soups and salads and a healthy diet primarily made of fruits and vegetables, could not, at the age of 16, differentiate between black and navy blue, does that mean that she was already suffering from macular or other type of ocular degeneration? If such is the case, the “age-related” part of it would be blown right out of the window. Yet, our ophthalmologist never saw anything suspicious when examining her eyes. She doesn’t even wear glasses.

It has commonly been assumed and said that children’s bodies do not start aging until they first reach adulthood: supposedly 18 for a girl and mid-20s for a boy. Is this no longer true? Are they actually starting to suffer from degenerative diseases before their bodies are fully grown and developed? Are those degenerative diseases in children the result of increased toxicity, at a greater scale and faster pace than before? Are our children growing old before they are done growing up? In that case, shouldn’t we start exploring all existing means of reversing the damage or, at the very least, make every effort to understand where it originates so as to prevent it in the first place? My kid never smoked or even drank alcohol (until college, that is), she was always enrolled in some physical activity (jazz, hip-hop, tumbling), she walked two miles every day to and from school, she ate relatively well, and, in her childhood, I don’t believe that she was prescribed antibiotics more than… three times, maybe? Yet, she displayed symptoms of a toxic body at the age of 16!

The last point I want to make is this: needless arguments can start out of skewed perceptions, as evidenced by the shirt incident. Perceptions depend greatly on our senses (sight, smell, touch) and senses depend on health. Healthy ears hear well. Healthy eyes see well. Sick sinuses interfere with both the sense of smell and the sense of taste. Are all arguments, then, triggered by misperceptions? I don’t know but one thing is certain: shows of explosive anger are becoming more frequent. Our society is becoming more violent: in fact, more violent, irrational crimes are being committed in the US than in any other part of the world and, sad to say, the US are the country where people have the poorest diet. If, as Drs. William James, Carl Lange and Jesse Prinz theorize, emotions originate in the body rather than the mind (anger is an emotion), and if our society is becoming angrier by the day, it would make sense to look into the condition of our bodies as the root cause for our negative emotions.

To me, this is a fantastic news: instead of being the passive victim of the environment or feeling overwhelmed and doomed by our impotence before it, it would mean that we can actually take action to overcome the negative impact on us of said environment.

So, what can we do? Where do we look for answers? How can we minimize the effects of environmental toxins on our bodies? And, most of all, where do we start?

Before taking action, we need first to remove any guilt from our mind. Yes, we may have partially caused our diseases by certain actions we took and habits we developed. We may even have knowingly done dumb things to ourselves and be reaping from them through aches, pain, illness and diseases. But was it really “knowingly”? Or were we simply unable to sort between beneficial and detrimental among the many sources we were receiving our information from?

Whether and to which extent we were responsible is relatively unimportant. What matters is to sit down and take the time to examine what decisions we took to get us where we are, figure out which ones are really under our control, discard the destructive ones and take on new ones. Simple. And let’s stop beating ourselves up: it is counter-productive, it takes all the energy we need to set on our new course of action and it is destructive.

I know some people who, through their trials, errors and successes, have a lot to teach us but don’t, for all kinds of reasons: fear of criticism, lack of time, indifference, God only knows... and, sometimes, He is not even sure Himself. What a waste of a good experience and a loss for the rest of us! I know other people who have nothing to say worth hearing but won’t shut up. Finally, the last category, by far the smallest one, is comprised of those who have something worthwhile to say, who take the trouble to say it and end up making a positive difference in someone else’s life. I blew all chances of ever belonging to the first category the day I took my first breath. Since we never know how well what we want to do will work until we try it and I am, by nature, a risk-taking optimist, I decided to do just that by sharing on this site the few tidbits of understanding I gleaned over the years and let the chips fall where they may: although I already have a slight idea, I will rely on the feedbacks I receive, if any, to tell me to which of the two groups I belong.

About 25 years ago, I decided on a whim to leave France , a crowded country with 55 million inhabitants roughly the size of California , and to move to the US . I was young, dumb, French to the core, arrogant (redundant, isn’t it) and invincible. I had no idea what I was going to find, whether I’d like it, how well I would adjust or anything else. I just knew that France had become too small for me to comfortably spread my wings. (I did burn a few bridges there during my first 25 years of life but, in retrospect, most of them would have led me nowhere anyway and quite a few among them have long been dead and buried. Forgive me Lord, for I knew not what I was doing). I arbitrarily set my mind on San Francisco , about which I knew absolutely nothing. I didn’t speak one word of English, which I had been forced to learn but hated with such a passion that I never bothered to study it.

In addition to being young and dumb, I was also a chronically malcontent dreamer, and an opportunist: if I wanted something badly enough, I knew how to steal, cheat and lie to get it. (Don’t look at me like that; you’re no Mother Teresa either and you know what you’ve done.) It took a while, quite a few slaps in the face and a radical shift in moral values but I’ve grown a lot since then: I’ve learned better and more honorable ways to obtain what I want and to simply forgo anything that would require me to willfully commit any hurtful or dishonest action.

To be able to come to this country legally, I needed a sponsor already living here. What better way to find one than by putting an ad in a paper I knew to be published in the US ? It just happens that the Herald Tribune had an office in Paris . So, completely oblivious to the risks I would be taking, I placed my ad, offering my services as an “au-pair”. Never mind that I didn’t like kids as a species and that I was completely unfit and unprepared for the job: expediency was the name of the game.

Providence (or God, if it is what you call it) decided to spare some poor, innocent kid and saw to it that the only ad my limited resources had allowed me to place should be read by Paul, an older, single, sweet and harmless man who owned a travel agency and a bar in the San Francisco area. Some time later, I received a letter from him in which he explained that he traveled frequently and needed a live-in housekeeper to take care of his cats and help with the businesses while he was away. Would I be interested and would I be available to talk to him on the phone? He would call me on such and such day, at such and such time. Interested? Me? You bet! My best friend at the time, who was fairly fluent in English, translated for me both his letter and my answer to him. On the appointed day, at the appointed time, Paul called my number (hers) and talked to me (her). By the time the conversation was over, he hung up satisfied that I spoke fluently English (I didn’t), I had a driver’s license (I didn’t) and I could handle the tasks he expected me to fulfill (we both found out that, indeed, I could. One truth out of three wasn’t so bad.)

Paul was a well-to-do gentleman: he sent me an airline ticket while I busied myself with obtaining a tourist visa. On August 8, 1982, with only a trunk full of clothes and a few nickels to rub together, my head full of dreams and without any worry about the future, I landed at San Francisco International Airport.

It soon became obvious to Paul that I was a fraud and that he had been conned. Being himself somewhat of a con artist, he respected my guts (there is a point to this story so hang on) and determination. I won’t lie and say, however, that he ever trusted me, which was largely reciprocal, but he needed me to speak English and to drive. He shelled out the amounts needed to make it happen fast and soon enrolled me in an English class at Foothill College and in a driving school. In no time, what had started out as flat-out lies became reality and I quickly was able to recklessly navigate and talk my way throughout the San Francisco area, at the wheel of a car I didn’t own and, therefore, wasn’t concerned about wrecking.

Give it enough time and recklessness will catch up with you. Within three months, on a January morning and in the midst of a heavy downpour, inexperienced, as I was speeding back from Scotts Valley on Highway 17 rendered oily and slippery by the adobe running from the shoulders, I suddenly applied the breaks (dumb) and lost control of the car as it immediately went into back-and-forth skids between the guardrails and across the two northbound lanes of travel and rolled over several times, before landing upside down against a redwood on the other side of the rail, half-way hanging in the air, some four hundred feet above the valley. In the few excruciatingly long seconds it took for the car to stop to a halt, I distinctly remember the feeling of sheer terror in the pit of my guts. My brain was registering images in a slow motion. I thought about nothing, I felt absolutely nothing except a huge knot in my guts. My entire being was engulfed into my guts. I don’t even think that I took one single breath.

I didn’t die (obviously), and managed to crawl out of the car and pull myself to safety. Only then did I go through every symptom and emotion anyone confronted with terror has ever experienced: the breathlessness, the heart pounding so hard that it feels like exploding, the cotton legs, the hysteria and, gradually, the focused fears and the bursting into tears. Oh my God! I almost died! The car! What about the car! And Paul! What is Paul going to say? And cramps in my belly. Horrible cramps the likes of which I had never felt. Eventually, a trooper stopped by, asked me a couple of questions and radioed for help. The EMTs came and checked me out. No broken bone, no blood anywhere, no evidence of internal injury. Before declaring me good to go, they asked me a weird question: did I want to go to the bathroom? Nope, I didn’t. Good. Well, I was going to be pretty sore for several days. If I felt or saw anything strange happening, I should go to the ER. And by the way, it is not unusual to come down with diarrhea after a major trauma. So, don’t worry if that happens.

Sure enough, for several days afterwards, I was sore. I also experienced the worst diarrhea of my entire life. Over time, given my reckless lifestyle in those “good old days”, I had a few other close calls and opportunities to experience again sheer terror with resulting diarrhea. Every time, I distinctly felt it in the pit of my guts. As I was getting well acquainted with fear, something started to recur frequently: suddenly and out of nowhere, I would feel surges of fear accompanied with knots in the guts. And I started worrying. My mind would think about scary eventualities such as being assaulted while out in the middle of the night and, immediately, I would feel the knots. Sometimes, I felt the knots firsts and scary thoughts would then enter my mind. Both were completely intertwined and one never happened without the other. The point of this lengthy story is that, in my experience, fear and guts are intimately connected.

I learned to live with those sinister and paralyzing “What ifs…” that linger and poison the mind and with the knots. I have the feeling that, even though I never had digestive problems, the constant stress in my abdomen wrecked havoc in my body. The numerous parasites I harbored probably finished the job. None of it though was enough of a deterrent for me to reconsider the value (or lack thereof) of my reckless ways until they finally got the best of me and progressively reduced me to the shadow of a human being I had become until I discovered DrNatura.

Since I had never had any problem with the functioning of my guts, I never really gave them much thought either until then. And to be frank, I had almost forgotten the car accident, the memory of it tucked away in the very back of my mind. I started the Colonix program for reasons completely unrelated to the colon. (I wrote about the experience in My story and About me). Again, I didn’t make any connection between the guts and fear until several months after I finished the program, when I realized that I was no longer afraid of certain situations previously frightening and paralyzing for me. In fact, I also realized that I felt no fear in situations where one is expected to feel some, like being over $250,000 in debt with no regular income and only a few bucks ahead of me, for example… or breaking a fight between large dogs (mine can be aggressive at times and he and I are still figuring out the Alpha thing). Colonix and Toxinout helped me recover my fearlessness!

I love doing research. One of these days, sooner than later, Providence will have to send me a paying job that allows me to do a lot of research. I won’t worry about it, though: I no longer know how. Anyway, inquisitive mind went to work to find whether some correlation existed between fear and the guts.

Here is what I discovered: many cultures much more ancient than ours, like the Orientals or the Greeks, placed the center of the emotions in the gut rather than in the heart, as we, Occidentals, do. The heart pounds hard as a result but the emotion itself originates in the belly. In turn, the mind tries to make sense of the emotions by superimposing specific thoughts to the sensation. Pleasant thoughts when we are in love. Scary thoughts when we are fearful. Thoughts of revenge when we are angry, etc.

In fact, even among scientists, there seem to be two schools of thoughts about the origin of our emotions. And in our language, we talk about “gut feelings” and “gut reaction”. Someone courageous is said to be “gutsy” or to have “guts” and, when we are absolutely convinced of the validity of our beliefs, we commonly declare to know them to be true “in the pit of our guts”.

I found several honorable sites mentioning the guts at the center of the emotions or, at the very least, playing an intrinsic part in their manifestation. I also read several articles on the research done by Drs. William James and Carl Lange, PhD., who theorized that [the conscious experience emotion was dependent on the perception of body reactions and that sensory feedback from the viscera (organs) –that is, feedback regarding the visceral changes themselves- accounts for the quality of emotional experiences… our feeling of fear owes much to our pounding heart and the “butterflies” in our stomach and we grieve because we cry and not the other way around.]

In other words, our body governs our mind and emotions. This theory is echoed by Dr. Jesse Prinz, PhD in his book: Gut Reactions

It is unclear to me to which extent emotions govern the body reaction and vice versa and I don’t purport to clarify it, which would be preposterous on my part. The mere fact that scientists are recognizing the existence of a correlation, however, should be enough for anyone emotionally wounded to want to pursue the idea of a cleanse as the starting point of his/her quest toward wellness. It probably doesn’t really matter if the chicken or the egg came first, i.e., mind over body or body over mind. What matters is that they are intertwined and interdependent.

So, the way I look at it is, if our emotional health can be greatly improved by a $325.00, 90-day risk-free body cleanse and detoxification instead of a $10,000.00, five-year, drawn out psychotherapy, that should be a no-brainer…

By the way, I have a theory to explain why westerners have decided to make the heart the center of the emotions. Can you, for one second, imagine the Valentines?

“I give you bitter pills in sugar coating. The pills are harmless.
The poison is in the sugar”.
Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

For several years when I was a little girl, I would experience episodes of dehydration for no apparent reason: I would fall asleep and would simply not wake up. Not being prone to hysteria and dotted of a solid common sense, my mother, in the absence of any fever, would automatically diagnose dehydration and immediately replenish the lost water by “pushing fluid” in every orifice of my body requiring it. Afterwards, and for several days, she would give me unrefined sea salt to suck on. Eventually, I outgrew it and kept an intense liking for its taste. However, because salt made me thirsty, I never became addicted to it: a little salt forced me to drink enough water not to dehydrate but did not cause me to drink so much that I would have been bloated and uncomfortable.

In my adolescence, I developed a different metabolic imbalance, which was discovered by accident: while practicing any kind of sport, it was not uncommon for gym teachers to carry sugar cubes, which they would generously dispense to students before any competition. Sugar was said to “boost the energy”. They simply doped us to obtain a better performance from the team. Interestingly, the few times when I ate the sugar cubes, I would feel immediately drained physically: instead of boosting my energy, the sugar appeared to sap it. I got into the habit of refusing it and ran my races without much difficulty. Although considered an oddity, no one thought much of it or even looked into it. As time went by, I experienced increasing dizziness and would even fall when getting up from a chair too quickly. Alarmed, my mother took me to the doctor’s and, after several tests, I was diagnosed with being hypoglycemic, hence hypotensive. His advice? Suck on hard candy. Not a bad medicine for a 14-year old to swallow… except that, over time, I realized that I was becoming increasingly tired.

Even though I am not a scientist, I found it rather strange that I would be especially exhausted shortly after eating candy. Being always tired wasn’t pleasant and I decided to make my own experiment: what would happen if I completely stop eating sugar for a while? I had recently learned in biology class that, as soon as one ingested sugar, the pancreas released insulin to process it digestion. What if my pancreas was so much out of whack that it released a quantity of insulin disproportionate with the quantity of sugar absorbed, which depleted my body of all my sugar reserves? Would it, in fact, reestablish its own balance if suddenly deprived of it? Was my pancreas simply in need of a rest? At the age of 14, I quit putting sugar in anything overnight: cereals, yoghourts, coffee. I wasn’t in charge of cooking, so I still ate my mother’s dishes but, in fairness to her, she was parsimonious with starchy foods known to transform into sugar once eaten. In a very short time, all episodes of dizziness and faintness stopped. Interestingly, following through with my decision had not required any insurmountable effort: I felt bad, I didn’t like it and no longer wanted to, and feeling good again was its own reward. Eventually and after several months, I was able to resume eating sweets but, by then, I had lost most of my taste for them. By the time my daughter was born, sugar was the farthest thing from my mind and the kid grew up deprived of sodas, ice cream and the likes. I would venture to guess that it played a part, however small, in her becoming such a social and prized human being: she liked her friends’ fridge much better than mine…

Anyone who ever ate a meal too salty knows that it does cause thirst (which is exactly why bars offer free salty snacks and peanuts during happy hours: it guarantees that parched patrons will consume enough liquor to make up for that minute investment…) Although salt exists in industrial food in greater quantity than ever before, most people instinctively curtail their intake after a certain point.

Sugar does not provoke the same kind of immediate effect: people can easily munch on sweets for hours without feeling overly thirsty. And in fact, it is a snack of choice because of its ability to relieve quickly any pang of hunger. Just because there is no immediate effect does not mean however, that sugar is harmless, far from it.

There is an increasing body of scientific evidence concerning the long-term dangers of excessive sugar. One of them is the chronic candida albicans infection most people suffer from nowadays. Turn on the TV any day and you’ll see countless advertising for prescriptions and products for yeast infections, in every possible form or shape: pills, gelcaps, liquids, powders, you name it.

With my research cap on, I looked extensively into information currently available about candida albicans. In one of the most interesting articles by Dr. Lawrence Wilson, M.D., which can be found on http://www.drlwilson.com/Articles/candida.htm, I learned, among other things, that :”Yeasts, molds and funguses are one-celled organisms. Beneficial ones include brewers and nutritional yeast, and lactobacillus acidophilus. Candida albicans is not among them. It produces poisons including alcohol. Candida is found in the air, water and food but not normally in our bodies. Slow metabolism, deficient acid in the stomach, an over-alkaline intestinal tract and copper imbalance allow candida to flourish in the body. Weak adrenals, improper bowel flora, diets high in sugar and taking antibiotics, antacids, birth control pills and steroid hormones contribute to candida infection.

Symptoms range from chronic fatigue and depression to headaches, bloating, gas and tightness in the shoulders. Candida can also contribute to brain fog, mood swings, memory loss, itching, joint pain, indigestion, ulcers, cancer and many sinus infections. Learning and behavior disorders are often due in part to candida infection, especially in children who eat a lot of sugar. Chronic candida can also contribute to irritable bowel syndrome, colitis, heartburn and gastric acid reflux disease or GERD…

Symptoms are often excellent for detection. If one is tired or spacy after eating sweets or a high-carbohydrate meal, candida is likely. If one gets yeast infections, candida is present in the intestines as well. Gas or bloating that improves when one stops eating sugars and carbohydrates is another simple indicator of possible candida infection.

Alcohol produced by candida can contribute to fatigue, spaciness, impaired judgment, emotional problems (AHA! Body over mind!) and learning and behavior disorders in children. Some people notice they feel tired after eating sugar. Sugar feeds their candida which increases production of alcohol. Alcoholics are often addicted to sugar without understanding the connection. Sugar addiction may occur because depriving candida of their sugar reduces alcohol production. This causes withdrawal symptoms including negative thoughts, anxiety, shakiness and fatigue. This drives many people back to sugar to enhance alcohol output. Hypoglycemia due to weak adrenals is another factor in sugar addiction.” .

If any of the symptoms listed above applies to you, you may wish to look at your diet: how much fiber do you consume daily? How much sugar (or do you know?) Are you on any prescriptions medication?

Although I did not consume an inordinate amount of sugar and was not taking antibiotics, I was experiencing many of the symptoms: depression, tightness in the shoulders, brain fog, mood swings, itching, joint pain and sinus infections. I mentioned previously that I also was drinking more wine than reasonable and, since I had quit cooking and was relying on frozen food, my fiber intake was lacking.

Candida is a living organism: it eats, it creates by-products (alcohol) and it reproduces (although I don’t exactly know how and don’t care to find out.) According to the many articles I read, it feeds exclusively on sugar, which it needs to reproduce. Here is how the cycle begins: we feed our children refined sugar in large amount right from infancy. Candida feeds on it and, rendered strong and healthy, it reproduces at a fast pace in a body already weakened and, therefore, incapable to keep it under control. As it eats, it depletes the reserves of sugar our body needs to produce sustained energy. In turn, our body transmits to our brain a craving for sugar (withdrawal), which requires immediate intake of it. Alcoholism may, in fact, be triggered by an overgrowth of candida. Our overloaded pancreas attempts to process it by producing more insulin. Overtime, the pancreas weakens and fails in its processing role. Overgrown candida then invades our organs, including and not limited to our brain. As we become colonized, illness develops. Some articles make a correlation with our increase sugar intake and the drastic increase in Alzheimer’s cases in the US in an increasingly younger population: 5 to 10% of the 4 million “Old timers’ disease” diagnosed patients are said to be 60 years old and younger (between 200.000 and 400.000!)

To me, learning about candida was an eye-opener. First of all, by explaining the correlation between sugar, candida and alcohol, it allowed me to understand why I took certain actions at certain times in my life: I was colonized by an enemy within and ignorant about it. Bad combination! I did what most of us do: my body was signaling certain cravings and I mindlessly acted upon them, while blaming myself for my lack of willpower. Since my candida did not receive the sugar it needed, it incited me to consume what, inevitably, would transform into sugar: wine. That cured my guilt right there en then! Furthermore, I now know that, were I to go back to drinking too much wine, there would be a reason independent from my willpower. It would no longer mean that I am morally corrupt but that I am rebecoming colonized by candida.

Secondly, it taught me why Colonix had been so effective at restoring my health, both physical and mental: by providing me with needed fiber, it restored an adequate bowel function which, in turn, decreased intestinal transit time and stimulated a better elimination and increased blood circulation, thereby “flushing” the enemy within.

Lastly, it confirmed what I have always known, deep inside: so long as we have one breath left in us, we can improve and even reverse our condition and it doesn’t have to be painful, difficult, time consuming and expensive. And not only that but, if one enemy within is responsible for a bad dietary habit, I can’t wait to arm myself and meet face-to-face the rest of my enemies within, responsible for my other bad habits! Think about the ramifications of such a discovery: which enemy within makes you choose bread, with no particular nutritional value, over bell pepper or garlic, loaded with vitamins et minerals? Which enemy within causes you to smoke?

A couple of weeks ago, I touched upon two schools of thoughts concerning medicine and I admitted to belonging to the category of people who do not, as a matter of principle, reject medicine but would rather go the natural route before subjecting themselves to the surgeon’s knife or starting to pop pills, both of which come with undeniable adverse side effects.

I want to reiterate that I do believe that Western medicine has a place in our society. I simply don’t want it to take control over my wellbeing, only because, as far as I am concerned, my body was given to me and to no one else and it is, therefore, my responsibility and no one else’s to take care of it. Unless, of course, I am no longer capable of doing so, in which case I will have to hand it over to someone who is. The idea, though, is to not allow that to happen since, as soon as I hand it over, I expose myself to the reality of adverse side effects. Which means that, as soon as I hand over my body, there is a good chance I will become worse over time, even if it doesn’t happen overnight. Remember that I started with the premise that misery ain’t what it’s cracked up to be and that illness and pain weigh us down and prevent us from enjoying life.

For many years, I handled medical malpractice matters on behalf of hospitals, physicians and caregivers in general. Those cases concerned many different situations, from the serious allergic reaction to some prescription to poor outcomes of surgeries and births of horribly deformed babies. As a result, I had a lot of opportunities to meet physicians of every specialty, so I did get a fairly good understanding of where most of them came from.

I will say that, in my experience and the majority of the cases, with extremely few exceptions, doctors want to help people. That’s the reason why they chose the field in the first place. It literally breaks their heart to see patients incapacitated by illness and pain and they try their utmost best to relieve them with the knowledge and experience they have accumulated. People do not choose to practice medicine for the money, contrary to what many of their adversaries proclaim: they really care. Louis-Ferdinant Celine, a French practicing doctor and acclaimed writer who spent a few years in the States between the two wars and eventually set up his practice in Paris , wrote in one of his many books: “I treat people because they are even nastier when they are sick”. Whatever their reasons, caregivers want to make a positive difference.

I cannot, however, count the number of times when a physician declared on cross-examination on the stand: “Medicine is not an exact science”, to explain and sometimes justify the poor outcome of his judgment call, whether it was right or wrong at the time.

So, here we have it: medicine is, indeed, not an exact science. So, why are we, patients, looking at it as though it were? What is science, anyway? “Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge” Dr. Carl Sagan, Ph.D. If science is a way of thinking, then, by changing the way we think, we can all become scientists. It really is as simple as that.

Knowledge would still be the first thing we need to tackle, elementary knowledge, that is. Knowledge of who you are and what your priorities are. You and I have a body with millions of parts, each of them completely interdependent and interrelated and yet with a definite individual role to play. Many of the physicians I’ve met made the same observation: people don’t know what their body is made ofand what it is supposed to do. They have a vague memory of what wellbeing felt like long ago but, most of the time, that’s all it is: a vague recollection. They used to be able to do certain things they no longer can do, they used to wake up energetic and vibrant, ready for a new day, and they no longer can, they used to expect good things from life and they no longer do. They don’t live anymore, they simply survive. Sad state of affairs. And I will let you in on a secret: when we feel lousy, we start avoiding whatever gives us pain or makes us feel worse. It’s called self-preservation and it’s built in everyone. So, as a result, we become “lazy”. We may start procrastinating on doing certain things for fear of triggering certain pains or bad sensations, we lose any desire to make any effort, we let things go and we quickly become overwhelmed by the amount of effort (or money) it would take to change the quality of our life. We no longer control our life: life controls us. We become depressed, sad, angry… In short, we no longer own our body: our body owns us. We are completely at its mercy.

Think about it: you feel pain, let’s say… in your belly. Where is it located? And what triggers it? You don’t really know, especially since you’ve already long stopped taking any action that would cause it to flare up. As time goes, that pain, far from subsiding, flares up more often and, as a result, you do less and less, until it becomes constant, you can’t take it anymore and you finally decide to pay your doctor a visit.

The man wants to help, so he asks you questions that you can’t really answer. You have a general idea of the different regions of your body: you have a head going from your hair to your throat, a chest, going from the throat down to your last rib, and a belly, from the ribs to the pelvis, followed by legs and, finally, feet. You know left from right and up from down. So, you tell your doctor: “It’s up, in my left side”, pointing to an area the size of your hand. What you don’t know is that where you point, you have, among many things, a pancreas, part of the colon and part of the small intestine. You also have an intricate nervous system, which role is to transmit the pain to your brain and millions of blood vessels. So, you’ve sent your physician on an exploratory expedition. Like you, the man has exactly twenty-four hours per day and, like you, he has a family and other interests to pursue, in addition to being a doctor. In order for him to help as many people as he can and to comply with the many time constraints imposed on him by many different sources (HMO’s, packed waiting room, little Suzy’s dance recital tonight…) he can only allocate a certain number of minutes to his investigation. He shoots questions at you like a machine gun: where does it hurt exactly, how often, when did it start, what triggers the pain, what kind of diet do you follow, do you drink alcohol etc. You try to answer as best you can but since you’ve avoided the pain for quite some time, you can’t remember accurately what triggers it and you give imprecise answers. In addition, you eat a lot of junk food and are not adverse to gulping a six-pack on occasions but since you know that it is not the best thing you could be doing and he is likely to comment on it, you don’t mention it (no one is going to dictate how I live my life!) remaining vague instead. The doctor becomes frustrated and a tad snappy, you become defensive, he is “on the clock” and so are you, you want to feel better… yesterday, you demand some magic pill. The doctor is conscientious: he won’t give you a prescription, knowing that the wrong one may kill you. Instead, he sends you away with a list of tests to undergo.

So, you’ve spent half-an-hour in the waiting room, fifteen minutes in his office and a $20.00 co-pay (if you have insurance, of course), you still don’t know what’s wrong with you and don’t feel any better and you now need to spend additional time running all over creation to get the tests performed, which means footing another $200.00. Back in your car, you decide that the doctor is a jerk and a quack, he knows nothing and “they are all the same anyway”: greedy incompetent, out to get your money. Besides, you have better things to do than waste your time in waiting rooms and your money on expensive tests you wouldn’t need if doctors knew what they were doing. You will bite the bullet and do nothing a little longer, in the hope that, if things don’t get better, at least they won’t deteriorate too fast. And because you are ticked off and still in pain, you take it on the dog (your spouse, your kids or your employees), thereby proving how accurate Louis-Ferdinant Celine’s statement is…

In fact, what you were looking for is not a doctor but a mechanics. Sadly and regardless of how well educated people might otherwise be, the majority of them do not take the time or the effort to understand their body, their “vehicle”, the only tool they have that can take them anywhere (your car will only take you as far and as long as your body can drive it). Of note, if you repeat the above scenario enough times, you will still not get better, you will become angrier at the medical professions and your spouse, kids or employees will start avoiding you like the plague. What a way to live!

On a Friday morning, you suddenly wake up with an excruciating pain in your left side. As you bend down, you realize that it radiates to your right side. You use your mind as a scientist would. You lie down on your back and, with your fingers, start poking to figure out exactly where it hurts. As you poke, you realize that the acute pain is, in fact, very localized, right below your rib cage. You’ve done your homework and you know exactly what you are pressing on: your colon. In fact, as you keep pressing and exploring, you also feel that it is harder on the left than in your right side. It also feels round, like a little golf ball, and it is deep inside your colon. You take your temperature and have no fever so you are fairly satisfied that it is not a raging inflammation or an infection. Because you know exactly what is inside your body, you are pretty confident that no major organ is involved. Also, you’ve had that body for quite a long time; in fact, you’ve been together ever since you were born. You know how it feels, you are completely intimate with it. As you keep pressing and massaging, you hear loud gargling sounds. You keep on and notice that, as the sound becomes louder, the pain appears to dissipate. That’s good news. As you continue on, you run in your mind the list of what you ate the previous day. Hmm… chili. You love chili but you’ve noticed that the last few times you ate some, you seemed to end up with gas. Well, chili doesn’t agree with you anymore. So you then decide to stop eating chili until you’ve found out why it triggers pain, why it only started a few months ago and what the underlying cause for it might be. Your goal is to ultimately resume eating chili (you love it so much!) and you are determined to reach it. You’ll look into it tonight instead of watching TV.

In the meantime, your pain is gone. You get up from the bed and tests how completely it has subsided. You bend over and backwards, move you waist, stretch sideways. Yup, all gone. In less than a half-an hour, you’ve taken care of a situation which might otherwise have made your day miserable. You feel good, happy not to be in pain anymore and ready to go to work. You might get there later than usual and might even be admonished for it but you feel good and strong and that’s what matters.

As you arrive at the office, you are immediately summoned into your supervisor’s office. As expected, you get chewed out for being late but, because you feel so good, it does not perturb you: you listen politely and, full of confidence, explain that, yes, indeed, you are late and you apologize for it. When you woke up, you felt so terrible and were in so much pain that you considered calling in sick. Fortunately, you know how to handle those situations and you took care of it. The pain is gone, you now feel very well and you are grateful that you were only an hour late instead of absent for the day. In fact, you are amazed that, since starting working there, you have never once called in sick. What you said is so undeniable and reasonable that your supervisor cannot and will not add anything except grumbling noises and you can walk back to your desk, in a good mood, confident, strong and healthy. Come to think of it, the last time you saw a doctor was several years ago, when you needed a physical for your job.

I don’t know about you but, to me, the second situation is very empowering. And it really didn’t take much: a little knowledge, the use of your critical mind, the will to get better and the confidence to know what to do. It sure as heck didn’t cost a penny and endless hours in waiting rooms. And now, you have an opportunity to learn something new: why does chili trigger gas in your body and not in others, how to stop it from happening, how to go back to enjoying it without taking pills and how to keep on feeling good.

“The doctor has been taught to be interested not in health but in disease. What the public is taught is that health is the cure for disease.” Dr.Ashley Montagu, Ph.D.

What are you interested in? Your diseases or your health? How about a short lesson in anatomy? http://www.innerbody.com/htm/body.html And while you are at it, do you want to learn why you may no longer tolerate certain foods? www.drnatura.com Read on and have fun. Who knows, that site might very well be talking about you!

“ I teach you to preserve your health,
so that you will succeed better in proportion as you avoid doctors.”
Leonardo da Vinci. (Seems like our distrust of them was not born yesterday…)

Years ago, out of fear, ignorance, vanity and intimidation (lethal combination), I subjected myself to a disastrous ear surgery: bad genes inherited from my father as well as several extended sojourns in humid West Africa, coupled with a childhood in the wet Parisian region, rendered me prone to severe and painful ear infections despite our vegan and homeopathic lifestyle

In those days, the common assumption was that children’s nervous system wasn’t fully developed and that, therefore, they didn’t feel pain as much as adults. Many people my age have horror stories to tell about repeated visits to the dentist’s office and the drilling torture they endured as kids: anesthesia wasn’t used as often as it is nowadays. The remedy against ear infections was the well-known “paracentesis”, a procedure during which the white-coated doctor, who smelled of ether and formaldehyde and wore some head gear with a flash light, shoved some sharp instrument in my ear to pierce the ear drum, so as to allow the bacteria trapped into the middle-ear to escape. This was followed by several days of peroxide drops which stung and made me scream. Needless to say, the word “doctor” was enough to send me into a fit of fear and despair and my mother, who had a difficult time handling her children’s cries, got into the habit of putting us in front of the fait-accompli: in the most opportune time, with no advance notice, a white-coat would appear at the front door. We would all run for cover, never quite sure who would be victimized that day but assured that one of us was going to be. That is how, in fact, we all gave up our adenoids and, to this day, I remember it vividly. I must say that one of the medical progresses I truly appreciate is the wide-spread use of anesthetic and pain killers: they definitely have a place in our life, even though some people do tend to abuse them.

Eventually, my ear drum was scarred in so many places and so weak that, within hours of an excruciatingly painful infection, it would simply tear on its own before the doc ever showed up, bringing immediate relief from both the pain and the fever. At the first sign of fever, my mother got used to putting the burning drops into my ear canal and, within hours, I would be well.

In those days (which are not so remote: I am only 50), everyone was starting to embrace the lifestyle to which we now have become accustomed: more and more children were enrolled in after school activities such as dance, tennis, horseback riding and other sports to prevent them from roaming the streets and cause mischief. Mine were swimming and judo. In retrospect, swimming in a pool full of chlorine was probably the last thing I needed but dwelling on the past won’t fix it: what is done is done and, in fairness to our parents, they did the best they could with what they knew, the same way that we are now doing with our children the best we can with what we’ve learned.

In any event, in my early adulthood, I was accidentally diagnosed with what is called a cholesteatoma, “a skin growth that occurs in an abnormal location, the middle ear behind the eardrum. It is usually due to repeated infection, which causes an ingrowth of the skin of the eardrum. Cholesteatomas often take the form of a cyst or pouch that sheds layers of old skin that builds up inside the ear. Over time, the cholesteatoma can increase in size and destroy the surrounding delicate bones of the middle ear. Hearing loss, dizziness, and facial muscle paralysis are rare but can result from continued cholesteatoma growth”. http://www.entnet.org/healthinfo/ears/cholesteatoma.cfm. It wasn’t painful and I had no symptoms, other than an increasing hearing loss.

Ignorant about natural medicine and afraid of what I had been told by the surgeon who used words such as “tumor”, “losing the nerves of the face” and “potential permanent brain damage”, terrified of becoming a monster unable to close my mouth or my left eye, I agreed to undergo the delicate and lengthy microsurgery, which entailed making a 3” opening from the ear to the temple, flipping the skin and muscle, scraping the mastoïd and the tiny bones conducting the sound, and grafting a makeshift ear drum to protect the middle-ear. Any surgery is traumatic. Not only did that one fail but, in addition, my temporomandibular joint was permanently damaged, leaving me with a crooked jaw and causing undue wear-and-tear on my teeth. Not to mention the shaving of half my hair, which plunged me into intense embarrassment for several months. That, my friends, is what we expose ourselves when submitting to surgery: in addition to the risk of failure, there always exist collateral damages any time we cut or puncture the skin. And although surgical consent forms purport to warn us of said potential collateral damage, most doctors as so eager to perform their craft that they tend to downplay the risks. How do I know? Ask them the hard questions, such as “What is the likelihood of a failure of the surgery and please, quantify it?”, “What percentage of patients develop such and such side effect?”, “What is the worst that can happen, should I decline the surgery?” and the mother of all questions: “What alternative methods exist before I submit to surgery?” Try it: I can guarantee you that you will get, at best, some rather vague answers.

The cholesteatoma recurred and in 1984, I had to subject myself to a second operation performed in the US and during which I was, once again, cut open, although not in the same place: the opening, that time, was behind the ear and required more shaving, more excruciating pain and more embarrassment. I survived but, ever since then, I have been forced to have a CAT-scan and consult yearly an ENT for follow up, in case of a possible recurrence of the cholestheatoma. To top it off, my hearing loss has considerably worsened and I constantly need antibiotic drops as moisture from a humid climate or a shower promotes the growth of bacteria, hence what has now become a “recurring, chronic infection”. In other words, I will have problems for the rest of my life. At some point, I was fit with some custom made ear plug which never stopped the condensed water contained in the ambient air to penetrate my ear canal. The cost associated with that left ear, including surgeries and dentistry, has probably long exceeded six figures by now.

In addition to its cleansing and detoxification programs, DrNatura carries a fantastic product I had never heard of before discovering its website: colloidal silver. “ Colloidal silver appears to be a powerful, natural antibiotic and preventative against infections. Acting as a catalyst, it reportedly disables the enzyme that one-celled bacteria, viruses and fungi need for their oxygen metabolism. They suffocate without corresponding harm occurring to human enzymes or parts of the human body chemistry. The result is the destruction of disease-causing organisms in the body and in the food.” http://www.all-natural.com/silver-1.html

Since I am “doomed” to suffer the consequences of my bad choices, i.e., the side effects of the surgeries I underwent years ago out of ignorance, vanity and fear, I might as well look into the best way to cope with my present situation. Best, for me, means simply this: it has to be effective, harmless and affordable. I have long realized that the more natural a product is and the more harmless it is. Of course, there exist, in their natural form, thousands of substances with the potential to not only harm me but also kill me. However, the way I see it, man has been in existence for thousands of years and has had ample opportunities to experiment and recognize them. That’s how I know for a fact that certain mushrooms are deadly, some ivies cause rashes and one can extract poisons out of common household plants. That is called “learning from others’ past mistakes” and that, in fact, is what life is all about: learning what works and what doesn’t and sharing the knowledge with others so as to prevent them from making the same mistakes and suffer the same consequences we did.

There is ample documentation about the benefits of colloidal silver on the internet (thank God for Information Technology: unlike the previous generations, I can learn a great deal without leaving the comfort of my home, which saves me a considerable amount of time while giving me access to both sides of any issue. It doesn’t get any better than that!) In addition, thousands of users have reported on the breakthrough they experienced with colloidal silver, on DrNatura site as well as unrelated ones. Would so many of us swear by a product unless we knew for a fact that it was efficient and effective? Would we recommend a mechanics if he weren’t living up to our expectations? Would we refer someone to a doctor we knew to mangle patient? Absolutely not! Deep inside, everyone of us wants to help others. There is a natural human yearning to create happiness in others. Why? Because when they feel good, they become pleasant to be around. They are joyous, peaceful and outgoing and they make us feel good.

Anyway, I ordered a while back several bottles of colloidal silver, satisfied that their potential adverse effects were limited (I will get back to that in a moment) and I have used it in my ear as needed, in addition to swallowing a teaspoon of it every day. Here is what I discovered:

my ear has not drained in several months;
as unbelievable as it may seem, I have recovered some of my hearing. Not much but enough for me to notice the difference. This, in and of itself, is a reward I didn’t expect to receive and it certainly is doing wonders for my faith in colloidal silver, my trust in DrNatura and, most of all, my self-esteem: if one small decision can result in such an improvement in my life, what other actions could I take to better my circumstances? I have regained a certain control over one aspect of my life and managed to derive satisfaction from it. Priceless, if you want my opinion. It really means that I can be in charge of me.
I have not had one single cold or sinus problem in months;
my energy level, which I had regained with Colonix has remained steady despite my diet and certain excesses I still am prone to;
I am more flexible than ever and I look forward to earning enough to enroll in different classes, such as gymnastics, dance or yoga (not yet decided which ones but, at the very least, the desire to take care of myself for the pleasure of it has returned with a vengeance: it is now only a question of finances);
my mind is more open than ever toward experimentation.
not only am I eager to share the “good News”, but resistance from non believers no longer affects me: I know what I know, I know what works and whether others decide to try it or not doesn’t take anything from me: it simply delays their own recovery. I feel sad about it for them but it is not within my control and I won’t waste time arguing over it: maybe some people really need to hit rock bottom before taking a leap of faith.

Now about the adverse side effects of silver: the only one known is argyria, a graying of the tissue from excess silver in the body. It is neither toxic nor deadly and, contrary to what Rosemary Jacob has extensively declared and stated, it does not result from “colloidal silver” but from a combination of silver and nitrates in use 50 years ago. True, Ms. Jacob suffers from argyria, which is quite unsightly and probably emotionally devastating, as shown on http://www.together.net/~rjstan/. Her skin is gray, which makes her look sickly. However, more than the silver itself, Ms. Jacobblames her physician for her condition, as evidenced by her statement: “If my doctor had read the medical literature instead of the ads, I wouldn’t look like this today.” Why? Because at the time when she was prescribed silver nitrates, there already existed enough medical information for him to know of their side effects. Notice that Ms. Jacob does not allege any illness, ache, pain or serious condition from the silver nitrates other than the color of her skin. Nor does Stan Jones, the former Montana candidate for the Senate, the only other known case of argyria in the recent years, who admitted to having used a poor quality colloidal silver he manufactured himself and took in excessively large quantities. And as he himself declared, as blue as his skin may be (and according to his own words, whatever picture has been published was “doctored” before hand: he is far from being as blue as the press made him out to be), he is in excellent health and attributes it to colloidal silver http://www.msrebel.com/Colloidal%20Silver.htm.

So, as far as I am concerned, Colloidal silver is safe, non toxic and much more effective than the antibiotic suspensions I spent the last 22 years buying. 240 ml of Sovereign Silver cost less than $25.00, or $.10 per ml. A 5 ml bottle of Tobradex, lasting less than two weeks, costs $65.00 or 130 times more. Need I say more?

Why Sovereign Silver and not another brand? The answer is easy: I used Colonix and it did wonders for me. I then used Toxinout and I regained the ability to discern nuances between dark colors. Since starting Sovereign Silver, my hearing has improved. No brainer…

According to a 1999 study from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, available at http://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/uninsured/#, 44 million of the current 300 million American did not then have any health insurance for many different reasons, the primary one being that middle class, employed people simply could no longer afford it. The must-read, sobering book Uninsured in America by Susan Starr Sered and Rushika Fernandopulle describes in chilling details the consequences for the world’s richest country of such a disgraceful situation (excerpt available at http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10379/10379.intro.html.) By 2006, the number of the uninsured had reached 46 million and it is increasing daily.

Being French, I grew up in a system described as “socialized medicine” (whatever that means), in which health insurance premiums are commensurate with one’s income while providing the same amount of benefits to everyone: everyone is charged the same fixed percentage for health insurance premiums instead of an all-across-the-board flat amount. Of note, most of the other deductions taken out of the employed American’s salary follow the percentage system: FICA, Social Security, taxes, etc., and everyone seems in agreement with its fairness. Somehow, however, any suggestion that it would make sense to apply it to health insurance is met with loud and angry protest, Gods knows why. I, personally, don’t get it. To me, that would be more equitable than the current system. Fortunately, I was fully employed while bringing up my daughter, and the bulk of my monthly premium was paid by my employer. However, I was still responsible for a portion of it and, let’s face it, a by-weekly deduction of $67 from a $700 paycheck represents an amount much more considerable than when deducted from a $2,500 paycheck. Like everyone around me though, I bit the bullet and did what needed to be done to see my wages increase regularly. Nevertheless, what needed to be done was not always what I liked to do or believed was right. Eventually, the trade off (my soul for a regular paycheck) became too high for me and I decided to become self-employed so that I wouldn’t have to sell my soul any longer. As of today, I haven’t had any health insurance for almost two years and, quite frankly, I am not concerned about it. And to be honest, my daughter and I hardly ever used the twenty-years I paid into health insurance. Common sense tells me that, with such a poor return and so little to show for it, the wisdom of the investment was questionable at best.

I will say, however, that one of the reasons I am not concerned is that I don’t expect to become ill and to need insurance anytime soon. I am way too interested in holding on to my health to waste my time and energy in worrying about disease. Besides, I have much better plans for my money than pay for an insurance premium I know I will never use and, to me, insurance is tantamount to throwing money out the window. In addition, health insurance is one link in a seemingly well-orchestrated system in which I simply do not believe: it covers us only for certain approved amounts spent for only certain approved treatments (medical, pharmaceutical or surgical) provided by only certain approved caregivers (physicians and medical professionals recognized as such by certain agencies) often under circumstances that I view as the systematic abdication of our individual responsibility and control over our own body, i.e., only when we agree to hand over our body to the medical system and giving it free reins with it. I probably would be in favor of those treatments if they proved to heal or prevent disease but, so far and based on my observations, it really isn’t the case. “The great secret of doctors, known only to their wives, but still hidden from the public, is that most things get better by themselves; most things, in fact, are better in the morning.” Dr. Lewis Thomas, M.D.

I did say “seemingly” well-orchestrated for a good reason: even though our system is less than a century old, it is on the brink of a collapse, according to the March 1, 2006 , issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association http://jama.ama-assn.org/ and a December 2006 study by the American College of Physicians http://www.acponline.org/hpp/statehc06_1.pdf

I will also say that the more I study a book I consider my instruction manual, the Bible, which I view as the most complete: “How to be a healthy, happy and creative human being” and the more I fail to see a justification for a great number of the western world’s inventions. Nowhere does it say: “Thou shall retire at age 65 and quit earning daily an income to support yourself”, or “Thou shall fear illness and the future and put today a lot of money into insurance just in case the Bible lied to you.” The way I see it is: we either believe it or we don’t. But the Bible has been here for over 2000 years and I haven’t heard of its impending collapse… Western Medicine can’t say the same.

So, how does health insurance work? Well, insurance is simply legalized and organized gambling: insurance companies, which are in the business of making money by collecting more premiums than they anticipate paying out for incurred medical expenses, bet with you, the insured, that based on existing statistics and on your current health, you will not need to use your policy this year and they will not have to make any payment on your behalf toward medical expenses. However, to assure that they will not lose money, should they have bet on a dead horse or should you suddenly come down with something they could not anticipate in view of your present, healthy condition, they calculate your premiums based on the cost associated with the sickest individuals in your specific age bracket. The older you get, the higher your premium, because the more likely you are to become sick and be the victim of a terminal or long lasting health problem. It doesn’t matter to them that you never once, in your life, set foot in a hospital. For them, the older you become and the more you become “a serious illness waiting to happen.” This is reflected in your premiums.

On the other hand, you, the insured, bet that you will become ill and that you will need to use your policy. In other words, you bet that, during your policy-year (year during which you pay your premiums), you are more likely than not to be seriously ill and require help with paying your medical bills. When you buy insurance, you have the mindset that sometime this year, you will become sick. You expect it; you anticipate it; you believe it will happen. It’s called fear. By buying insurance, you buy peace of mind. What you don’t buy, though, is health.

The system was designed to work to the advantage of the insurance company. So much so, in fact, that in order to protect themselves further from having to pay their insured’s medical bills, they pick and choose whom to accept as an insured. Hence the long questionnaire you need to fill out when applying for insurance. Sad as it may be, in today’s overall health climate, more and more American are being turned down for health insurance on the basis of their health history. Those unhealthy insured who are not turned down may end up paying exorbitant premiums and be imposed a six-month waiting period for pre-existing conditions (adverse health conditions which existed before you applied for insurance) or the health condition may simply be excluded once and for all on the policy, meaning that, for example, the $45,000 hospital bill for your heart attack will not be paid by your insurance because you have been under medical treatment for high blood pressure for three years. Anything else can be covered but think about it: if your blood pressure is 184/112, are you more likely to have cancer or a heart attack? What good is it to you, then, to be insured if the most probable illness is excluded?

HMO’s (and PPO’s), which made their apparition in the 70s and became almost the normal form of health insurance for corporate America ’s employees, function somewhat differently but with the same goal: make a profit. An approved primary care physician, usually a generalist or an internist, serves as the gate keeper for the insurance company. He provides the primary care and has the control over whether and when you will require the help of a specialist, in which case he will refer you to a list of those approved by the insurance provider. Pick one not the list and your treatment will not be covered. For those of you who worked a long time for the same company, you may have noticed that every two or three years, your employer would announce that he had contracted with another health insurer or HMO. As a result, you sometimes found yourself having to choose a new primary care provider and, when under the care of a specialist, a new one as well as yours are not on the approved list. Hard to develop a trusting relationship with a doctor when you change so often, isn’t it? Why the need for such a change? Money. “I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor; rich is better.” Sophie Tucker. That’s what businesses do: make money. Not spend it when they can prevent it.

Due to certain regulations, HMO’s are, by law, compelled to accept as an insured everyone in the same group, regardless of health (have you noticed that they never ask you question about your health?). To make it profitable for them, they must calculate their premiums based on the statistical medical costs of the older individuals in the insured group. As a result, 20-year old John who is never ill pays as much as 64-year old Paul who had a triple bypass five years ago and is currently undergoing chemotherapy for cancer or Susan, pregnant with twins. As employees become older, they become sick more often and more severely and they start costing more to the HMO, which is then left with two choices: increase the premiums of the entire group and write themselves out of the market by becoming no longer competitive or simply cancel coverage to the entire group altogether. (They are not allowed to cancel coverage for only a few individuals.) Large corporations, which pay the bulk of their employees’ premiums, do a good job of shopping around for the best insurance deals which is why, every so often, they change insurers without asking for your input, regardless whether the trusting relationship you have established with your doctors will come to an end as a result.

Obviously, there exist many variations of the above systems but you do get the idea of how insurance works.

Now, in the recent years, insurers have considerably increased their deductibles and their co-pay to offset their pay-out in order to remain in the business of writing policies. The deductible is the portion of medical bills which are not reimbursed because your policy covers you only after you have already incurred a certain amount of medical expenses. The deductible is something you absorb. Nowadays, deductibles can be anywhere from $500.00 to $10,000.00 per year. In addition, co-pays, which were $10.00 twenty-years ago, may now have increased to $20.00 or $30.00 a visit and/or a prescription.

When all is said and done, you may easily be paying thousands of dollars in premiums, deductibles and co-pays every year without ever receiving any benefit from being insured. Or, if you are declared uninsurable because already too sick to be attractive for an insurance carrier (and therefore the most in need of health insurance), you may be paying out-of-pocket for all of your medical expenses while waiting to come under Medicare, which won’t kick in until you reach 65.

Why did I get through the trouble of explaining the above? Well, for starters, most people have little understanding of how insurance works. Fewer even realize that insurance does not guarantee health. It only guarantees that you may get some financial help with your medical bills under certain circumstances when your health is failing. But until you decide that, to a large extent, you can control whether it will, indeed, fail, you may be in for spending outrageous amounts of money you will never get any return for.

So, instead of being reactive when you do become sick, wouldn’t it make a lot of sense to become proactive and assuring that you don’t so that, in addition to feeling physically well all the time, you no longer feel compelled to waste so much money? You already eat every day because you know that, without food, your body won’t survive. Most of you probably regularly purchase supplements such as vitamins and minerals (not covered by insurance…) Doesn’t it make sense to see whether a $350.00 DrNatura cleansing and detoxification could, in the long run, save you thousands of dollars in insurance premiums, deductibles and co-pays by restoring your health? Small investment compared to the savings.

Recently, I have gotten into the habit of asking my friends: “Do you like your body?” The answers they give me are quite telling: “My nose is crooked”, “My hair is so stringy, I can’t do anything with it”, “I have a big butt”, “I need to lose a couple of pounds”, etc., often followed by: “Why do you ask? Do you see something else wrong with me?” The only person who didn’t mention her appearance is a woman of 87 who told me: “Well, I liked it a whole lot better when I was ten years younger. I could walk faster, I could eat almost anything, I didn’t have to take pills and I had a lot more energy.” At 87, you don’t care anymore if your nose is crooked or your butt is too big: you don’t need to impress anyone and you don’t care if you don’t. What you care about is how well you feel. Why wait to reach that age to decide what’s important?

For centuries, people were taught that they had a spirit, the superior part of themselves, which they needed to turn over to God lest they would burn in hell, a mind worthy of educating, cultivating and improving, and a despicable and treacherous body, the devil’s tool, stupid, greedy, weak and basically worthless, that they needed to “crucify” in order to tame it when it acted up and to ignore the rest of the time. Even though we’ve made tremendous progress, there is still a deep sense of shame attached to the body and many people have a rather estranged relationship with it, especially in this country. Many founders of religious movements, such as Martin Luther, were known to scourge themselves and inflict on themselves horrible tortures, while others, such as Mary Baker Eddy, viewed disease as a manifestation of a sinful nature and advocated prayer and faith healing; although medicine could be sought after when all else had failed, there exist countless reports of cases involving people and children dying unnecessarily, for want of timely medical intervention. And although we have, indeed, made progress, many preachers and churches still use that outdated vocabulary: “the flesh is stupid”, “we must crucify the flesh”, “sin brings about disease”, “we must repent and pray God for a healing”. With such a legacy, it should be no wonder that people are still afraid of their body.

As a result, people are constantly split and ambiguous about it. They have an acute awareness of its appearance reinforced by the media, mixed with a gross lack of understanding of its functions and how much they impact on its exterior. In addition, every other health book written for the general public purports to help them bridge the gap by making well-meaning yet cliché analogies which still miss the mark. I can’t tell you how many times I have picked up a book stating: “Your body is like a car. As it needs fuel to run, so do you need food to function”, “your body is like an engine: it needs regular oil changes and tune ups”, “being overweight is like driving an overloaded car: it drags and can’t pick up speed and it increases the wear and tear”. I have yet to hear someone tell me: “Whoa! What an eye opener to realize that my body is like a car! The realization hit me so hard that I joined a gym right away and lost 20 lbs!” The problem with the car analogy is that it is too superficial and not quite relevant: people own a car which they bought and know they will use only over a limited period of time: no one buys a car thinking that it will last forever. Hoping, maybe, but not really believing it. Deep inside, they know that, when the car malfunctions, they can take it to the mechanics, give him the keys and leave it there for however long it takes him to repair it. They don’t need to know what’s wrong with it: it’s the mechanics’ job and that’s what they pay him to do. If push comes to shove and the car dies, they can buy another one.

A friend of mine, 60 lbs overweight and miserable about it, was showing me one of those self-help books mentioning the “overloaded car”. With a pitiful look on her face, she said: “Here is my problem: I have three kids and a husband. If the car was overloaded and it started huffing and puffing, I’d get out and ask them to unload the excess weight. Who’s going to unload my 60 lbs? All that book is telling me is that being the way I am is dangerous. If I don’t have the energy to hit the gym, it doesn’t tell me how to regain it in the first place. So now, I am overweight, I am still in no shape to exercise and, in addition, I am scared. To top if off, if I follow the diet they recommend, all I’ll be doing is cook. I’m a full time employee, mom and wife. Where am I going to find that kind of time? The guy who wrote that book wrote about what worked for him. He doesn’t know what works for me!” She made a few good points and, come to realize, if those books were the answer for everyone, why would we need thousands of them?

Your body is not a car. It is with you for the rest of your life. You can’t lease it, trade it or junk it. No, let me rephrase: you can junk it but you’re still stuck with it. You’re stuck in a rut, wanting desperately to regain your health and your energy. You could, if you followed the advices of self-help books. But those advices require you to make the kind of efforts… which require the kind of energy you don’t have in the first place. Some predicament!

The next problem we face is the emotional aspect of that estranged relationship people have with their body: they don’t really want to know what’s inside. It makes them feel uncomfortable. It scares them to find out. It grosses them out. Well, I got news for you: like every organism, it eats, it poops and it reproduces. It is an incredible masterpiece of engineering, similar to 6 billion other bodies… but not alike. There is no body like yours. No two bodies function the exact same way. As a result, no one can know your own body better than you. What is good for the goose may not always be good for the gander. What I can digest may be different from what your body tolerates. What I am allergic to may be different from what you are allergic to.

When we treat our body like a car, we expect a mechanics’ job from our doctor: we bring it to him and let him figure it out on the basis of look, feel, noise, smells, misfiring and apparent malfunctions. Our doctor’s knowledge is based on the study of similarities: everyone has a heart, a liver, a pancreas, etc. Theoretically, they are supposed to perform certain functions, which they do in a similar fashion… but not exactly alike. The order in which chemicals are produced may be the same. Their quantity may differ, based on heredity, environment, prior illnesses, toxicity, immune deficiencies, etc. As a matter of fact, when you have lab work done, the results show ranges within which things are considered “normal” or “abnormal”. Those ranges were established based on statistics. “Statistics: the only science that enables different experts using the same figures to draw different conclusions.” Evan Esar.If we were completely alike, one single number would apply to everyone without exception, prescriptions would work exactly in the same manner for everyone and side effects would be clearly defined and automatic instead of potential. In other words, we didn’t come from an assembly line. No one but us can find out how we function.

So, where do you start? Three words: research, research, research. And… guts, faith, hope, expectation. All good things. Where do you start your research? www.drnatura.com And if you have any question, write me at Cbrightlife@aol.com

Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power.
We have guided missiles and misguided men.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

I mentioned in a previous article how health insurance worked and I am flabbergasted by the feedbacks I have received so far: although most people did not “trust” insurance companies and had had bad experiences, they did not understand why and simply blamed their agent for not having given them enough information to allow them to make an “informed” decision.

In addition to being a medico-legal interpreter and translator, I am also an insurance agent and, being a Christian, I firmly believe in “do unto others”. Since I do not like being rushed into decisions without knowing exactly what I am up against, it would never occur to me to do it to others. As a result, when people approach me about health or life insurance, I go through a great deal of trouble to educate them first, oftentimes at the expense of a quick sale: the way I look at it, my purpose in life is to make their life easier, not more difficult. Forcing anyone to write a check with the full knowledge that whatever I am selling will not serve their interests goes against my core values. Needless to say, I am not yet “successful” by our society’s standards. What matters to me is that I am at peace with my conscience and, in that respect, I am successful by God’s standards.

As an insurance agent, I do meet a considerable number of people who have been turned down by several insurance carriers on the basis of “pre-existing” conditions or who simply can’t afford the high premium resulting from said conditions. Although the company I represent is more liberal than most in its underwriting policies, there are still many people whom I can’t help. There is, however, something I can always do for them: direct them to DrNatura. It should come as no surprise to you that that’s exactly what I do. Those who choose to order the Colonix and Toxinout programs are appreciative and thankful and I have yet to meet anyone who has not, in some way, greatly benefited from them. What makes me the happiest is knowing that, even though they may not be able to purchase health insurance for another two years –most insurance companies require that one not be treated for two years in order for the condition to be considered healed- at the very least, those people no longer live with the fear of impending doom. The objective improvement they see in their condition tells them that, even though they may need a costly medical care, they have at least successfully bought themselves enough time to become insurable before they seek it.

What troubles me, though, is a reaction I am commonly seeing in certain people and which I do not understand: when talking about colon cleansing, I often hear statements such as “My doctor told me that the colon doesn’t need to be cleaned and messing up with it can be dangerous”, or “My doctor says that the body heals itself and that no one needs a colon cleansing”. What troubles me even more is that those are the same doctors who prescribe to their patients extremely potent and potentially dangerous drugs. Common sense dictates that if, indeed, the body healed itself, there should be no need for drugs and a wait-and-see approach would suffice for people to get better. So, what am I missing?

Many among those people are also routinely prescribed fiber supplements such as Metamucil or laxatives. I do not doubt that Metamucil may work for some but, based on the thousand of testimonials contained on www.DrNatura.com, it is not the case for everyone: many writers indicated that it never worked for them. Others found themselves trapped on the laxative road with endless bouts of constipation-diarrhea and without ever seeing any permanent relief for an uncomfortable and sometimes debilitating situation.

While waiting to interpret for a patient in a medical office, I recently read a four-page brochure on Metamucil: I found it very interesting that nowhere, in the pamphlet, was there any advice on the need to drink plenty of fluids (let alone water) while taking it. In fact, the only time water is mentioned in the instructions is in connection with the one glass to drink with the powder in the morning http://www.drugs.com/cdi/metamucil_powder.html.

I read additional information concerning laxatives and, again, found very little information about the need to drink water throughout the day. I have to wonder why so many people report diarrhea while taking laxatives: where is all the fluid they eliminate coming from? Might they, in fact, be systematically dehydrating their body and thus worsening their constipation? Mind-boggling…

I have a tremendous respect for doctors: it takes commitment and dedication to put oneself through medical school for seven to ten years and most report that they did so at the expense of everything else and that it took them years of deprivation to repay the horribly expensive student loans they had contracted. In addition, the highly litigious environment in which they operate fosters a considerable amount of stress few of us could sustain on a regular basis and it is not uncommon to hear that our dear doctor was victim of a heart attack (I have known quite a few myself) before reaching 65.

We need, however, to put things into perspective: doctors do not know everything, as I pointed out in previous articles. Further, what they have been taught is to deal with existing illness, to recognize it, diagnose it and treat it according to standardized methods. They have not been taught how to naturally prevent it. We consult them only when something is already wrong with us, unlike in many other developed countries where yearly physicals are not only strongly encouraged but also required. Unfortunately, the highly regulated system under which physician practice forbids them from advising patients about anything not endorsed by certain government agencies, lest they would expose themselves to harsh punishments. In fact, they sometimes find themselves compelled to chastise healthy, intelligent and articulate patients for refusing certain treatments considered “necessary” even in the absence of any illness. I found myself in such situations several times in the past and, being human, I blamed the doctor at the time for his lack of understanding and what I perceived as an encroachment on my freedom. When they don’t like the message, humans tend to shoot the messenger…

Case in point: 21 years ago, I gave birth to my daughter. Although aware that she was the best thing that ever happened to me, I was also conscious that she was only “entrusted to me” and that my job, as a parent, was to bring her up to be a physically, mentally and emotionally well-balanced individual, fully functioning in society while dotted of solid values she would be morally strong enough not to compromise. Having myself grown in a vegan family for the first 5 years of my life where antroposophy and Rudolf Steiner were commonly and openly discussed, I knew all the pros and cons of vaccinations, most of which I never received. Although my mother eventually did away with the vegan diet, since I was healthy, energetic and well-functioning, I decided that my daughter did not need immunizations anymore that I had. I am, however, not adverse to them as a matter of principle and, in certain cases, I believe that they have a place in our life. As an example, we lived in San Francisco at the time of my daughter’s birth. Common sense told me that, if the earth shook quite a bit there (and it did), the likelihood of water mains being broken was fairly high. Contamination of the water supply was, therefore, a serious risk. Further, being raised as a European, my child never wore shoes until the bones of feet were fully formed: she walked bear foot for her first two years. The risks to her health were through potential polio, diphtheria and tetanus. She received immunizations against those three diseases: common sense means weighing benefits and risks. I refused, however, to have her immunized her against what is commonly known as “childhood diseases”: I had contracted them as a kid and fared extremely well. I did not anticipate her to fare any differently.

My child was a Kaiser baby: born in a Kaiser hospital, she would come under the care of a Kaiser pediatrician. One cannot imagine the pressure under which I was to have her vaccinated against measles, mumps, chickenpox and pertussis (whooping cough). I was accused of irresponsibility, neglect and child endangerment and it took all the strength and energy I could gather to remain steadfast. Eventually, Kaiser relented, not without fights, however.

I subsequently moved to Boston when my kid was 2 and, because of the health insurance program I was under, I was required to select a pediatrician immediately upon starting my new job. My daughter was healthy. She had been brought up at home by live-in nannies (au pairs) and was seldom in contact with other children. Due to my new financial situation as a single mother and the breadwinner, I found a wonderful woman with two children to care for her during the day (daycare centers have never been attractive to me). She referred me to her own pediatrician and, to my grave, I will always remember our first (and only) conversation.

The pediatrician, Dr. V., was a sweet and probably very good doctor. She came highly recommended. However, she and I did not see eye-to-eye on the subject of immunizations. She immediately decreed that my daughter “needed” to be vaccinated against pertussis and other childhood diseases. She explained to me their benefits as other physicians had in the past and handed me a three page consent flyer extolling their advantages, half-a-page of which listing all their potential adverse effects (the disease itself, infection, convulsions, seizures and death), asking me to sign it so that she could proceed with the immunizations. I read the pamphlet and asked her several questions:

- How many children actually died of childhood diseases in the US every year? She did not know.

- How old were the children who actually died of said diseases? To her knowledge, mostly infants a year or younger. (my kid was already past the age of two).

- At her age, and should she contract any of those diseases, what was the worse that could happen? Well, she could develop cardiac or pulmonary problems, she could run an extremely high fever, she might need to be hospitalized.

- Could one tell ahead of time which children would develop adverse side effects from the vaccinations? No but given my daughter’s health, it was unlikely.

- If it was that unlikely, why then did I need to sign a consent form acknowledging that I understood all the potential risks and was willing to take them? It was the law.

- How likely was it for my child to develop complications from a childhood disease? Less than 1/1000, given her current health and family history.

- Under the circumstances, what rationale did she have to pressure me into vaccinating my kid? Well, should my kid not be immunized and should she contract any of those diseases, she would be responsible for passing them on to someone else.

- Dr. V., since all other children will be immunized, how can that be possible? Are you telling me that the vaccinations, which come with definite risks, may not be effective? In that case, are the benefits really outweighing the risks?

Dr. V. became defensive and stated that, given my apparent refusal to comply with her professional recommendation, she would decline becoming my child’s pediatrician. I left her office, mentioning that her statement was very close to blackmail and that I did not believe it to be in agreement with the Hippocratic Oath. I soon came to realize that I was up against an established system of monumental proportions. Shopping for a pediatrician I could trust took me several months but I did eventually find one with an open mind. My kid never received the immunizations, she did contract mild cases of benign childhood diseases and her healthy immune system fought them adequately.

I strongly suggest that anyone curious about vaccinations read Allan Phillip’s excellent article at http://www.relfe.com/vaccine.html. The evidence compiled against them is sobering. The medical community itself is divided on the subject. Anytime a community is divided on any subject, one should view it as an indication that simple, immovable and undeniable truth is lacking. Lately, there even has been extensive media coverage on the apparent correlation between early childhood vaccinations and autism. Worth looking into… or, at the very least, thinking twice before putting our children at risk. Anyone willing to do some research can read extensively the existing information by keying “vaccinations and danger”. In fact, countless medical journals have reported on it, including one of the nation’s authorities in medical matter, the New England Journal of Medicine, as documented on http://chetday.com/novacarticles.html. Shouldn’t that be enough for us to question our own doctors? As I said, sobering…

Our medicine is based on what is called “the standard of care”. So long as a physician abides by said standard of care, he cannot be held liable for the poor outcome of his medical decisions. Unfortunately, the standard of care is not as exact as 1 + 1 = 2: it follows medical trends established by government agencies and the pharmaceutical industry. Certain drugs may be heavily pushed onto patients one day and recalled the next, once it has become obvious that they harmed more than they helped. God-given Nature, on the other hand, is not subject to trends. Nor is our body. It will need to eat, drink and eliminate until the day we die. Rather than injecting into it chemicals that, in the long run, destroy the immune system, doesn’t it make more sense to return to Nature’s way and look into her for the answer on how to boost our immune system? That’s what DrNatura is all about. Reassuring, as far as I am concerned. Come to think of it, why is Europe so liberal about vaccinations? Could twenty countries be all wrong and the US be the only right one?

“The superior man thinks always of virtue; the common man thinks
of comfort.” Confucius.“ Comfort is the only thing our civilization
can give us.”
Oscar Wilde.

When I came to this country, some 25 years ago, I spent my first year in Los Altos , playing governess for my sponsor, Paul. He owned several houses but, for some reason, preferred to live in a condominium. In retrospect, and although upscale, the condo was in one of many non-descript complexes one can find all over the US nowadays: a two-bedroom/two bathrooms apartment with double living-room and sliding windows, it had a fully equipped kitchen, washer/dryer, forced-air heat and AC and… beige wall-to-wall carpeting except in the kitchen and bathroom, lain with off-white linoleum. Having grown in an older house with tiles on the first floor and hardwood upstairs, wall-to-wall carpeting was, for me, the epitome of luxury. No need for slippers, warm and cozy all year round, comfortable enough to slouch on it with a good book, I was in heaven.

As I mentioned it earlier, Paul had two cats, both used to spending a great deal of time outdoors. He also owned a bar and a travel agency which, at the time, provided all travel arrangements for a very famous client: the San Francisco 49ers. As a member of the Stockton Booster Club, Paul, who was an avid fan, followed them everywhere they played and was gone several weeks every month, leaving me alone to care for the cats and handle the affairs of the bar. In addition, my job at the agency was to personally deliver the airline tickets to businesses and individuals all over the bay area, which allowed me to personally meet many of the football players, including Joe Montana, Jerry Rice and Dwight Clark (on whom I had developed a mad crush…)

During one of his numerous trips, in a late evening of September 82, when the temperature is still hot and the days shorter, I returned from one of my daily delivery errands to the empty apartment, happy to enjoy a quiet and solitary evening of TV, looking forward to the freedom of clicking on any program I wished to see. The living room of the condo didn’t have a ceiling light: as I entered, I had to walk several feet to a lamp sitting on top the monumental TV encased in a wooden cabinet. I clearly remember wearing sandals and white pants, as usual. I proceeded to turn on the light and directed my steps to the kitchen. One of the cats was crying for food and, as I bent over to pet him, my eye caught a glimpse of small black dots on the legs of my pants and the top of my feet. I shook them, thinking that it was dust for the outside or some kind of pollen, and the dots immediately disappeared. I fed the cats, started fixing dinner and returned to the living room with my plate, setting it up on the coffee table, my feet resting on its edge, the clicker in my hand. The light of the TV screen fell on my feet and legs and I saw those black dots again, dozens of them. And they were moving. I approached my hand and they disappeared. It suddenly downed on me: fleas! I put my foot on the floor: it was immediately covered. I literally freaked out. I jumped out of my seat, started running throughout the apartment, shaking my legs and probably screaming and soon realized that they were everywhere except in the bathroom and kitchen: they came from the carpeting!

I had to do something. I had no idea what, though: alone in the infested condo, my bear feet soon bitten, I put socks on, tucked my pants inside and climbed on the furniture, jumping from one piece to the other to reach the phone. In the States for less than six weeks, hardly able to speak English, I frantically called the only person with whom I could communicate: Ingrid, Paul’s former live-in, an Austrian woman whom I had replaced and who still worked at the agency and served as my interpreter in most of my dealings with him. In no time, Ingrid showed up to find me standing on the couch, my plate in the hands, finishing my dinner. She took one step in the condo, saw hundreds of fleas on her ankles and took one leap on the coffee table from where she called 411 (the phone book was unreachable, underneath the TV) to get the name of an exterminator. I will always remember standing there, bent over with laughter, waiting to see what would happen.

Eventually, she hung up and related to me her conversation with the exterminator: it was flea season, when the eggs hatch and, from the sound of it, it appeared that the entire condo would need to be fumigated, which meant grabbing the cats who would need to be brought immediately to a vet to be disinfested lest they would develop serious infections, and leaving the apartment for several days. The man came a few minutes later, confirmed the damages and gave us a brief course on fleas: a blood-sucking parasite that can jump up to 150 times its height, it lives for approximately four weeks on a host (cat or dog) during which time it lays up to 2000 eggs. The eggs fall off the host and onto the carpeting where they hatch into larvae. In turn, those jump back and forth from the animal, where they feed off its blood and back to the rug for several months, before reaching maturity. In other words, and even though we were completely oblivious to them, the fleas had spent months in the rug and, as the cats wandered from room to room, they unknowingly transported them onto every square inch of it.

According to the expert, it was one of the worst infestations he had ever seen. It could only be cured with extreme measures and remedying the problem required the use of potent chemicals which would need to impregnate and remain in the pile for several days in order to destroy all the eggs and larvae. Simply put, we had to move out for, at least, one week. Luckily for me, Ingrid had an extra room where I could stay. I would, however, need to wash every article of clothing I was to bring with me as eggs could be attached to them and could fall off on her carpeting, which could start the cycle all over again.

While I was quickly packing, the man got to work, starting with Paul’s room: wearing a mask, he assured that all windows were tightly closed and all closets open and he opened two canisters, which immediately released a smoky gas which shot up toward the ceiling before spreading into the entire room. He walked out and closed the door, working one room after the other. I remember watching him several feet away without mask, not even thinking that the gas had to be very toxic in order to be effective deep inside the rug and to stay active for a week.

The cats caged in, my bag packed, Ingrid and I waited for the man to finish his work and to give us additional instructions: upon our return, we were to dust all the furniture, vacuum thoroughly every inch of rug to removed all the dead larvae and eggs and regularly treat the pets. The problem would then be resolved. Needless to say, Paul wasn’t too happy to move in with his mother for a few days but we went through it and quickly put the incident behind us, although I got into the habit of checking my feet while walking in the apartment, just in case of fleas. Eventually, I forgot all about it and returned to slouching on the floor without ever considering that, whatever chemical had been spayed, it had to have been incredibly potent to penetrate the hard shell of eggs and kill the larvae and it had never been washed out of the carpeting: anytime I walked bare foot on it, it had to, somehow, enter my body through my skin. For the next nine months, day in, day out, I lived in that chemical and rolled on the rug without giving it a second thought.

Only after the birth of my daughter did I ever realize how filthy and unsanitary wall-to-wall carpeting has to be, regardless how spotless it appears. By then, I had moved into another non-descript condominium with similar high-pile wall-to-wall beige carpeting and linoleum on which we walked bare foot or fully shoed, dragging dirt from outside. Once or twice, I had the rug cleaned because of stains but I felt uncomfortable with the idea that some soapy solution was being sprayed onto it and that it would simply dry on it without ever being rinsed out. It didn’t feel right. I started thinking that others before me had lived there, walked on it and, who knows, maybe they had athlete’s foot or some kind of skin disease. How effective was the soap? How toxic was it in the long run? I started to view carpeting more and more as a Petri dish and whatever level of comfort it brought paled in comparison with what I perceived as its dangers. At the time, however, those rugs were everywhere: most houses were twenty or thirty years old and built in the same cheap fashion: the floor was often made of plywood. Carpeting simply hid it.

After moving to the East Coast, I found an apartment in a very old two-family house. It had a rug that was stained and had long served its purpose: I immediately removed it (without asking the landlord), lifting heavy clouds of dust in the process, and refinished the oak and fir floor. Hard work but I had the satisfaction of knowing that I could now wash it with mild detergent. The apartment became draftier but I viewed it as a small drawback and somehow thought that cold air was healthier than dust trapped in an airtight place. The fact that my kid was never sick tends to prove me right.

Interestingly, asthma never overtook her as it has so many children her age and I have to wonder if there is a correlation between wall-to-wall and respiratory illness. Common sense leads me to believe that, indeed, there is one even though the documentation of specific research seems to lack.

Lately, I have started to think about it quite a bit: our offices have wall-to-wall, all our cars do too and, in many houses, people wouldn’t think of doing away with it. Rug manufacturers and installers flourish and one can now find designer rugs in any color and pattern. Anytime one shampoos a rug, it remains damp for several days and I noticed when removing mine that it had large, grey moldy stains on the bottom of it, which, in certain areas, had stained the hardwood floors as well. So, not only do rugs trap the dust but, in addition, they promote the growth of mold and mildew, both connected with the increase in respiratory diseases we are now seeing in children and elderly, and allergies have reached proportions never seen before: 1 in 30 persons suffered from them a century ago. By 2000, 1 in 3 was subject to one or more allergies.

When the term was coined, in 1910, it was considered to be an ailment primarily striking the upper middle class who spent little time outdoors and whose houses embodied “refinement”: heavy drapes hanging from all the windows and doors, large rugs covering most wooden floors, cigar smoke filling libraries and parlors, all of it contributing to a dusty and unhealthy air quality. As people’s standard of living improved during the following 50 years, they duplicated what was considered to be a wealthy and chic lifestyle. One must wonder if the trade off was worth it. The past 50 years also saw the advent of air conditioning now common place in all new buildings and which, personally, I never got used to: as air cools, it condensates and deposits moisture on the floor. The moisture becomes trapped in the rugs where it creates mold. Many kitchens and bathrooms no longer have windows: a hood or a fan aspirates a portion of the vapor caused by boiling pots and hot showers. A large amount of it, however, remains on the walls and tiles where they promote the growth of mildew.

What I find remarkable is that, in the recent years, we have seen a serious boom in the sale of air purifiers, most of which function electrically by releasing unhealthy quantities of ozone into the ambient air of the home. Those purifiers do not come cheap: a good model costs anywhere between $700 and $1,500. They work but at what cost in the long run? It is a relatively recent phenomenon and the same way that it took a century to understand that wall-to-wall triggers allergies, we may come to realize one day that purifiers hurt us much more than they helped.

It seems to me that we are going about solving the problem the wrong way: rather than add some expensive electric appliance which increases our consumption of energy and our exposure to electric current in our homes, we might be better off simply removing what we know to be the culprit for our allergies, embarking on a complete detoxification with DrNatura programs and returning to a simpler way of life. I k

My DrNatura Experience