Archive for the ‘Supplements’ Category

ACTION ALERT: Anti-Supplement Bill Back From the Dead

https://anh-usa.org/durbin-strikes-back/

Durbin Strikes Back

By ANH-USAOn  
Durbin Strikes Back

After we defeated his anti-supplement bill in 2022, Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) is trying to do the same thing again. Let’s make sure he doesn’t succeed. Action Alert!

THE TOPLINE

  • Sen. Durbin is planning to reintroduce his legislation to require mandatory product listing for dietary supplements.
  • This is an unnecessary regulation that will restrict consumer choices, putting us on a road to high-dose supplement restrictions with no basis in safety or public health.
  • It is another instance in which the FDA shows its loyalty to drug companies by slapping needless red tape on its competitors in the natural product industry.

It’s time, once again, to defend our supplement access in the face of an FDA / Big Pharma / Sen. Durbin onslaught. We’ve done it before, and we can do it again—but not without a powerful grassroots response telling Congress NOT to restrict our supplements.

MPL on the move

Earlier this week, Sen. Durbin, a longtime supplement opponent,  reportedly sent letters to several supplement industry trade groups indicating he would be reintroducing his Dietary Supplement Listing Act requiring mandatory product listing (MPL) for supplements. This comes on the heels of the FDA asking for the authority to require MPL in its list of legislative proposals for Fiscal Year 2025, as it did the previous year. With your help and support, we defeated Sen. Durbin’s legislation in 2022, and we can do so again.  But, like last time, we need your help.

MPL seeks to create a registry of all supplements on the market bringing it ever closer to the Canadian model that our colleagues at the Natural Health Products Protection Association have confirmed are wiping more and more products from Canadian retail shelves. Sen. Durbin and the FDA claim this policy would help regulators “know when new products are introduced and quickly identify dangerous or illegal products on the market.” We believe Sen. Durbin and the FDA are using safety as a smokescreen and that such a registry will be used to target and eliminate products that the agency believes do not comply with its ridiculous regulations. Just like in Canada.

Supplements: a health threat despite ZERO deaths?

For starters, this is a solution in search of a problem. The safety record for supplements is indisputable. Dietary supplements boast a consistent and remarkable safety profile making them many times more safe than conventional foods. Data from the American Association of Poison Control Center’s National Poison Data System (NPDS) typically show, year on year, that zero Americans die from taking dietary supplements.

Oft-cited reports on supplements causing adverse events fail to highlight that many cases are the result of unsupervised children swallowing pills, elderly Americans choking, and heart palpitations from ingesting too many diet pills, sexual enhancement pills, and energy drinks. Compare these numbers to the adverse events caused by pharmaceutical drugs, or even rates of food borne illness, and you’ll find that supplements are, overall, among the safest things you can consume.

The bottom line is that the supplement industry is not sickening and killing alarming rates of Americans to necessitate restrictive policies. So what’s the real motivation?

As we’ve argued through the years, the FDA takes an antagonistic attitude towards natural products because it relies on the drug industry for funding, and natural products compete with drugs. Put simply, the FDA is captured by drug industry interests. We believe this helps explain the motivation behind many anti-supplement policies, including the ridiculous limits the FDA imposes on what can be said about the benefits of supplements.

The case against MPL

The implications of MPL are even more concerning. MPL might be used to create a list of supplements that might lead to “adverse events,” similar to a legislative effort by Sen. Durbin we defeated a number of years ago. In that case, the list would be created by the FDA and the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM)—the same body that once said people up to the age of 70 don’t need more than 600 IU of vitamin D per day, and above 4,000 IU may be dangerous. Through this and other mechanisms, such as harmonization with EU supplement levels we’ve discussed elsewhere, we can easily see how MPL could be used to eliminate access to high-dose supplements.

To make a long story short, mandatory listing legislation would add regulations to supplements that would increase prices for consumers and decrease available options, making it easy for the FDA to eliminate supplements that compete with the drugs that provide significant funding for the Agency. MPL would also throttle innovation in the supplement sector that delivers American consumers the most diverse array of cutting-edge products that support health, anywhere in the world.

Action Alert! Write to Congress and tell them to oppose mandatory product listing for supplements. Please send your message immediately.

(Go to top link to fill out form to your reps)

For more:

Category:

Activism, Supplements

Niacin: The Real Story (2nd Edition)

https://www.townsendletter.com/1f-townsend-eletter-niacin-protocol-for-health/

Niacin: The Real Story (2nd Edition)

by Abram Hoffer, Andrew W. Saul, and Harry D. Foster

Reviewed by
Robert G. Smith, PhD

Niacin (vitamin B3) is a biomolecule required by all forms of life. It functions as a precursor to NAD, an enzymatic co-factor in hundreds of metabolic pathways. Niacin is called a vitamin because the body can only synthesize it slowly and therefore requires a small but adequate amount from the diet. The reason that we cannot synthesize adequate amounts of niacin can be traced back to evolutionary pressure. Over millions of years, niacin was readily available from plant- and animal-based foods, so our bodies have evolved to rely on this dietary source.  However, larger amounts of niacin than the minimum required by the body are helpful because they allow our metabolic pathways to function at full speed for optimal health and to prevent disease.

Some individuals are dependent upon high levels of niacin for health because of their genetic background or because of severe stress. For these individuals, much higher doses of niacin than the minimum dose can prevent and reverse disease. And for the rest of us, high doses of niacin are beneficial—and even necessary—for many aspects of health.

This new expanded edition, published in March 2023 by Turner Publishing, nearly doubles the original Niacin: The Real Story, (from 228 to now 490 pages). It has several new chapters and appendices and more than 600 references to document recent advances in scientific knowledge about niacin. Several chapters focus on the different forms of the molecule niacin, how it works, safety of niacin supplements, and how to take niacin supplements.

Other chapters describe how niacin can help to prevent and reverse a variety of diseases and other conditions, including arthritis, ADHD, many forms of mental illness, cardiovascular disease, aging, alcoholism, Alzheimer’s, cancer, cholera, Huntingdon’s disease, migraine, multiple sclerosis, nephritis (kidney inflammation), Parkinsonism, PTSD, Raynaud’s disease, and a variety of skin conditions. There is a special chapter focused on the recent Covid-19 pandemic: how niacin can help the body recover from infection and reduce the risk of “Long Covid.”

A major focus of the book is how niacin supplements, along with adequate doses of all the other essential nutrients (vitamins and minerals) and a healthy diet that avoids sugar and processed foods, can prevent and even reverse a variety of diseases. This orthomolecular theme is developed in the chapter “Pandeficiency Disease.” This theme is based on avoiding deficiencies of vitamins and minerals that contribute to a wide variety of conditions.

Some vitamins are needed only in small milligram or microgram daily doses, but others such as vitamin C and niacin are needed in much higher doses, depending on the body’s state of stress, inflammation, and disease. The optimal dose varies with the individual and the state of inflammation and disease because biochemical stress in the body can deplete vitamin and cause deficiencies — which in turn can cause many different types of disease.

The book contains several interesting and significant new sections and chapters. The chapter entitled “Reversing Arthritis with Niacinamide” has been expanded, now including some of Dr. Kaufman’s notes and a memoir written up as his final unpublished paper. Niacin: The Real Story is the only book in print to present Kaufman’s own case notes and niacinamide protocol details. In these new sections, Dr. Kaufman documents his discovery of niacin and niacinamide treatments during his medical education, along with his observations of the nutritional deficiencies in the typical diet that caused pellagra (caused by a severe deficiency of niacin) and that also tended to cause osteoarthritis.

Many of the patients in the early years of his practice in the 1940s were referred by other physicians who wanted to get rid of their most complaining and difficult patients. At the time, the only treatments for arthritis were aspirin, hot paraffin dips, or heat treatment of joints. With his careful observations of symptomatology, Kaufman realized that most had a niacin deficiency—and these symptoms are summarized in detail. He explains that he soon found that most of these patients had a deficiency of niacin in their diets—proven by rapid improvement after niacinamide treatment.

He reported that he treated all his patients with kindness, respect, and adequate doses of niacinamide—and soon after starting niacinamide treatment with up to 2000 mg or more per day, taken in divided doses, the patients “became easy to take care of medically” and had “astonishing improvements in their health.” Kaufman took their complaints seriously and found that a niacin deficiency was independent of family income. Well-to-do families could afford a nutritionally good diet, even if they did not do so.  (See link for article)

______________

**Comment**

I highly recommend this book.

I too have benefitted from both niacin and niacinamide.  

For more:

Category:

Supplements

Peripheral Neuropathy Evaluation & Repair in Lyme Disease

https://www.treatlyme.net/guide/neuropathy-repair-heal-that-tingling-numbness-pain

Updated: 4/24/2023

Neuropathy in Lyme Disease

In chronic Lyme disease it is common to have nerve injury in locations outside of the brain and spinal cord – also called peripheral neuropathy. Common symptoms of peripheral neuropathy include:

  • numbness,
  • burning sensations,
  • and/or sharp, stabbing or electric feelings.

In this article Marty Ross MD reviews:

  • laboratory evaluation of neuropathy in chronic Lyme disease and a functional medicine approach to remove nerve insults and to repair nerve injury.

Neuropathy Laboratory Evaluation

A basic laboratory evaluation of neuropathy may include:

  • Vitamin B6 (too much Vitamin B6 causes neuropathy)
  • Vitamin B12 (low Vitamin B12 causes neuropathy)
  • Vt D3 (levels around 40 ng/ml to 80ng/ml support healthy nerve function)
  • CBC
  • CMP (evaluation of kidney and liver function)
  • TSH, Free T3, and Free T4 (evaluate for low or high thyroid function)
  • TTG-IgA & EMA (for possible celiac disease)
  • heavy metal urine testing (see the end of the article for when to do this)

(See link for video and article)

_______________

For more:

Neuropathy Laboratory Evaluation

A basic laboratory evaluation of neuropathy may include:

  • Vitamin B6 (too much Vitamin B6 causes neuropathy)
  • Vitamin B12 (low Vitamin B12 causes neuropathy)
  • Vt D3 (levels around 40 ng/ml to 80ng/ml support healthy nerve function)
  • CBC
  • CMP (evaluation of kidney and liver function)
  • TSH, Free T3, and Free T4 (evaluate for low or high thyroid function)
  • TTG-IgA & EMA (for possible celiac disease)
  • heavy metal urine testing (see the end of the article for when to do this)

Functional Medicine Neuropathy Repair

Steps to repair nerve injury include:

removing the nerve insults

  • correcting abnormal labs including thyroid, Vitamin D, Vitamin B6, and Vitamin B12
  • stopping RX meds that may cause neuropathy
  • treating infections
  • correcting mold toxicity

repairing the nerve damage

  • repairing nerve cell and mitochondria power plant membranes,
  • increasing the master cell repair antioxidant glutathione,
  • increasing the nutrient Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10)
  • taking acetyl-l-carnitine if you do not eat red meat,
  • decreasing inflammation, and
  • using the peptide BPC-157.

Category:

Lyme, Supplements, Testing

Chlorine Dioxide & Natural Medicine: Kerri Rivera

https://robertyoho.substack.com/p/298-kerri-rivera-returns-to-reveal?  Audio Here

KERRI RIVERA RETURNS TO REVEAL MORE SECRETS OF NATURAL MEDICINE

Kerri Rivera kindly returned for a second interview about chlorine dioxide and other natural medicines. She began studying natural health to save her vaccine-injured son from autism years before Kalcker or Humble appeared on the scene. This makes Kerri an OG, an Original Gangster. This phrase is a rapper complement that now means a respected or old-school source.

Kerri deserves to be heard because of her depth of experience and training with some of the best healers in the world. If you haven’t, listen to her first interview HERE. She helped me clear up some of my confusion about alternative medicine. Kerri is a homeopath who offers online consultations. Email her at kerri@kerririvera.com if you are interested.  (See link for article and interview)  Go here for the Rumble video version

______________

Important quote:

“Chlorine dioxide (CD) is foundational; methylene blue is adjunctive.”

A BIG THANKS to Dr. Yoho for summarizing the video in the link above.  Most people don’t do this and it frustrates me to no end as most of us don’t have time to listen to hour plus interviews!

He also lists dosages and frequency as well as other helpful tidbits.

Notice that desperation for her son’s health is what drove Rivera to find this treatment.  I have seen this play out over and over again.  People who are vested in finding real answers find things people who just get a paycheck don’t.

Please also see:

Category:

Activism, Detoxing, diet and nutrition, Supplements, Treatment, Viruses

CBD Under Siege: Take Action

https://anh-usa.org/cbd-under-siege/

CBD Under Siege

By ANH-USAOn 
CBD Under Siege

Years after the feds legalized hemp, the ax is still dangling over CBD supplements despite ongoing, exciting research into all of CBD’s health benefits. We need to protect access NOW! Action Alert!

THE TOPLINE

  • We’re only just beginning to scratch the surface on the benefits that CBD and other cannabinoids can have on our health, but the FDA is standing firm in its determination NOT to allow CBD in supplements.
  • Part of the reason we don’t know more about CBD’s effects is because federal law in the US made it almost impossible to study CBD and other cannabinoids before the passage of the 2018 Farm Bill.
  • Non-psychotropic cannabinoids like CBD work so well because they ‘speak’ to the billions of receptors of every cell of our bodies through the recently discovered endocannabinoid system.
  • The coming years will tell us even more about CBD’s potential to help us ward off many of the key conditions and diseases that afflict modern society—but it may be too late if we don’t take action to protect CBD supplements today.

We are only beginning to understand the array of benefits CBD and other cannabinoids can have on human health, but the FDA is trying to make sure that the only way we can get CBD is to be prescribed it as an FDA-approved drug—a drug listed at $32,500 a year. We cannot allow Big Pharma, in concert with the FDA, to threaten our access to this natural compound.

In hundreds of studies over the last few years, CBD—short for cannabidiol, one of the hundreds of cannabinoids found in the hemp and as well as a number of other plants—has shown promise in helping with pain, neurological disorders, insomnia, seizures, anxiety, stress, antibiotic-resistant infections, and inflammation, to name just a few. This diverse array of health benefits is due to the fact that CBD interacts with the human endocannabinoid system (ECS), an entire network of receptors throughout the body that was only discovered recently and is responsible for regulating mood, pain, and immune responses.

There’s no doubt that the agency wants to ban CBD when delivered in dietary supplements—so it can secure it, along with its many relatives, for control by Big Pharma. Last January the FDA released a statement explaining that the “existing regulatory framework” for foods and supplements are not appropriate for CBD and that a new regulatory pathway is needed. The agency also denied three Citizens Petitions requesting the agency issue a regulation that would allow CBD to be sold as a supplement.

The FDA has affirmed the illegality of CBD as a supplement in the warning letters it has been sending out to CBD and hemp companies, though the agency seems to be focusing its enforcement on companies making health claims about CBD and hemp.

The crux of the matter, of course, is that CBD has been approved as a drug to treat a rare form of epilepsy. If a natural compound is investigated as a drug before it is sold as a supplement, FDA rules dictate that the compound can no longer be sold as a supplement.

The FDA has also raised the issue of safety, claiming that CBD has the potential to harm the liver and the reproductive system, in addition to concerns for vulnerable populations such as children and pregnant women. You can read our rebuttal to those safety concerns here.

This “back-channel” that turns natural compounds into drugs is a big problem that threatens many natural ingredients, but if CBD is turned into a monopoly drug it would be a tragedy.

First, we just don’t know the full range of health benefits CBD and other cannabinoids have because research has just started to pick up steam. Before the 2018 Farm Bill excluded hemp (cannabis plants with less than 0.3% THC) from the Controlled Substances Act, federal regulations made it extremely difficult to study any cannabinoids.

In a 2017 report on the health impacts of cannabis and cannabinoids, none other than the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine concluded that there “are specific regulatory barriers, including the classification of cannabis as a Schedule I substance, that impede the advancement of cannabis and cannabinoid research.”

When the Farm Bill passed, the research floodgates opened. In PubMed, from 2018 to the present, you’ll find around 6,000 results when you search “CBD.” From 2017 to 1924, as far back in time as PubMed goes, there are 5,810 results when you search “CBD.” In six years, there were more studies on CBD than the previous century.

Because we’re playing catch-up on the research, we’ve only recently discovered the human ECS (endocannabinoid system), an entire network of receptors throughout the human body that plays a role in modulating our mood and how we feel, how we experience and respond to pain, how our immune system responds to threats, and much more. We evolved this system because we produce cannabinoids internally (endocannabinoids) especially when we in engage in moderate physical activity such as walking, cycling, swimming or engaging in others forms of rhythmic exercise. But we can expose our bodies to more still when we consume cannabinoids in some specific foods (exocannabinoids). Most of these cannabinoids, including CBD, are not psychoactive – THC being an exception – but they all offer profound benefits.

CBD and other cannabinoids interact with the ECS in a number of different ways, so it’s no wonder that research is finding CBD to have potential in such a wide variety of health conditions, exerting neuroprotective, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and analgesic effects. This could be a game-changer for some people. We recently covered the subject of inflammation and how chronic inflammation is the common denominator in many chronic diseases—yet inflammation is not something that is tracked by mainstream doctors.

As we continue to probe deeper into the effects of CBD and other cannabinoids on the ECS and beyond, we will likely learn even more about the host of positive health effects these natural compounds can have on the body. It would be contrary to the agency’s mission of promoting and protecting public health to put these health benefits out of reach for many people by banning CBD supplements.

Action Alert! Write to Congress in support of bills that allow the legal sale of CBD in supplements. Please send your message immediately.

_____________

For more:

Category:

Activism, Supplements