Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby's Total Health Newsletter #25. Week ending Nov 8th, 2009
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1. The Quote Of The Week Comes First From Now On
2. Did You Eat Your Sulphur Today?
3. Temporary Memory Loss After Passionate Sex
4. Man's 4-Wheeled Friend!
5. Tips On Back Pain
6. Pasteur On His Deathbed And what He didn't Say
7. Health Tip For Winter

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Quote comes first from now on!

All young people are not necessarily youthful; some are already old and jaded far beyond their years. In contrast, some elderly people remain youthful in spite of their advancing age. They keep their minds young. Their smiles trickle down from their souls into their bodies and faces; their very life blood throbs with the joy of being.

Yogananda Paramahamsa The Journey To Self-Realization

And before we begin, here's a picture of me 2 weeks ago in my inflatable kayak in Yosemite (it's a great little thing to fold down and fit in a car -- always ready to go!)

1. Did You Eat Your Sulphur Today!

sulphur (English spelling, much nicer: sulphur) is a superfood, if ever there was one. We need plenty of it.

Sulphur is part of our detox mechanisms; what we call Phase II detox is moderated mainly by glutathione and consists mainly of conjugating toxic molecules with things like a sulphate radical. That renders the toxin relatively harmless and it can be excreted, via urine, bile or skin.

The precursors of glutathione, such as N-acetyl-cysteine (NAC) and s-adenosyl-methionine (SAMe) are, essentailly, just sulphur donors. Sulphur is present in certain foods, such as the crucifers: break open some raw brocolli and sniff it. You'll see what I mean.

(Wherever you get stinky smells sulphur is the reason. Garlic is rich in sulphur which is why it smells and it is a great detoxer! The repellant smell of rotten eggs is hydrogen sulfide, a simple compound of hydrogen and sulphur).

Sulphur is a nutrient probably more important to health than magnesium, zinc, iron, copper, sodium, iodine-and, for that matter, many vitamins. It accounts for about 1% of our body weight, for heaven's sake!

You'll have heard of MSM (methylsulphonylmethane) for joints and ligaments.

Sulphur-containing crucifers (cabbage and brocolli family) are known to help fend off cancer. The active agent is indol-3-carbinol and that too is rich in sulphur. Is this beginning to add up for you?

Solid sulphur, a pretty yellow

Sulphur is so essential for life that you would die without it, yet it is hardly ever mentioned in books on nutrition.

But the old folks kinda knew about it. They used to dose kids on brimstone and treacle; remember? Brimstone and treacle is prepared by mixing an ounce and a half of sulphur, and half an ounce of cream of tartar, with eight ounces of treacle; and, according to the age of the child, giving from a small teaspoonful to a dessertspoonful, early in the morning, two or three times a week.

Not surprisingly, it made kids pretty sick and probably worked by stopping the child from voicing their suffering so they didn't get the "cure"! But the sulphur does kill most parasites and so this was a good worming mix.

Interestingly, sulphur has been a common ingredient in homeopathic remedies, developed in the 19th century and still popular today as over-the-counter remedies. Now, researchers understand that sulphur forms part of the matrix of bone joints in the form of chondroitin sulphate and glucosamine sulphate.

Yessir, we need plenty of that! Don't forget.

2. Temporary Memory Loss After Passionate Sex

OK, I don’t normally share secrets of my intimate private life with the public. But—you know me—wherever there is a lesson to be gleaned and it does somebody some good, somewhere, then I’m right there...

A few weeks ago I had an alarming episode that doctors call “transient global amnesia” (TGA). It’s sudden but temporary memory loss following some strenuous or stressful event. In my case it came on after passionate sex with my beloved wife.

All of a sudden, I couldn’t remember what we were doing or why. I knew who I was but wasn’t sure about the lady with me! For several hours I was quite confused about recent events and couldn’t get a grasp on things. I remember shopping at the local supermarket but not what we bought.

TGA may result from the deactivation of the brain’s temporal lobes and/or thalamus (the part of the brain that serves as a center for the relay of sensory information). Usually occurring in otherwise healthy persons, TGA triggers memory loss from external stresses such as strenuous exertion, high levels of anxiety, sexual intercourse, immersion in hot or cold water, and other similar conditions.

It was quite scary for me but absolutely frightened Vivien out of her wits. She assumed I had had a stroke or some serious event and from the first imagined that she’d lost me, for good. I was GONE!

Hours later my memory came back and although I am still a little vacant about those few hours (I can remember maybe 60%), my considerable intellectual powers are not diminished in the least.

In fact the curious thing is there is almost never any residual damage after TGA. What’s more it’s rare to experience TGA more than once; certainly 3 times maximum in a lifetime. Only 3% of people who have a TGA will ever get it again.

There are no ethnic associations or inherited conditions associated with TGA. Men experience the condition more often than women. In addition, the occurrence of this type of amnesia rarely happens before middle age, with about 12 out of 100,000 people ever experiencing the condition before age 50. The most likely ages in which to experience TGA are the 50s and 60s. I’m 65 next birthday (and feel around 30 years old).

Read about our poignant goodbyes and what really happened on the main website: sudden memory loss after passionate sex

3. Man's 4-Wheeled Friend!

Seems that dogs are no longer Man's best friend... Four wheels beats four legs!

Feeling Green? Is eco-sensibility important to you? Should you drive a smaller car?

No. Ditch the dog! It uses more carbon than even a gas-guzzling SUV does!

According to a new book Time To Eat The Dog, it takes 0.84 hectares of land to keep even a small dog fed. Meantime a 4.6-litre Toyota Land Cruiser (including the energy required to build it and drive it 10,000 kilometres a year) needs only 0.41 hectares.

Woof! I'm sorry, I should have said Brrmmm!

It's not just the dog. A cat is equivalent to a Volkswagen Golf!

What's even worse is that a few years ago the average citizen of Vietnam required only 0.76 hectares; for an Ethiopian, it's 0.67 hectares. That means the lousy mutt takes up more eco-room than some human beings, never mind the d***ed car!

Shoot it!

4. Tips On Back Pain

The concierge’s wife has back pain due to a prolapsed inter-vertebral disc (a “slipped” disc).
Then, I woke up this morning with a stiff neck, due a poor sleeping posture (and a dose of dairy in the form of ice cream last night!)

It got me to thinking I should write a little bit about back pain: neck pain and low back pain constitute the most common musculoskeletal complaints in primary care clinics.

Few of us will go through life without at least one episode of severe incapacitating back pain, whether due to a fall, repetitive strain injury or excessive lifting. I have some great information you can share with family and friends, if any of them should suffer with this problem.

But it turned out to be too much. Even cut down drastically, it's far too much for a slot in Letter From Serendipity. So I posted an entire web page at alternative-doctor.com.

Go read it here: Back pain! You can beat it!

5. Pasteur On His Deathbed And What He DIDN'T Say

I assumed there would be a lot of flack from my unwavering support of Louis Pasteur and attack on the ridiculous and destructive lies surrounding the life of this great man. I was right.

I especially deplore the myth that he is supposed, on his deathbed, to have renounced all his discoveries and said (something like) "I was wrong; Bernard was right; it is not the microbe; the terrain is everything."

Here is what Pasteur's chief biographer had to say; this is from Vallery-Radot, Pasteur's son-in-law, and therefore much more likely to have been there during Pasteur's final hours than some other anonymous biographer or someone who waited until 44 years after Pasteur's death to write a hagiography of one of his rivals (Bechamp):

Pasteur's strength diminished day by day, he now could hardly walk. When he was seated in the Park, his grandchildren around him suggested young rose trees climbing around the trunk of a dying oak. The paralysis was increasing, and speech was becoming more and more difficult. The eyes alone remained bright and clear; Pasteur was witnessing the ruin of what in him was perishable.

How willingly they would have given a moment of their lives to prolong his, those thousands of human beings whose existence had been saved by his methods; sick children, women in lying-in hospitals, patients operated on in surgical wards, victims of rabid dogs saved from hydrophobia, and so many others protected against the infinitesimally small! But, whilst visions of those living beings passed through the minds of his family, it seemed as if Pasteur already saw those dead ones who, like him, had preserved absolute faith in the Future Life.

The last week in September he was no longer strong enough to leave his bed, his weakness was extreme. On September 27, as he was offered a cup of milk: "I cannot," he murmured; his eyes looked around him with an unspeakable expression of resignation, love and farewell. His head fell back on the pillows and he slept; but, after this delusive rest, suddenly came the gaspings of agony. For twenty-four hours he remained motionless, his eyes closed, his body almost entirely paralyzed; one of his hands rested in that of Mme. Pasteur, the other held a crucifix.

Thus, surrounded by his family and disciples, in this room of almost monastic simplicity, on Saturday, September 28, 1895, at 4:40 in the afternoon, very peacefully, he passed away.

These are the last four paragraphs from a 1926 English translation of The Life of Pasteur by René Vallery-Radot, first published in 1900.

Terrain and disease

Pasteur was actually well aware of the importance of biological terrain. He wrote clearly in his notes of its importance, long before he died. He did NOT say that microbes don't matter; he simply said the truth, which is that terrain also matters. Without the right terrain, microbes cannot flourish. This is the so-called "soil and seed" version of health.

You need the right soil AND THE SEED to get a plant (in this metaphor, the plant is the disease, the microbes are the seeds).

6. Health Tip For Winter!

Since winter is here, let me bring out one of my old chestnuts - not that I ever hear anyone else with this knowledge. It's one of those curious things where the truth flies in the face of what everyone accepts is correct. Do it wrong (what you are expected to do) and you prolong suffering, do it right and you'll be well in no time.

That's why I'm publishing it. It's timely for the flu season anyway.

Throw away your handerkerchief. If you develop a cold or catch flu DO NOT BLOW YOUR NOSE! Just sniff and swallow the mucus. If you blow your nose, you will raise the pressure in your nasal passages and that drives infected organisms into the sinus cavities. Once in there they will set up an infective process that is the devil to get rid of, creating an endless yellow-green mucous effusion or "snot" as the schoolboys like to call it! Your "cold" will have turned to sinusitis, lasting for days or even weeks, maybe requiring antibiotics. We don't want that.

You never see dogs with handerchiefs! They just sniff (or lick) and swallow. So should we; that's what Nature wants. Your stomach can easily kill and digest most nasal germs.

For the same reason make sure you sneeze through the mouth and not through the nose. It won't clear the passages and will tend to repeat. But it is vital to avoid blasting the infected mucus into your sinuses, as I have explained. A sneeze, of course, is a sudden and very sharp rise in air pressure. Take care to neutralize the pressure rise by letting it out through your mouth.

As I said, nobody teaches this. But it's obvious if you understand the reason why!

So, that's all for this week!

Be well; find the sacred in all you do, otherwise don't do it!

Prof.

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