Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby's Total Health Newsletter #63. Week ending Aug 28th, 2010
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No Serendipity next week. I'm off to Hawaii for a break!

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• This week's Quote

1. Modern High-Tech Surgery Beat By Bush Doctors
2. When You Are Fat You Are Dying
3. From Death's Dark Door Back To Life (Vit-C)
4. Where Did We Come From?
5. My Birthday Photos
6. What's In A Word

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This Week's Quote:

Question: If you could live forever, would you and why?
Answer: I would not live forever, because we should not live forever, because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live forever, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever.
- Miss Alabama in the 1994 Miss Universe contest

[16 years on maybe she changed her mind?]

1. Modern High-Tech Surgery Beat By Bush Doctors!

What’s wrong with modern high-tech surgery?

Just to give you a little background, in 2003 I was awarded a fellowship of the Royal College of Practitioners (FRCP) in Colombo, Sri Lanka, for my contributions to alternative medicine. This is not to be mixed up with the United Kingdom FRCP, which is from the Royal College of Physicians. But I am very proud of it.

The Asian college, attached to the Open International University for Complementary Medicines (now moved to California), is named "royal" to commemorate King Buddhadasa, a Sri Lanka ruler back in the days when the country was called Serendib. He was a real healer.

Many countries have a tradition that the king was a healer. It comes into "The Lord Of The Rings", if you remember. Well, Serendib (whence comes our word serendipity) had a king who went one better: Buddhadasa was a surgeon; he carried with him at all times a set of surgicial instruments.

It was not uncommon for him to stop his entourage and operate on some desperate case then and there. This was remarkable in two counts:

1. that anybody survived at all!
2. that the king, who was of a high cast, should stop and even touch commoners and lowly people - it was strictly forbidden to touch the king!

But Buddhadasa was a noble man, filled with compassion; touching "the great unwashed" didn't bother him.

He was also pretty good at surgery and an astonishing number of cases survived.

Now this is where I'm going: in fact many bush doctors, in primitive conditions, did extraordinarily well. You have probably heard of the skulls found with trepanning holes from prehistoric sites: yet these skulls show clear signs of bone growth AFTER the operation. The patient did not die! (and that's brain surgery, for heaven's sake!)

Now a new study has shown that doctors operating under the aegis of Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), out "in the bush", or at least in territories with extremely limited resources, or in war zones, actually do better than modern high-tech US surgeons!

It has been reported that surgeons working for Medecins Sans Frontieres performed nearly 20,000 procedures in countries with limited resources over an eight-year period, and the operative death rate was extremely low. Between 2001 and 2008, MSF surgeons performed 19,643 procedures on 18,653 patients, which included 8,329 (42%) emergency, 7,933 (40%) obstetric-related and 2,767 (14%) trauma-related procedures, the study authors noted.

Eight of the programs reported no deaths. The highest death rate in any program was 0.9% and the overall death rate for all the programs was 0.2%. Given the increased risk of death associated with war zones, emergency procedures, difficulties with sterilization and cross-infections, complex procedures (including abdominal surgeries and hysterectomies) and the fact that many patients were classed as severe, based on the American Society of Anesthesiologists classification of severity, this result is truly staggering.

It's a real testimony to the ability of Nature to heal, the human spirit and the will to survive, and the skills and courage of what I think of as real doctors.

It's also a damning indictment of greedy, high tech, low standard surgery which goes on in many major Western countries with, supposedly, the best standards of health care.

Take a look at these statistics of medical misadventure for the USA, given by various sources, as you see:

• 6.56% of post-operative pulmonary embolism or deep vein thrombosis deaths were attributable to a patient safety incident in the US 2000-2002 (Patient Safety in American Hospitals, Health Grades 2004)
• 30.97% of post-operative respiratory failures resulted in death in the US 2000-2002 (Patient Safety in American Hospitals, Health Grades 2004)
• 7.65% of cases of accidental puncture or laceration resulted in death in the US 2000-2002 (Patient Safety in American Hospitals, Health Grades 2004)
• 6.25% of cases where a foreign body was left in during a procedure resulted in death in the US 2000-2002 (Patient Safety in American Hospitals, Health Grades 2004)
• 1.44% of complications of anaesthesia resulted in death in the US 2000-2002 (Patient Safety in American Hospitals, Health Grades 2004)
• 10.45% of cases of post-operative haemorrhage or hematoma resulted in death in the US 2000-2002 (Patient Safety in American Hospitals, Health Grades 2004)
• 14.99% of cases of post-operative wound dehiscence resulted in death in the US 2000-2002 (Patient Safety in American Hospitals, Health Grades 2004)
• 13.16% of selected infections resulting from medical care led to death in the US 2000-2002 (Patient Safety in American Hospitals, Health Grades 2004)
• 8.95% of transfusion reactions resulted in death in the US 2000-2002 (Patient Safety in American Hospitals, Health Grades 2004)

[SOURCE: JAMA/Archives journals, news release, Aug. 16, 2010]

2. When You Are Fat, You Are Dying

Well, at any rate, statistics are against you.

A survey just published in the Aug. 9 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine examined associations between waist circumference and the risk of death in 48,500 men and 56,343 women (aged 50 and older) and found that people with very large waists -- 47 inches or more for men and 42 inches and more in women -- were about twice as likely to die, compared to thinner people, from any cause.

All participants had completed a mailed questionnaire about demographic, medical, and behavior factors and provided information about weight and waist circumference during the 1990s. Over a nine-year follow-up period, 9,315 men and 5,332 women died.

A larger waist was associated with a higher risk of death across all measures of BMI, or body mass index, including people of normal weight and people who were overweight and obese.

But what foxed the researchers was that among women, the risk association between waist size and death was strongest for those with a normal BMI. Yet guidelines from the National Institutes of Health recommend that waist circumference be used to identify increased disease risk only among individuals in the overweight and obese categories of BMI.

That now appears unsound.

[SOURCE: Jacobs, E. Archives of Internal Medicine, Aug. 9, 2010; vol 170: pp 1293-1301].

The thing is, even just a little belly fat can be very dangerous. It creates abnormalities in the function of cells that line their blood vessels (endothelium), increasing the risk for high blood pressure and other problems, according to another new study published in the Aug. 17, 2010 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Damage to the endothelium can lead to the vessel not functioning properly and eventually high blood pressure and blood vessel disease, the researchers noted.

The researchers measured endothelial function in the brachial artery, which is located in the arm. Specifically, they looked for the ability of the artery to dilate. People who gained weight showed a decrease in the ability of the artery to dilate, the researchers found.

However, when they shed the weight again, the ability of the brachial artery to dilate properly snapped back to normal.

10 lbs may not seem much but the consequences can be serious. The great thing is, it’s totally reversible! Just lose the weight and your arteries go back to normal.

Check out the Fat Release weight loss system, if you haven't already done so!

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3. From Death's Dark Door Back To Life (Vit C)

Thomas Levy MD (LivOn Labs) sent me a fabulous link. It's from New Zealand TV, so most of you may not have seen it. It tells the story of a man in a coma. The doctors wanted to turn off the life support machines; the family refused and fought (yes, really had to fight) to get the doctors to try IV vitamin C therapy.

The result? Aw, c'mon, you can guess!

Guy wakes up, lives happily ever after (well, nearly). You'll see him flying his aeroplane, instead of pushing up daisies!

I've seen the AWESOME power of IV vitamin C over the years. Trouble is, the people who need it most (folks in hospital) are never likely to get it. But just remember this story: if you really fight HARD you may get them to do it and so save the life of a loved one.

Here's the link: Vitamin C miracle man (have some Kleenex handy)

What is staggering to the layman is the sheer bone-headed arrogance and criminal negligence of the doctors, who outright refused to use vitamin C, despite clear evidence it was bringing the man out of the coma.

Thomas Levy has a commercial interest in Lypo-Spheric (liposomal) Vitamin C, featured in the video. So I know he's pretty delighted with the story, which has now gone round and round the world, many times! You can get some yourself here (I take it): www.livonlabs.com

Don't forget the moving coma story of Jean-Dominic Bauby either, from issue #57

By the way, don't miss the fact that what sent this man into an almost terminal coma was none other than our old friend the swine flu. Do not let the lies and dissembling of governments ever get you to turn your back on the dangers of wild organisms. They can be deadly.

4. Where Did We Come From?

This hasn't been demoted. But I am sensitive to the fact that not everyone thinks this should be the lead article week after week.

Actually, the topic has attracted a lot of deep comment and I think it will be well worth blogging separately. On a blog, you can easily comment and some of the replies I have received added considerably to the worth of the original writing by me.

For example, this interesting lady:

Hi Professor Keith.

Regarding your 'Where Dids We Come From? part 2 article; it's clear that you are what Don Juan (Carlos Castaneda books), called a 'dreamer'; someone who easily and naturally travels and sees that which the conscious brain and mind cannot see. You traveled out into the galaxies and constellations that you were viewing in the photographs you studied when you were young.

Some individuals are very adept at it, doing it without effort, even to the point of assuming everyone can do the same. I think the world would be a better place if everyone had that talent.

I am the opposite, what Don Juan called a 'stalker', the word having had a different meaning than we now give it, but defining a spirit's propensity to be highly detail-oriented, very grounded and often in a research or scientific career. It's much harder to teach a dreamer to also become a stalker, for the purpose of giving the dreamer more control while 'out there', and also to help the person to be able to return to their body safely.

Teaching a stalker to become a dreamer is more reachable, but still is not easy. I'm a stalker and damn good at it, and struggle with the seeing part, the dreamer capacity being tightly metered out as I work on this. It's a belief system as good as another to describe how you got to do what you did out there as a child.

When I was very young, I could see my angels, every day, anytime. There were always more than one, usually three or so. One of them saved my life when I was five and had a very bad fall from a tree.

I remember when I stopped seeing them, and when my brother asked me in an annoyed voice why I kept turning my head to look over my shoulder, rapidly and on both sides, I told him it was to try to see my angels before they faded out and I couldn't see them anymore. He laughed out loud and told me I was nuts or something like that.

It was the first time I ever had an inkling that I was seeing something that others were not seeing. I used to talk to my mom about my angels, and she knew I was seeing them. Eventually, I forgot that I could see them, for a long time. Then, as a school kid in a Catholic school, I found myself flying in my sleep, always close to the ground (a little ways above the telephone poles), and I was always flying away from the nuns, who were chasing me. It was scary because the nuns had power over me and I had to get away from them. So I flew from them, and I did it often.

Eventually that stopped too, but I've never forgotten it. I also have had episodes of spontaneous travel, happening without conscious effort on my part. I believe we all do this during our sleep, and that it's absolutely necessary for our health and survival; if we, as spirits, are confined into a physical body with never a moment's respite, we will go certifiably nuts, which is why the sleep-deprivation tortures by the Japanese upon their prisoners of war was so devastating on their mental health, and for some, on their longevity; they died.

Eventually, it will kill a person if they can never escape the confines of the body and of this world. At the very least, it will drive them mad.

I hope you don't get any negative reactions to your part 2 of the 'Where Did We Come From?' conundrum, because I want for you to continue the course. But hard-core Christians (evangelical and born-agains, especially) would take offense, because they have not learned tolerance and acceptance.

Please don't let any detractors keep you from continuing with this subject... Thank you for your interesting and entertaining letters. I read them all...

Melissa (surname omitted by me)

5. My Birthday Photos

I forgot to post these for you last week. My birthday was a few days before that. Our friends Nick and Theresa turned up with champagne and a RIDICULOUS cake with balloons attached!! Here are the two of them as they marched in (left). Alongside, Viv and I also posing with the cake (no Viv is not wearing some strange hat; that's a lighting device and the photographer failed to notice it looked silly)...

In case you are wondering, the cake was delicious. And also in case you are wondering, it was not big enough for all the candles I'm due!!

6. What's In A Word?

Perspicacity

Not one you hear very often these days. Yet I seem to remember a movie character called Perspicacity way back when. Anyone help with that?

It means clear seeing or far seeing (hint of prescience too, maybe). So: clear seeing, discernment, wisdom and understanding or the capacity to assess situations or circumstances shrewdly and to draw sound conclusions (I have it!)

The meaning comes from the Latin perspicacitas, meaning sharp-sighted.

Perspicacious is the adjective. A person with perspicacity is said to be perspicacious.

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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