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I don’t know about you, but as the tone of presidential campaign begins to deteriorate - as it inevitably does, despite early pleas to take the high road - I am finding it more and more difficult to figure out what the candidates’ positions actually are. This election cycle, the state of the health care system in the U.S. is quite the hot topic, and the candidates are busily trying to tear down their opponents’ plans as they tout their own.

Want an unbiased run-down of how our candidates propose to fix our health care system? Click here for a great resource.

The Henry J. Kaiser Foundation gleaned all the data they could from candidates’ websites and speeches, as well as information from debates and news items, and created this handy site that allows you to compare each candidate’s health care proposal (or promises of a proposal) side-by-side with all of the other candidates.

The rest of the site is also chock full of information on the continuing political debate and policy issues surrounding our broken system.

Check it out!

If you aren’t diggin’ honey, you ain’t been paying attention.

Think that diabetes is out of control? How about infections? Well, honey, you should be happy to note that this sweet message is brought to you by your truly, Miss Kimbely Ann. And the way I see it: I put the information into your hands, it’s up to you what you do with it. Challenge yourself to treat yourself better, cause honey child: you deserve it.

PART ONE: Honey, your sweet-tooth is irresistible!

Dr. Bodog Beck, MD has a name just drums its way along your tongue in a honeyed kinda fasion. Dr. Bodog Beck is a dude that got honey and health all figured out back in the 1930s with his book, appropriately titled: Honey and Your Health. This publication is even more mind-boggling considering that current research is just catching on to this age old, healing tradition. His historical accounts and research concludes that honey treats just about everything, from successfully curing diabetes and allergies and asthma, to providing the body with basic materials for optimum health. And that’s not all. Its anti-fungal, anti-viral, anti-bacterial properties make it the ideal topical salve for open and festering wounds, as well as an aid during the sick season. And that’s still not all. Here’s an excerpt from his book Honey and Your Health:

Beyond any doubt, a great error in the present feeding methods for children is to permit them to consume sugar-candy instead of natural sweets. Dr. Seal Harris (New Orleans Med. & Surg. Journal. 81, Sept. 1928) remarks: “The sugar-fed child often becomes rachitic, is prone to acquire colitis and other infections. If he survives infancy he becomes the pale, weak, undernourished child, or the fat flabby indolent and self-indulgent adolescent. Sugar saturated and vitamin-starving America presents a problem…. An ounce of prevention in an infant is worth more than the proverbial pound of cure in an adult. Sugar-fed children will not enjoy milk, eggs, fruit and vegetables to provide them with protein, fats, minerals and vitamins, which are needed for their growth.”

Dr. Harris thinks that the sugar-saturated American children are confirmed sugar habitués. They cover their breakfast cereals with sugar, spread sugar-syrup over their pancakes, cheap jams over the muffins and often even sweeten their milk. They are served sweet desserts (the sweeter the better) for lunch and dinner. Between meals they devour candy and ice cream, and indulge in all kinds of sweet “soft” drinks. Candies contain 40- 60% of some sort of processed sugars. As a result, these children suffer from flatulence, hyperacidity and headaches and become irritable, restless, capricious and undernourished. They are physically underweight or overweight and mentally precocious or retarded; are easily fatigued and unmanageable, suffer from one cold after another. Physicians, instead of conducting the fashionable search for some non-existent endocrine deficiency, should rather be guided by the fruity breath of acetone of these children, which in itself usually reveals the difficult (?) diagnosis. The French Dr. Le Goff contends that about 80,000 children die in France from the direct effect of industrial sugar. Dr. Le Goff would not permit in his practice the minutest quantity of sugar in the food and drink of infants and children. The results are astounding because almost all the new-born grow up to robust childhood. Many pediatricians recognize the existence of so-called “sugar-fever.”

Sound like our current state of affairs is still struggling with the sugar issue? Maybe if we all started supporting the honey industry, give them hard-working busy bees some just due, then perhaps we could see some drastic changes in our overall health care system. We could begin to eliminate those difficult to manage cases such as irritable bowel disorders that affect 30% of all Americans. Just a thought, and it was just too simple to pass up mentioning.

PART TWO: Honey, Give it to me straight!

To make the situation even more interesting, our honey resources are rapidly declining, as our honeybee populations are decreasing due to an umbrella term call the Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). There are many theories about the decline of the honey bees, and I have my own thoughts to add fuel to the debate: it’s the classic bait-and-switcheroo. Commercialized honey farmers extract more honey than the hive is capable of providing, to compensate: the farmer substitutes a corn-syrup substitute for the bees to eat instead. Well, here’s the catch: honey contains substantial mineral components from the soil, these minerals are vital to the structural integrity and proper metabolic functioning of the honeybee. Honeybee diets that are based upon the sugar substitutes may not provide our winged workforce with essential vitamins, minerals, and nutrients typically found in honey and most importantly essential to proper immune function. No wonder these little buggers keep getting sick. These mineral components are also, coincidently, missing from the diet of a typical American (instead consuming an interesting hodge-podge of sweetener alternatives) thereby lacking those essential components for our body and immune system.

Years ago, Western nutritionists discounted the minerals in honey, on the assumption that their quantity was too small to make them important. Now it is known, however, that numerous minerals are needed by the human body in very small amounts to keep the body in mineral balance. Honey contains minerals, in about the right quantity, to serve the needs of the normal individual. (Great resource)

Perhaps the same corn syrup/honey substitute craze found in our food sources is to blame for our lack of structural integrity. What components are found in honey and how does the body use each item, you ask? Iron, copper, chlorine, manganese, silica, potassium, sodium, phosphorus, calcium, aluminum, melanin, and magnesium are typically found in the darker varieties of honey. To learn more about minerals, what purpose each serves in the body, and what happens when the body does not have enough of it, click here or here. You will be startled to know about the multitude of unmanageable diseases that can be managed if honey was used instead of the refined and artificial counterparts typically used in today’s food industry.

Still hungry for more, Honey?

An essential guide to help you understand the health benefits of honey can be found here.

To learn more about refined sugar foods, current trends on sweet-toothed consumption, and tips to reduce your intake of honey substitutes, click here.

To understand the properties of honey and it’s wound healing properties, click here.

For a comprehensive look at honey’s healing properties, click here.

For those pesky STAPH infections, want a truly viable solution? Click here.

Honey: Nature’s Perfect Food by Tariq Sawandi, MH, has more than enough information to satiate your appetite about the stats of honey and treatment options.

Dr. Bodgog Beck should be a household name, his reference, unabridged is: Beck, Bodog F, MD. Honey and Your Health. Robert M. McBride and Company: New York, 1938.

An excerpt from an editorial written for the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine by Dr. Kim Tippens, ND, L.Ac., and Erin Connelly, M.A.

There is little doubt that poverty and health are closely linked. According to the Center for Disease Control, poor adults in the United States – defined as persons whose family incomes are below the Census Bureau’s poverty threshold - had higher levels of heart disease, respiratory conditions, diabetes, pain, depression, and anxiety than non-poor adults [1]. A World Health Organization/World Bank study describes the link between ill health and poverty as “inextricable,” explaining that illness can perpetuate poverty, and poverty can put people at greater risk of illness or injury [2]. As primary care providers, doctors are important allies in the fight against poverty, a welcome role for an overwhelming majority of practitioners [3]. We posit that naturopathic physicians (NDs) and other natural medical practitioners have a valuable role to play in public health and are in an ideal position to practice pro-poor* health care, due to their holistic orientation towards health and emphasis on preventive care. The natural medicine professions can work as a whole towards offering health care to the medically underserved, aiding patients with health care system navigation, and serving as advocates to improve policies that disproportionately affect those of lower socio-economic status. While this article focuses on NDs, the suggestions can also be expanded to other practitioners whose scope of medical practice is holistic in nature.

As primary care physicians, NDs are on the front lines of the health care field and may be the first or only health practitioners some patients see. Thus, they are in a position to impact multiple aspects of their patients’ lives. The emphasis on prevention and lifestyle enhancement makes the practice of naturopathic medicine inherently social, requiring close consideration of the interactions between body, mind, and environment and an understanding of how health and social conditions are interrelated. When it comes to the poor and medically underserved, the underlying source of disease is not limited to the individual but can involve deeply embedded social and economic realities that subvert optimal health. Naturopathic medicine’s holistic view of wellness can and should be broadened to address these social determinants of health, which falls in line with the naturopathic principal of identifying and treating the underlying causes of illness. To heal the whole person, physicians must take into account that powerful social inequities make it difficult to access and pay for medical care, and can harm one’s health.

The causes of disparities in health are complex and deeply entangled. Many of our most pressing public health issues, such as cancer mortality, diabetes and obesity, heart disease, and environmental degradation, have a disproportionate affect on the poor [6-9]. Faced with these and other obstacles, low-income patients may not have the same opportunities for wellness as those with higher incomes. As physicians, NDs can help patients overcome these obstacles in multiple ways. NDs can offer sliding scale or low-cost care to the medically underserved, can help their patients understand their choices in the health care system, and can become advocates for better nutrition, environmental, and education policies.

See cited references and the full text article here.

* Pro-poor health is defined by the World Health Organization as an approach “that gives priority to promoting, protecting and improving the health of the poor. It includes the provision of quality public health and personal care services, with equitable financing mechanisms. It goes beyond the health sector to encompass policies in areas that affect the health of the poor disproportionately, such as education, nutrition, water, and sanitation. Finally, it is concerned with global action on the effects of trade in health services, intellectual property rights, and the funding of health research as they impact on the health of the poor in developing countries.”

Should US citizens be concerned about pharmaceutical drugs and personal safety? Aside form the litany of side-effects that accompany pharmaceutical drugs, the US’s FDA might be putting patients in harm’s way. Here are the facts, you decide:

An article in the NY Times today announced that 80% of the components comprising the US’s pharmaceutical drugs are made in foreign countries. Foreign drug suppliers do not have to meet the minimum regulatory standards set here in the US, which may result in counterfeit products. When you take a moment to consider all the recent news from China concerning toothpaste ingredients such as diethylene glycol (a poison found in antifreeze) and the lead-based paint used on toys, we may want to reexamine our health care options.

The FDA announced that it is unable to keep regulatory records for the safety of these foreign manufacturers, citing poor data management systems. The result is that the FDA relies on foreign inspectors and volunteers, oftentimes where the manufacturer gets a “heads up” before an inspection or translators are used. Are we receiving an honest picture of what is going on?

Following that same line of thought, recently the FDA recommended NOT to import/buy pharmaceutical drugs from international sources, such as Canada and Mexico, citing caution about unknown ingredients and ineffective doses of active ingredients:

“For public health reasons, FDA remains concerned about the importation of prescription drugs into the U.S. In our experience, many drugs obtained from foreign sources that either purport to be or appear to be the same as U.S.-approved prescription drugs are, in fact, of unknown quality. FDA cannot assure the American public that drugs imported from foreign countries are the same as products approved by FDA.” (Source)

Does the new information highlighted today in the New York Times conflict with these precautionary measures? Perhaps so. Clarification from the FDA and US policies for the origins of its pharmaceutical drugs should be reexamined and implemented in a way that protects consumer safety.

Why are the costs for pharmaceutical drug higher in the US than any where else on the globe? 60 Minutes attempted to get to the bottom of this powerful lobbying action with their expose` entitled: “Under the Influence“. You’d be surprised how this got through Congress.

And if that’s not enough questionable karma:

When it comes to pharmaceutical advertisement, the specifics are presented with a slight of hand technique, leading scientists say at the Poynter Institute. An example of a recent NPR interview looks at the drug, Lunesta, a sleep-aid, where the consumer is given the particulars in a manipulative manner. To name a few techniques: benefits are read at a sixth-grade reading level, side effects read at a ninth-grade level; visual imagery was used to detract from a cautionary list of complications; and the only difference between the treatment group (those that received Lunestra) and the control group (those that did not), according to the fine print, was a mere 40 minutes of sleep! Is this a reasonable antidote for sleep considering the list of side effects?

Not convinced of Big Pharma’s karmic debt? Well, unfortunately, you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet: http://www.newstarget.com/Big_Pharma.html

Stay informed, protect your most valuable asset: your health because you’re worth it.