Candida albicans is a typical gastrointestinal fungus that is a component of a normal GI environment that, when under certain conditions of GI stress or imbalance, can proliferate to the point of being pathogenic. One manifestation of this pathogenic overgrowth is the creation of barriers known as biofilms.

Allicin, a powerful and active metabolite of garlic, was shown to disrupt the membrane and reduce the proliferation of candida. Also, allicin demonstrated the ability to decrease biofilm production more effectively than the anti-fungal drug fluconazole.

Source: Science Direct

Dr. Strauchman and Dr. Morningstar want to thank everyone who completed our email survey by November 15th. We are excited to announce that Danielle Enos won our $100 Prepaid VISA gift card. Congratulations Danielle!

Although we only have one grand prize, we also want to reward everyone who took the time to complete the survey by the November 15th deadline. Therefore, everyone who did, in fact, complete the survey will receive $5 off their next in-clinic purchase of any supplement or nutrient they purchase. We are truly grateful that you all took the time to help us help you better.

Exciting news!  Dr. Mark Morningstar, chiropractic physician at the Natural Wellness & Pain Relief Centers of Grand Blanc and Richmond, has successfully completed NeuroScience’s  NEI Certification Program.  This means he has successfully mastered the tools and approaches to comprehensively and effectively treat many of the most common, yet complex health concerns. This benefits the patient by providing quicker and more effective health management – saving time and money.  He is among the first 100 providers nationwide to achieve this distinction.

“It is very exciting to receive this certification . The human body tends to function as a single entity. Therefore, it is important to evaluate people with a whole-body approach. NEI certification serves as an assurance to patients that the NEI-certified physician will evaluate and treat them with this perspective. The NEI certification training program has challenged me to better understand the tools available to address health through the evaluation of nervous system function. It allows me to comprehensively and effectively treat many of the most common, yet complex health concerns through innovative nervous system assessment and unique treatments. This has benefited many of my patients, by providing new and very efficient approaches to health concerns – saving my patients both time and money,” says Dr. Morningstar
For more information or to schedule an appointment to discuss your health concerns and the options available to you, please call one of Dr. Morningstar’s offices below.

810.694.3576  Grand Blanc

586.727.7500  Richmond

In a new study published in the European Spine Journal, researchers wanted to see if hormone deficiencies were a triggering event for adult degenerative scoliosis, a condition that commonly occurs in postmenopausal women. It is thought that menopausal hormone changes affect bone density, which sets off a cascade of events that leads to degenerative scoliosis.

In this latest study, women given hormone replacement therapy were less likely to develop one of the initiating factors in adult degenerative scoliosis, called lateral listhesis, a rotational displacement of a vertebra.

The occurrence of adult degenerative scoliosis is more common that scoliosis in juveniles or adolescents. Therefore, this research is very important in helping to possibly prevent adult-onset scoliosis in the first place.

One note we would like to add to this however. Bio-identical hormone replacement has far fewer risks involved than conventional hormone replacement therapy, which is made from pregnant horse urine. Synthetic hormone replacement carries with increased risk of certain female reproductive cancers. So please do your homework if you are interested in hormone replacement.

Women who are already developing degenerative scoliosis will likely want a combined treatment approach, one that includes bio-identical hormone replacement and a conservative exercise-based scoliosis therapy like ARC3D to help reverse the scoliosis.

Source: Eur Spine J. 2011 Oct 28. [Epub ahead of print]

If you have read the recent reports about the cantaloupe that has killed over a dozen people, you have also seen the terrifying news that it ain’t over yet and that the listeria poisoning can take a couple of months to show up. Some reports say the melon from the farm in question was shipped to 17 states, others say 25 states.

So, there are a bunch of worried consumers out there, waiting for that ticking time bomb melon to go off inside them. With not even a hint of what do do about it coming across the airwaves. I had the peach colored melon myself this weekend, at a restaurant. A melon of unknown origin. Was I foolish to trust it wouldn’t kill me?

I am a subscriber to the Claude Bernard milieu theory, which suggests that we can build our immunity to disease and even pathogens by creating an inhospitable environment inside our bodies.

Good Advice from the Healthy Home Economist

I highly recommend reading this post called Foodborne Illness that Sarah Pope did on my blog during another serious illness outbreak. Read it and you will see her excellent advice to partake of pro-biotic foods (for example, kefir, yogurt, fermented vegetables, raw kombucha, unpasteurized beer). She also recommends a low sugar/starch diet to develop your immunity.

Why do some people get sick during illness outbreaks and others don’t? Some have a better environment, consequently a stronger immune system. It is a simple as that.

Don’t live in fear of salmonella, listeria and the like, start building your interior milieu with thousands of good bacteria, these bacteria will protect you and can even overwhelm a bad bug. Think about it, the reason it takes a month or more for virulent listeria to cause disease, is because someone ingested a little bit of bacteria that multiplied, and grew inside them until it became a major problem.

Don’t just sit and wait, throw down as much competitive bacteria as you can and take those pathogens OUT!

Plus, sauerkraut, naturally fermented pickles and kefir shakes are great tasting and add variety to your diet!

Live a Wellness Lifestyle, Everyday!

The reason I wasn’t afraid to eat cantaloupe is that I have in my daily diet these protective foods. For years now I have been building a strong milieu in my body.

Since the news reports say the average age of people dying from this cantaloupe outbreak is 78, you may want to reach out to the elderly folks in your life and encourage them to add kefir or raw kombucha to their diet.

And, by the way, antibiotics are contraindicated for foodborne illness. Please get a second or third opinion if a hospital tries to give you antibiotics. The damage can be serious when antibiotics are administered.

Taken from the Health Freedom Alliance.

Full Source: http://hartkeisonline.com/natural-health/cantaloupe-outbreak-what-to-do-if-you-have-eaten-cantaloupe/

Conventionally grown strawberries are hard orbs, bred to endure long-haul travel and leisurely stints on supermarket shelves, not to taste good.

Aesthetics aside, their real scandal is chemical. It takes a lot of pesticides to keep them healthy and growing in vast monocrops, including some of the very most toxic ones available in the US: fumigants that sterilize the soil and imperil farm workers.

For years, I’ve been urging consumers to denounce the use of such poisons by buying only organic strawberries. But it turns out, in California at least, most organic strawberries have a dirty secret: they come from plants that spend time on nurseries that use “millions of pounds of toxic chemicals,” including methyl bromide, before being transplanted to organically managed fields, The New York Times reports.

To be clear, dramatically fewer toxic chemicals are used in the production of organic strawberries, because such poisons are banned in the fields where the fruit is actually grown. But to me and no doubt to many others, the fact that they’re used at all is jarring news.

The Times points to a letter signed by three California organic farmers and the Pesticide Action Network urging the USDA’s National Organic Program to clarify rules around organic seed and plant stock. Organic code stipulates that farmers must use organically produced seeds and plants whenever they are “commercially available,” meaning they can resort to non-organic ones otherwise. Consumers have shown they want an alternative to fumigant-grown strawberries. It’s time for the USDA to step up.

According to the Times, the state doesn’t have a single organic berry industry—hence the the practice of relying on plants that grew on fumigant-using nurseries.

But here’s the kicker: From 2005 to 2009, the Times reports, the state did have a commercial-scale organic nursery, run by farmer James Rickert of Prather Ranch, one of the letter’s signees. But Rickert’s plant-starting operation languished and went out of business because farmers were wary of paying a premium for organically grown plants that they feared they might carry disease, Rickert told the Times:

“The reality is that a lot of the organic growers want nothing to do with organic plants” because it scares them, said Mr. Rickert, who has since gone back to herding organically fed cattle at his ranch in Butte Valley. Indeed, for many organic strawberry growers, using organic stock amounts to taking a big financial risk with little chance of reward.

But the problem evidently wasn’t the quality of Rickert’s products or some inherent difficulty in raising strawberry plants organically. Indeed, pioneering California organic strawberry grower Jim Cochran of Swanton Berry Farm (briefly profiled on Mother Jones here), who also signed the letter, used  Rickerts’ plants extensively and found them “always of excellent quality,” he told the Times.

The problem was that lax enforcement of the “commercially available” rule, combined with the risk-averse nature of most farmers, allowed most organic farmers to avoid trying Rickert’s products. As the whistle-blowing farmers’ letter to the USDA puts it, “Without clear enforcement we fail to create the marketplace for new technologies, especially alternatives to chemical fumigation.”

If the USDA had enforced the rule in the first place, Rickert’s business would likely have succeeded—and drawn more organic nurseries into the market. And Rickert himself told Pesticide Action Network that he would “jump-start” his nursery business as soon as the USDA shows it’s serious about enforcement.

TOM PHILPOTT

Source:

http://motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2011/09/organic-strawberries-not-always-grown-without-toxic-fumigants

Westport, CT – infoZine – E/The Environmental Magazine – It is true that some red inks used for permanent tattoos contain mercury, while other reds may contain different heavy metals like cadmium or iron oxide. These metals—which give the tattoo its “permanence” in skin—have been known to cause allergic reactions, eczema and scarring and can also cause sensitivity to mercury from other sources like dental fillings or consuming some fish. While red causes the most problems, most other colors of standard tattoo ink are also derived from heavy metals (including lead, antimony, beryllium, chromium, cobalt nickel and arsenic) and can cause skin reactions in some people.

Helen Suh MacIntosh, a professor in environmental health at Harvard University and a columnist for the website, Treehugger, reports that as a result of a 2007 lawsuit brought by the American Environmental Safety Institute (AESI), two of the leading tattoo ink manufacturers must now place warning labels on their product containers, catalogs and websites explaining that “inks contain many heavy metals, including lead, arsenic and others” and that the ingredients have been linked to cancer and birth defects.

Of course, exposure to mercury and other heavy metals is hardly the only risk involved with getting a tattoo. The term tattoo itself means to puncture the skin. Tattoo ink is placed via needles into the dermis layer of the skin, where it remains permanently (although some colors will fade over time). Some people have reported sensitivity springing up even years after they first got their tattoo; also, medical MRIs can cause tattoos to burn or sting as the heavy metals in the ink are affected by the test’s magnetism.

Beyond the long term risks of walking around with heavy metals injected into your body’s largest organ (the skin), getting a tattoo in and of itself can be risky business. If the tattoo parlor’s needles and equipment aren’t properly sterilized in an autoclave between customers, you could be exposing yourself to hepatitis B or C, tuberculosis, mycobacterium, syphilis, malaria, HIV or even leprosy.

“The potential risk of infectious spread from tattooing (particularly due to Hepatitis B) is high enough that it is a practice that should be avoided by pregnant women to safeguard the health of the baby [and that of the pregnant woman herself] whose immune system is down regulated and is much more vulnerable to these types of infection,” reports dermatologist Audrey Kunin, who runs the popular Dermadoctor website. Dr. Kunin advises to be careful about choosing a tattoo parlor: “Make sure the place is reputable, perhaps check with the health department to see if there have been past claims against the parlor in question if you still have doubts.” She adds that since tattoos are essentially open wounds, they must be cared for properly, especially in the first few weeks, to stave off infection.

Those who want go ahead with getting a tattoo anyway despite the risks should consider steering clear of colors derived from heavy metals. Dr. Kunin reports that black might be the safest permanent tattoo ink; it is often derived from a substance called carbon black and rarely causes any kind of sensitivity issues. If your heart is set on red in your tattoo, ask around to see if any tattoo parlors in your area are willing to work with non-metallic organic pigments that lend a red color such as carmine, scarlet lake, sandalwood or brazilwood. There are non-metallic alternatives available for many other popular tattoo ink shades, too.

Source:

http://www.infozine.com/news/stories/op/storiesView/sid/49216/

The September issue of the Journal of Chiropractic Medicine is now available. In it is Dr. Morningstar’s 24-Month follow-up study titled, “Outcomes for adult scoliosis patients receiving chiropractic rehabilitation: a 24-month retrospective analysis.” Here is the abstract of the paper:

Abstract
Objectives: The purpose of this study was to retrospectively report the results of patients who completed an exercise-based chiropractic program and its potential to alter the natural progression of adult scoliosis at 24 months after the clinic portion of treatment was concluded.
Methods: A retrospective chart review was conducted at 2 spine clinics in Michigan, USA. Each clinic uses the same chiropractic rehabilitation program to treat patients with adult scoliosis. Multidimensional patient outcomes included radiographic, respiratory, disability, and pain parameters. Outcomes were measured at baseline, at end of active treatment, and at long-term follow-up.
Results: A total of 28 patients fit the inclusion criteria for the study. The average beginning primary Cobb angle was 44° ± 6°. Patients received the same chiropractic rehabilitation program for approximately 6 months. At the end of active treatment, improvements were recorded in Cobb angle, pain scores, spirometry, and disability rating. All radiographic findings were maintained at 24-month follow-up.
Conclusion: This report is among the first to demonstrate sustained radiographic, self-rated, and physiologic benefits after treatment ceased. After completion of a multimodal chiropractic rehabilitation treatment, a retrospective cohort of 28 adult scoliosis patients reported
improvements in pain, Cobb angle, and disability immediately following the conclusion of treatment and 24 months later.

Source: Journal of Chiropractic Medicine

Dr. Strauchman and Dr. Morningstar received official word this past Wednesday that their latest research paper was accepted for publication. Their study, titled “Manipulation under anesthesia for patients with failed back surgery: retrospective case series with one-year follow-up” will be published in the Journal of Chiropractic Medicine later this year. In their study, they evaluated the ability of a specialized procedure, manipulation under anesthesia (MUA), to reduce pain and improve daily function in patients who had a previous back surgery but either still had pain months after the surgery, or the pain never subsided with the surgery. One year after they received the MUA procedure, their clinical improvements were maintained.

They encourage everyone with chronic pain from disc bulges or herniations, previous spine surgery, or fibromyalgia to contact their office for a free consult to see if manipulation under anesthesia is right for you. It can literally change your life……what have you got lose?

On September 24th, 2011, the Natural Wellness & Pain Relief Centers in Richmond will be hosting a Grand Opening!

The day’s events include a ribbon-cutting ceremony, featured health workshops, and tons of free information and prizes.

As part of our community health awareness program, in partnership with the Michigan Health & Wellness Initiative, during the Grand Opening we will be offering FREE blood pressure checks, breathing tests, and FREE laboratory tests including intestinal flora, antioxidant status, 10-parameter urinalysis, and H. Pylori testing (a common cause of ulcers and autoimmune disorders).

We will be taking $15 donations, all of which will be given to a local charity.

Laboratory testing is on a first come, first served basis until test kits are gone.

Come and find out why the Natural Wellness & Pain Relief Center in Richmond is the most comprehensive integrative medicine clinic in Macomb County.

For more information, please call 586-727-7500.

Media contacts: Please call 810-694-3576 for interviews with Dr. Megan Strauchman, Medical Director.